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Bacterial blooms can be dangerous to the fish, and also have a negative impact on the nitrifying bacteria living in the bio-media. I’ve ran across several posts on several forums from aquarists telling others that these bacterial blooms are either a normal part of cycling a tank, or are not harmful at all. This is due to a lack of knowledge about bacterial blooms because they’ve either read something that was written by a person with lack of knowledge, or they just have not done proper research into it themselves.

Over at FishForums.net one of the retired moderators, backtotropical, in 2008 wrote up one of the most comprehensive articles on bacterial blooms that I’ve ever seen online. It’s written in such a way that any new aquarist can understand it. I contacted one of the admins of the forum to request permission to repost it here on my blog, but permission cannot be given because the author disappeared and they have no way to contact him. There’s no way that I can do the article justice by rewriting it in my own words, so I’ll just have to settle with sharing the link to the article itself. Better here than on another forum where it will be deleted since most forums do not allow you to link to other competing forums (such a shame too because there’s so much useful information floating around on various forums).

You will learn what causes bacterial blooms, what to do if you have one, and how to prevent them. Without further adieu… Bacterial Blooms Explained.

Thank you so very much for sharing your knowledge with us, backtotropical! Where ever you are, I hope you are doing well.