Treating infections in shrimp

[Delapool]

I’ve still had bacterial infections with UV unfortunately - it did seem to restrict to within the school only so maybe doing something. But apart from start again not sure on anything else helping.

 

[Fishlegend]

Tears of happyness?

Is that just a mistake or did this mean sad ? Happy like joking is thi right and sad is this and happy is thus and happy wink is this and in aww is this :0 and is this @_@ like looking at the screen to long im soooooo confused pls help.
I am bad at reading text expressions

 

[libertybelle]

Haha, a little bit happy tears. I don’t mind them most of the time and they’re still in my 10 but this tank is on my bedside table and I’ve found in the last few weeks I find it somewhat aggravating to see little snail specs on the glass when I glance over.

So I decided not to cycle with media from the 29 just in case so I know that the tank is 100% sterilized and fresh. All hard scape/plants/media etc were bleached. Then I overdosed with safe mixed up the sand a bunch and let it run for a bit to ensure the bleach was gone.

I had an old bottle of stability which I have used to jump start cycles before but it was expired by a year. My new bottle hadn’t come yet so I just emptied like half a bottle of the stuff into the tank. Just emptied it since I was going to toss it anyway, if nothing else it’ll be an ammonia source from dead bacteria. 100% water change that night to get rid of the extra safe and presumably dead bacteria and tossed in some algae pellets to let it do it’s thing. (I’m such a technical fishless cycler aren’t I!) For kicks and giggles I tested the water today just to see. It’s been what... two days. Surely not much going on, yeah?

I just checked ammonia first, to see if I should add more food. Zero.

Okay that’s weird. There’s a small pile of food in this tank no way ammonia is actually zero. Checked again. Zero. (The test kit is relatively new and shows slight positive from treated tap from the chloramines so I know it’s good.)

So I check nitrites. Zero nitrites. I mean I wasn’t expecting them this early anyway.

Ok this is stupid but... checks nitrates.

Wouldn’t you know it I have nitrates. I checked against tap and the tank is noticeably producing nitrates already.

Dang.

So there’s my unexpected tidbit for the day. My memoir will be titled ‘how to do everything wrong and still get a cycled tank in three days.’

 

[Autumnsky]

So there was actually still BB in the bottle??? Is that the take away here?

 

[Delapool]

That’s good going for a year out of date bottle (if I’m reading right).

 

[libertybelle]

There must have been because no newly bleached tank cycles in a couple days on its own. Even the plants/decor/sand were bleached so that bottle was the only source of a sizable volume of bacteria.

Actually it expired in 2018. (And I was never particularly careful about storage.) I mean I dumped in most of a leftover bottle that I was going to throw out anyway...so I guess even if the stuff was only like .01% viable that’s a lot of bacteria. Little ecosystem and ammonia supplement in a bottle, live bacteria sticking it out by breaking down the dying ones probably. (For the record, I certainly wouldn’t recommend anyone doing this especially with fish in the tank. Probably shot the ammonia through the roof and dropped dissolved o2 for a while afterwards...)

Anyway if I had any doubts about stability speeding things up that sure crushed them. I haven’t used it in years since I first started a fresh tank years ago. I know they recommend using it at water changes and some people claim that it’s not a stable bacteria and that if you stop dosing your cycle will crash but I’ve never seen any evidence of that. Not even a blip in the cycle whenever I’ve stopped using it.

 

[Delapool]

I used to dose it (or similar) at water changes when I had a see through canister and could definitely notice a difference in muck reduction (although more heterotrophic I assume). Same that no problems when stopped using it. Maybe a decade ago but imo they have the right bacteria to use sorted now (I remember old posts that were negative on using a powder form)?

From memory they do a solution so the bacteria are inert (low ph)??. Still seems pretty amazing.

 

[Autumnsky]

I'm amazed!

 

[libertybelle]

It is, but that’s what the test tubes say. 0 ammonia 0 nitrite and 5-10 nitrate today. And that’s with a big pile of food in the bottom. Way more bioload than the shrimp will be. That’s more food than I feed my colony in a week.

That’s an interesting point, perhaps the older version of stability was more unstable but the advice didn’t change with the product. I still see people all the time spouting that bacterial additives are snake oil and I’m just like *gestures vaguely at test tubes! *

Why make it harder on yourself!

Anyway, cloudy water today in the 6 so it’s clearly still blooming and stabilizing. I certainly wouldn’t put anything in the tank yet even if I am seeing nitrates.

I wonder if I should toss in bacterAE to give the biofilm a boost too. Maybe after the cloudiness dissipates. Don’t want all the bacterial types competing with each other too much. Cycling bugs first, then biofilm. It’ll be a week or two before the replacement shrimp are even available to ship so it will force me to not foolishly jump ahead before the tank is really ready for them.

