Does more filters mean less ammonia?

Does more filters mean less ammonia or less chance of an ammonia spike? Because it will increase the surface for bb right?
I'm not saying more filters for more fish. I'm saying more filters for less ammonia.

 

Sort of, yes. The more surface area for bacteria to grow the more ammonia they can take care of. However, the bacteria will only grow a big enough population to take care of the usual amount of ammonia in your tank. They won't be able to "eat" a spike, you'll have to bring that down yourself through water changes.

 

Oh okay. Thanks. But if a person has high ammonia in his tap water and tank, then it will help right?

 

The way I think of it, there are several things that set how large the colonies of beneficial bacteria can grow. One is the amount of biosurface. One is the amount of ammonia avaliable to feed the bacteria. There are others, as well

If your fish and feeding produce a set amount of ammonia, then your aquarium and filters will become inhabited by the amount of bacteria that the ammonia can support. The bacteria population is limited by the amount of ammonia available to it.

When you then suddenly increase the amount of ammonia being introduced into the aquarium, there will be a time lag during which more bacteria will need to grow before you have enough to properly handle this increased ammonia production.

Small increases in ammonia production rate can probably be handled by the existing bacteria. But larger increases will result in a rise in ammonia concentration while the bacteria reproduces enough to catch up.

The larger filter media surface will at least provide enough surface for that to be possible. But you should still add new fish slowly enough to allow the bacteria population to catch up.

But in general, more filter media surface is better. And multiple filters is a good idea because it also provides redundancy.

 

Thank you for the elaborate answer what will happen if you have a tank with already high ammonia? Adding more filters will help right? Because the required ammonia is already there. Its controlled only by pwc every 2 days. So I might get a another filter to push it to maybe 4 to 5 days for a pwc. Correct me I'm wrong.

 

More filtration is no bad thing! If you have a high bioload in your tank then yes, adding another filter will give you more room for media and hence more surface area for bacteria to grow. Another thing it will do is increase the rate at which your aquarium water is processed, so each gallon will be pushed past the filter media and its bacterial population more often.

 

Thank you for the elaborate answer  what will happen if you have a tank with already high ammonia? Adding more filters will help right? Because the required ammonia is already there. Its controlled only by pwc every 2 days. So I might get a another filter to push it to maybe 4 to 5 days for a pwc. Correct me I'm wrong.

Adding more filters won't hurt, and it will help given enough time. But when you first add the new filter(s), they won't do anything because their filter media will be sterile, and have no beneficial bacteria. But over time, the filter media in those filters should become colonized by beneficial bacteria. And then the increased amount of BB will start to help metabolize the excess ammonia.

This could take a few weeks to a few months, though.

But once you've got the increased bacteria colonizing the increased filter media surface area, then you should be able to push your PWCs out to, say, once a week, or once every two weeks depending on nitrate build-up.

I guess, ideally, you'll want to have enough biosurface in your filters to host more bacteria than you need. That way, your bacteria is not limited by the filter biosurface. You'd really like the bacteria to be limited by the availability of ammonia. When you have enough beneficial bacteria in the system, you should never read much if any ammonia at all. Likewise, you should never read any nitrite, either.

But nitrAte will build up regardless. So the limiting factor for time between water changes will end up being the nitrate concentration in the tank. That's how all of my tanks work. I never see any ammonia or nitrite when I test. But I do see ever increasing nitrate, so I have to do water changes to keep the nitrate concentration in check.