just trying to lecture myself a little bit....

[patagonia]

Heres my question...where does all the beneficial bacteria come from when u start cycling your tank??? id thought they would come with the fish but since u have bacteria growing when u do fishless cycling with just pure ammonia it kinda threw my theory down the drain...so...

 

[BrianNY]

Bacteria exist everywhere. Life on this planet couldn't exist without it. It's in your drinking water, in the air you breath, in your digestive and respiratory systems and so on. It will collect and fall with dust in all of our aquariums.

 

[Rach101]

Bacteria exist everywhere. Life on this planet couldn't exist without it. It's in your drinking water, in the air you breath, in your digestive and respiratory systems and so on. It will collect and fall with dust in all of our aquariums

... I am never breathing, eating, or moving again.. Infact.. its time to go drink some anti-bacterial soap.... Creepy >.<

 

[carpediem]

And you thought, we would live in a clean world. Let me tell you, you do not even want to know, what is on chicken eggs.......

Bacteries are everywhere. They only start to pose a problem if the conditions allow them to grow more than what they should. Consider your skin for example, tons of bacteries of all kind. Under normal conditions, the "good" range of bacteries (flora) is balanced with the "bad" flora. The bad bacteries do not do us harm, unless they get to a place they should not be, e.g. inside the skin with a cut or a sliver. Then you get infections...

Here in this case with the aquarium, we have to change the conditions for the nitrosoma and nitrobacter in order to make them grow and make our fish happy.

 

[patagonia]

hmmm...very interesting...im a lab technician myself (i guess i fell asleep during the microbiology part of the course...hehe) and before that i was studying marine biology in argentina...(missed that microbiology again i guess) and i kinda became a little paranoid about all this bacterial stuff...but then i learnt we DO have an immune system so i just let it do its job...so no antibacterial soap for me...

 

[QTOFFER]

Good question! The short answer is that nitrifying bacteria exist in all sources of drinking water. Infinitesimally small numbers of these bacteria manage to evade destruction by chlorination. In fact, our drinking water is by no means sterile - the water purification process has simply reduced the number of microorganisms to levels that pose us no threat.

Given a bacterium's explosive reproductive capacity, it only takes the presence of favorable conditions (warm, oxygenated water and some ammonia) for these beneficial bacteria to set up shop. Add a porous substrate (filter media, gravel, and plants) on which they can form a stable layer, or biofilm, and you will have a fully functional biofilter in a couple of weeks.

 

[Jchillin]

And you thought, we would live in a clean world. Let me tell you, you do not even want to know, what is on chicken eggs.......

Don't need to go that far...just check the inside of your mouth...LOL

 

[patagonia]

oh ! u mean that pasty thing in ur mouth when u wake up in the morning??? thats quite a biofilm isnt it? yuk.....listerine fellas....haha....

 

[patagonia]

and what about the rag that we use to wipe our counters "clean"....huh?

 

[carpediem]

And door handles and phone receivers..... yumm!