 

[libertybelle]

Good thing I got that surprising nearly instant cycle because the shrimp became available again sooner than I realized they would be. So by the time they get there the tank will only be a couple weeks old (aka time since bleaching.)

I could ask them to delay shipment to give the micro climate time to develop but I think since the tank is cycled and I’ve been dosing bacterAE ( things are already getting pretty ‘slimy’ in there!), I’ll probably go ahead and have them send them when they’re available.

There really are some amazing products on the market these days. When I first got otos I didn’t have success with them until my tank was probably a year old. They’re sometimes in bad shape already, granted, but I think it probably had a lot to do with insufficient biofilm. If I were getting them now I’d probably be able to do it much sooner thanks to that product. And I keep way more otos than my 29 would be able to support without having to keep an algae garden thanks to that.

I sound like a commercial but I’m very impressed with the stuff!

 

[Autumnsky]

I ordered some last night based upon your experience! For the exploding Endler/Guppy populations. To make sure I am keeping up with the load of feeding babies. (And the 80G had 2 trays which were from my storage of media for the FX-5 which has 3 trays) Might as well lad up the media with a variety of goodies.

It IS really surprising. Honestly half way keep wondering if there will be a "But now it isn't". Long back when the MACNA (SW) convention was in Denver, I got to speak with Dr. Tim of Dr. Tim's One and Only at his booth and discussed the bacteria in a bottle, he saying, of course it works because of XYZ... Seemed plausible.

What is your pH?

 

[libertybelle]

Last time I checked my ph it was about 7.4. Haven’t checked in a while though. I’ll check tonight when I double check everything else.

I suspect it was not a stable cycle. By that I mean there hasn’t been time for bacteria to physically set up shop deep in the biomedia and sand and for nice biofilm to give them purchase on the glass.

So I think there was just so much bacteria maybe even floating about in the system that it overwhelmed the ammonia/ ITE present. However because there hadn’t been time for it to get a good grip on biomedia and populate inside it I suspect the cycle would not have held up to much rough handling. Gravel vaccing or moving biomedia likely would have been enough to throw things completely off and I absolutely wouldn’t have trusted it with inhabitants even though the numbers looked perfect. That said I did do a 100% water change and it held up to that. It was about 24 hours after the 100% change that I tested 0/0/ 5-10 Most bacteria’s doubling time is 12-24 hours so maybe I just took a shortcut by throwing so much in at once. (It was probably luck that I didn’t screw up ph or oxygenation or something enough to make it counterproductive...)

Another possibility that occurs to me is that the tank had been established and was never dried or physically scrubbed. I simply exposed to bleach then rinsed and used safe. Biofilms are made up of a complex matrix of proteins sugars etc most of which are hydrolyzed by strong oxidizes like bleach. But part of the purpose of biofilms is to protect live cells from harsh environments for a time. It’s possible that some of the scaffolding of proteins/ sugars were not completely penetrated/ destroyed by the bleach leaving some of the work already done for the immigrating bacteria in stability. Smooth glass is extremely difficult for bacteria to colonize and a limiting factor in building biofilms is waiting for particular bacteria that can attach to smooth surfaces and start excreting the scaffolding material for other bacteria to attach to. Likewise the pores of my biomedia were exposed to bleach but could possibly still have some of that scaffolding material built up deep in the pores which helped the incoming new bacteria?

One piece of evidence for this is that I can physically see white spots on the glass where bits of spot algae were growing. It’s dead now but that material is still sitting there. Essentially by not scrubbing it’s possible I (accidentally!) left nice surfaces for the incoming bacteria to grab onto.

All of this is highly hypothetical of course. I’m simply trying to use what I know about cellular biology and biofilms to explain a frankly bizarre effect that I wasn’t expecting. I really wish I had thought to remove a subset of my bleached and “safe-d” supposedly sterile biomedia to test if there were still living bacteria in there capable of processing ammonia. I used a bleach concentration/ time that I previously used in a laboratory setting as a sterilization procedure so I was fairly confident in it but wouldn’t that have been interesting if the pores or biomatrix or both actually protected some of the bacteria in the filter from such a strong disinfection procedure.

(For the record, if anyone setting up a new tank comes across this post please don’t count on this happening to you and order fish to be delivered two days into your cycle! You’ll likely be very disappointed!)

 

[Autumnsky]

Interesting hypothesis. Your guess is better than mine!

Just another situation of how we can't even begin to know everything. Been reading about goldfish and wondering about what I "know". That is a different topic, hahaha.

