There is a lot of misinformation above. There is science on all of this.
The nitrifiers reproduce by dividing, they do not form spores. So they would not have existed for many millions of years if they had no strategy for surviving hard times. They do go dormant. They are able to sense when ammonia or oxygen levels drop drastically and they respond by slowing down their activity greatly. When the ammonia and or oxygen levels are restored, the bacteria "wake" up and get back to work. The research on this has shown several things to be true.
1. The amount of time it takes for them to recover depends on their condition when they go dormant. The better that condition, the longer they can last in a dormant state and the more quickly they can recover when nutrients return.
2. They do not feed when dormant which means there is a limit to how long they can remain viable. Individuals will be dying every day, but at a very slow rate. And there is no reproduction unless what they need returns.
3. Different strains of bot AOB and NOB have different tolerances for dealing with starvation as to how fast they lose individuals and how quickly they can recover when needed nutrients are restored.
If the above were not the case there could not be any form of bottled bacteria which worked to seed a new tank or other situations where they are needed.
Joke Geets, Nico Boon, Willy Verstraete, Strategies of aerobic ammonia-oxidizing bacteria for coping with nutrient and oxygen fluctuations,
FEMS Microbiology Ecology, Volume 58, Issue 1, October 2006, Pages 1–13,
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1574-6941.2006.00170.x
full paper here
https://academic.oup.com/femsec/article/58/1/1/468326?view=extract
Next, because most of the bacteria in question form biofilms in which they live attached to hard surfaces, they pretty much must have all their nutrients delivered to them, They do not actively seek them out. However, some portion of them will be motile. The numbers will be smaller or larger based on nitrogen levels. However, this does not exceed 10% or the total numbers. When nitrogen disappears the jon of the motile ones is to move to where there is what they need. of course in nature there are place to which they can move which is not the case in our tanks.
It is also important to understand how nitrite effects fish. When there is nitrite in the water it enters fish via their gills.
Once inside fish how long does it take to works its way out?
from
http://vetmed.agriculturejournals.cz/pdfs/vet/2005/11/01.pdf
As to where the bacteria will colonize in an aquarium, the answer is pretty basic. The can live on any hard surface where what they need is available as long as it is out of the light. The bacteria and Archaea involved are photophobic and prefer to be in darker conditions. So they live inside media, in the substrate, on decor both natural and fake and even on live plants.
Usually the place they are found in the greatest numbers is inside the media of filters. This is because the circulation and is good there and they also tend to expose the bacteria to the highest levels of oxygen. But, if a filter is small or if one allows the media to clog, the bacteria will respond by reproducing in other parts of a tank in order to pick up the slack.
As far as i am concerned it should not be possible for a normal feeding to cause detectable nitrite in an aquarium. Nitrite is produced because of ammonia resulting in more nitrite than the microorganisms for handing it can process. So one should see an ammonia spike as well. Nitrite is not an ingredients in fish food. So for it to produce nitrite it has to first be broken down into ammonia and then converted to nitrite. In a properly established tank normal feeding should nor appear as the bacteria present will handle it before it can accumulate to where it can be tested.
It is importan to realize they in a cycled stocked tank that the amminia bing produced is not haopening the way if does duriing a fishless cycle. Here we basically add a full day's worth of ammonia in a single dose. So we need to see it all handled in less than a day. Then we add a full fish load and what happens. The ammonia is produced continuously all day and night but at a rate that the bacteria are able to handle it it immediately and we cannot detec eithe ammonia or nitrite. Howerver, if we do something which greatly increases the source of ammonia we will see a spike in it and then in nitrite.
Moreover, what food we feed matters in terms of ammonia creation. AGan we learn this from the world of fishless cycling. Before we learned to use ammonia or ammonium chloride to produce tha ammonia needed to cause the bacteria to colonizem we used other means to create that ammonia. One was adding fish food to a tank. But, as Dr. Hpvanec has taught us in terms of using food to do a fisless cycle,
So, the above teaches us that just adding foods it takes time for it to decay and create ammonia let almost for that ammonia to be be processed into nitrite. Dr. T. suggest using another bacteria to accellerate the process of converting the food to ammonia.
I do not believe that putting a normal amount of food into a cycled stocked tank can produce nitrite in a matter of minutes. The process to get from food tonitrite is simply not that fast.l And since a cycled tank had a propper balance of ammonia and noitrite oxidizers.........
Plus we also know that what food is involved can prodice more or less ammonia and thus more or less nitrite. And then there is this. If feeding were indeed creating excess nitrite, the result of this should be a rise in the level of nitrate which flollows the from the creationg or more nitrite. And when live plant are addded, this alters things a fair amount since the plants can use ammonium much faster than ther bacteria or archaea can use ammonia. And the plants to not create nitrite from the ammonia they consume.
Some of the other things in our tank water can cause false nitrite readings. Some dechlors can cause them. ewxcess nitrate levels may d this also. Expired test kits will do it xan do this as well. Even the fertilizers we add can cause false nitrite redings. Givenall the things that get added fo fish food, I doubt the science even knows which of them might cause a false nitrite reading.
Then there is the fact that it takes time for nitrite getting into a foish for its effects to leave a fish. What this requires is an exrtend period in water with 0 nitrites. So if we feed fish more than one a day, this should increase the accumulation in the fish. But for there to be serious levels of nirtite cause by excess feeding, it should not only take time to appears and there should also be a spike in ammonia first.
And then there is the fact that some strains of notrospira we might have in a tank are the ones able to process ammonia to nitrate in a a single step. When these are present adn a normal feeding does increase the ammonia before it increases the nitrtie, then no nitrite will result.
Finally, I know for a fact that a colony of ammonia oxidizers is able to process an greater level of ammonia before the increase is enough to increase the reproduction rate of the bacteria. They have a bit of flexibility in this respect. I have not seen research on this ability for the nitrite oxidizers, but I would guess that they also have a bit of flexibility similar to the ammonia oxidizers.
