Has anyone done a fishless cycle starting with distilled water?

[Caliban07]

I need to disinfect everything I want to use to make it "as sterile as possible" because most of it has had some sort of fish-related thing in it at some point. However, it has been dry for over a year. Is it safe enough to say that any relevant bacteria is no longer alive? What should I disinfect with that won't skew my results (for example I certainly am not going to bleach everything). Hydrogen peroxide?

Hydrogen peroxide seems to be the popular choice. Flick to messenger.


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[Caliban07]

yes but I thought the original premise was to see if bacteria would "appear" if an all sterile environment was used as the starting point.
Now it sounds like it has shifted to testing if distilled water would work.


I see we need to develop a hypothetical construct and an operational definition for this experiment....

I was under the impression by sterile thren just meant a brand new set up. Void of anything fish related. A true sterile environment is just never going to happen at this level in the game.

Or was I wrong?


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[threnjen]

edit: AA blip, double post

 

[threnjen]

Well, we definitely need to let go of the idea of a sterile environment, at least for me. I'll leave that as a hypothetical project for Sinibotia to pursue since he has those resources available.

I think I just want to know if the bacteria will appear in distilled water. Because I have seen lots of threads over time - where do the bacteria come from? Like you said, who knows - the air, our hands, the water etc. If I use distilled water, we can *mostly* (but not truly) rule out the water. If I use distilled water and it's a not-perfectly-sterile environment and bacteria does NOT appear, at the very least we can then hypothesize that it DOES primarily come from the tap water.

In the past cycling was always one of my specialty topics but even I encountered stalled cycle threads that totally flummoxed me.

 

[Mattfinn]

are you sure it's distilled water and not bottled drinking water?
distilled water costs more $$$, is devoid of any mineral content and has a very low ph, all those things would be a problem for cycling, well not the $$$ part....LOL

distilled water is meant to be used in machinery and stuff where you don't want any mineral deposits to build up and it is not really good to drink nor good for critters to live in.
if you are mixing distilled and tap that would explain why you haven't had any major issues yet.

The water is from the filtered tap in kitchen, I always just thought that it meant that it was distilled... I'm probably wrong as I have been using the water for a few years in a 5g that wasn't planted for a few years out of ease of not having to use water conditioner.

Seeing as I probably am wrong about what I thought distilled water was, disregard my above post.


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[Caliban07]

yes but I thought the original premise was to see if bacteria would "appear" if an all sterile environment was used as the starting point.
Now it sounds like it has shifted to testing if distilled water would work.


I see we need to develop a hypothetical construct and an operational definition for this experiment....

Ok I've just actually realised what the aim was of the experiment. That was a bit slow sorry.


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