It is too bad in not being able to test with material pre-bleach.

 

[libertybelle]

And yes it’s very plausible that it works, the only limiting factor of these bacteria in a bottle products is keeping them alive through storage and handling. There’s no other reason to suspect they wouldn’t work. It’s just the commercial version of ‘squeeze your old filter media into the new filter.’

If I recall back years ago when I started keeping fish there was an older product that required refrigeration and many people claimed it was the only one that worked. (I think an older version of biospira ?) Since then it seems multiple companies have perfected keeping the bugs shelf stable and alive at room temp.

For every one of these products there’s a handful of people online saying they tried it and it didn’t work and therefore it’s a gimmick. See too many of those and it tells you they haven’t quite gotten down keeping the bacteria alive in there so some bottles don’t make it. But if there’s only a few and everyone else says it works? Most likely they just got unlucky and got a bottle that got left in a truck in August for three days or something ...

 

[libertybelle]

Lol yes. The more you know the more you realize how little you know!

 

[libertybelle]

Just out of curiosity I decided to do an experiment with BacterAE while there is nothing in the tank. I’d read it doesn’t pollute the water.... so I tossed in an entire scoop to see if ammonia spiked. Maybe bacterAE is less likely to pollute the water then other powdered foods (I’d definitely believe that) but add enough of it and it definitely will. Ammonia popped up by about 1 ppm. Could have been more but I didn’t test until the following day. Seems obvious but I’ve heard a few claims to the opposite so I wanted to find out for sure.

I’d also read that because of what snowflake food is made of it doesn’t pollute the water either. After the ammonia comes down from this test I’m gunna try snowflake next!

I know it’s not much of a ‘test’ because I’m tossing in way more food then I ever would if there were shrimp in the tank but I’ve heard claims that both will not so I had to know!

Nitrites seem to be processed faster by my cycle at the moment. Even when I do see ammonia (like from the overfeeding tests) I never catch a nitrite level. Just see the nitrates climbing.

 

[Autumnsky]

Very interesting. I have seen deaths of shrimp after using b.ae (although not using a great deal of the stuff), maybe it was due to an ammonia spike. It will be interesting to see the results of the Snow. I lost a PRL after feeding the stuff 2x in one week (also did a couple pwc too + completely mature cycled tank - over 1 year), though smallish 1/3" and the snails ate it in 2 days....

Because the Snow is soybean hulls (also read of it being some other similar husk, can't recall atm) from my understanding, it shouldn't be a big deal. But if the binder is something else? Though I seem to recall the only item listed is soybean husks on mine.

Can't wait for the result of your experiment.

 

[libertybelle]

Potentially false alarm, I’m embarrassed to admit! Within hours of that post my bleach dipped vals finally had a massive delayed melt. (Yeah ... Vals HATE dips so I’m not surprised.) So that easily could have been responsible. I’m going to do that test again just in a few cups of tank water. Fewer complicating variables.

Also even though I’m seeing nitrates they didn’t climb very quickly when the val melt added to ammonia. They’re there but I think the population still needs more time to be robust and adaptable to sudden swings like the vals provided. I decided a stable cycle was more important than an absolutely ‘sterile’ start and went ahead and added old media to provide that extra security. (From my 29, not from the infected shrimp tank... which by the way has been death free since ... I last told you it was death free. About a week. I’ve probably just ruined it by telling you this...)

I think the chance of whatever is in my ten having made its way to the 29 and then proceeded to hang out with no dwarf shrimp host, effecting nothing for months is pretty unlikely. And it will have to hang out another week without any inhabitants most likely. Most pathogens don’t love that. I don’t like the idea of starting a shrimp tank without established media; even if stability did give me nitrates crazy fast. It’s bad enough it won’t be an aged tank.

I still trust the stuff but I trust old established media so much more!

I’ll let you know what my food decay in a cup experiment says about some of our supposedly low polluting foods!

 

[Autumnsky]

LOL, I am eyeing a glob of Hornwort, I forgot to pull it off of the intake yesterday, where it collects from top of tank to bottom, and the bottom doesn't get any light through the mass. Kinda pale at the bottom.

Interested to see what the results are...still, hahahaha!

 

[libertybelle]

Yeah I gave up on hornwort. For ages I was pulling out clumps of the stuff that was beautifully healthy. Gallon size bags stuffed full removed every week or two. It was quite beautiful. While it was healthy.

Then it just died back and to this day I am still occasionally pulling out little sprigs of dying hornwort hat I somehow missed removing.

I stopped using my timer for a while and lighting was a bit more inconsistent For a while... that’s the only thing I can think of that changed. Unless it was some kind of micronutrient that got used up.