老坦克综合症,或OTS,什么g we have been hearing about since the hobby started, and I am not quite sure exactly what it means. Is it due to parameters, loss of diversity, lack of interest, diseases, metal accumulation, global warming, locusts, or all of the above? I think it is much simpler than “all of the above,” but some of those things are probably on the list of causes—especially locusts.
It’s about bacteria
在我看来,OTS有关with bacteria, or lack of it. Bacteria really run our tanks, and we are just there so the bacteria have something to make fun of. Without bacteria, our tanks would crash in less than a day. Of course on the other side of the coin, bacteria are also the cause of tank crashes. Bacteria can work for us or against us, and even the same bacteria can work both ways.
Some bacteria can double in numbers in an hour (I wish my tomatoes would grow half as fast as bacteria!). Just put a dead fish in a container of water (preferably in your girlfriend’s or boyfriend’s house) and see how quickly it stinks. If you put a live, healthy fish in a container of water, nothing will happen—the water will remain clear, for a day or so anyway. What is the difference? How do the bacteria know that they should foul the water?
很简单。健康的鱼具有一种免疫系统，可防止细菌分解细菌。鱼死后，其免疫系统也会死亡，细菌听到晚餐铃声并开始食用其身体 - 不仅是鱼的细菌，而且还包括鱼内的细菌，大部分都充满了肠道细菌。
Of course, if we leave the fish in that container of water for any length of time, bacteria will also kill it, but for a different reason. In this case, there are not enough bacteria in the water to convert the ammonia that the fish excretes through its gills into something less toxic, so the fish dies of ammonia poisoning. In a sense, it’s not the ammonia that kills the fish, but the lack of bacteria.
乘法问题
对我们（和我们的鱼）来说幸运的是，细菌通常“知道”其中有多少人应该在某种情况下繁殖。For instance if we overfeed our tank, the bacteria will multiply very quickly, and because bacteria can’t really swim, or even dog paddle, all the available spaces on the rocks will be covered in bacteria, forcing the overpopulation into the water column where they cloud the water. (I assume they learn how to swim very fast, but I really don’t know.) In time, the bacteria will consume all the food and the tank will clear.
这样做的问题在于，大多数蒙上阴影水的细菌也像鱼一样使用氧气，它们可以轻松地将其全部使用，从而导致鱼在地面上吞噬空气。大多数鱼不是这样设计的，因此，除非它们是肺鱼，否则它们可能会死亡。
Bacteria and OTS
What does all this have to do with OTS? As I said, we need bacteria and bacteria live on and “in” all the surfaces in the tank. Many of those spaces in a tank are inside the rocks. These are places we rarely think about, but they’re home to the types of bacteria we need to purify the water. Bacteria certainly live on the surfaces of the rock, but there is much more surface area inside the rock where the bacteria like to party. In time, those spaces, or pores, will clog. They will clog with detritus, which in boating terms we call “flotsam and jetsam.” That means just about anything that is a solid and in the water. It could be dead bacteria, pod exoskeletons, or anything else we have in the tank that eventually gets ground down by animals and currents.
请记住，曾经，eons前，沙子是岩石，准确地说是陨石。然后，暴风雨，火山和闪电破坏了岩石，恐龙和大脚怪，沿着它们走来走去，最后，SUV完成了工作。最终，这些岩石变成了沙子，即使在今天，沙子也越来越小，就像我的银行帐户一样。
In the sea, fish like parrotfish chew on the reef and excrete sand, but the stuff they are chewing on is not really rock, but coral rock, which was made by calcium-secreting creatures. Anyway, this also happens in our tanks to a smaller degree, and those tiny particles get trapped in the pores in the rock just like old plumbing pipes eventually get clogged. That leaves fewer places for the bacteria to live. Fewer bacteria equals less capacity to purify the water. This happens in tanks at the same time that the organic load is getting larger.
In older tanks, we have more fish and larger fish because we have gotten older, our boss has given us raises, and our kids have (hopefully) grown up and moved out, so we can go out and buy more fish. Do the bacteria care? Of course not. They can’t elevate their numbers because the pores in the rock are clogged, and besides bacteria being stupid, they are also lazy and won’t even try to clean out the pores in the rock. Instead, they will let the pollution build up in the tank in the hope that the fish will die so they can all feast on Thanksgiving dinner.
Typhoon time!
这不是有充分的理由在海中发生的。大海有大自然照顾她，我们有旧阿姨埃斯特。大自然（或戈尔）发明了台风。台风是一件很棒的事情，然后她错误地发明了人类坚持在海岸附近建造公寓。在海中，台风完全搅动了沙子及其上面的一切。在飓风和台风之后，我在某个地方潜水，看到脑珊瑚一半的大小与我房屋的大小倒置。我已经在游艇旁边看到海风扇在山坡上数百码。这些发生破坏了一些珊瑚，但也允许其他珊瑚蓬勃发展。就像森林大火；需要它们来恢复森林，杀死昆虫并将保险公司保持营业。
这种海底大屠杀有助于将毛孔保持在岩石中的打开状态，波动动作破裂了岩石，以便进入其中的处女毛孔。这些毛孔会迅速填充净化水的细菌。
We can carry our tanks to an airport, get on a plane to a tropical destination just before a typhoon, and set them down on the sand to be stirred up, but the airlines frown on that. What you can do is take a canister filter (I use a diatom filter) and put a restriction on the output hose. I use one of those little plastic funnel-looking things that florists use to keep cut flowers fresh. But anything that restricts the water flow is good, and you can use that just like a power washer.
当您将此设备直接放在毛孔上时，您会惊讶于从礁石岩中产生多少gunk。除非您不想要它们，否则不要以这种压力击中珊瑚。我每年在所有可以伸出的岩石上做这两次。在我的设置中，我还将砾石一直搅拌到水箱的底部，但是如果您有一张深沙床，您不应该这样做（这就是为什么我不喜欢DSB）。您可以搅拌越多，越来越多的笨蛋，细菌的空间就越多，礁石持续的时间就越长。
This is all just my opinion, of course, and you surely do not have to believe me. In a few years my reef will be 50 years old, and I believe it got to that age because of this procedure, which only takes me an hour or so twice a year. Of course at that time, I will be 120 years old, so I may take the tank down then and set it back up in my nursing home, where a retired supermodel will do this maintenance for me.
