I have just installed Zen Cart v1.4 after an older stores database became very bogged down (11,000 queries and 8+ seconds for each product page load). After around 4 years of running.

After installing a test product on the new site with the same exact attributes as my old site, now I am down to only 570 queries and 1.1 seconds. So I went from 11,000 queries per product pageload on old store to 571 on new store. Same attributes, and settings for attributes. I know this because under Configuration> Logging> Display The Page Parse Time set to true.

Here is my concern: After 3 tests of the same exact product with no changes in my new store, it seems to add additional querries with each pageload. This is what I see:
First page load test on new store - Number of Queries: 570 - Query Time: 0.612658459869
Second page load - Number of Queries: 571 - Query Time: 0.642329505249
Third page load - Number of Queries: 576

As you can see every time a page refreshes or load it seems to add more queries to my database.

I don't want this to build up to 11,000 queries like my other site. During setup I selected to add Cache to database to speed up large site. Is this the reason? And should I disable?

How can I keep from adding lots of files and bloated files my database over time? And why is this adding a querry or a few each time I load a page?