Very interesting & informative article on BB

The friendliest place on the web for anyone with an interest in aquariums or fish keeping!
If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.
See posts with no answers
Very informative. Kinda worthless to me atm, but i enjoyed reading it. I did a 20% water change and it was still 5 ppm, so I did another one.... And knocked it down to 3 ppm.
Hopefully whatever bacteria I do have will be able to negotiate that's a little better.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I747 using Aquarium Advice mobile app
 
Did you mean to post this under "General Discussion" rather than "General Hardware/Equipment Discussion"? Its not really a big deal, I just think the "General Discussion" area gets more traffic and interest in this sort of posting.
People mostly come to this little corner to talk about different filters and lighting systems. You know... discussions about general hardware and equipment. ;)

I think you may have posted something about phosphate tests here too. At the time I though "I guess a phosphate test kit could qualify as equipment", so I didnt say anything. :lol:
 
I wasn't sure where it fit. I tossed a coin and put it here. It's fine to move it if it should be elsewhere.


(Friend of Bill W., One day at a time)
 
It doesnt bother me, I just figured more people would be interested in the other area... or maybe even under Getting Started so that the folks who are new to the hobby can get a better idea of what BB is.
 
You're right. Getting started would be the perfect place. Maybe one of the mods will see it and move it for us. Thanks!


(Friend of Bill W., One day at a time)
 
Interesting, though there is controversy about Nitrospira vs. Nitrobacter being the correct species of nitrite-oxidizing bacteria found in aquariums.
 
Masha said:
Although I don't think everyone will agree about the opinons on where in the tank most of the bacteria resides :)
Click to expand...

I don't know why. The majority of bacteria does reside in the substrate considering the substrate has the more surface area than anything else in tank, including sponges, filter pads and ceramic media.

Think about it.
The bacteria live on surfaces, that means that the surface area of every single grain of sand or piece of gravel is covered with bacteria.
Can't get more surface area than that unless you use something like a pool sand filter.

Curious, Where do you think the majority of bacteria live?
 
PB_Smith said:
I don't know why. The majority of bacteria does reside in the substrate considering the substrate has the more surface area than anything else in tank, including sponges, filter pads and ceramic media.

Think about it.
The bacteria live on surfaces, that means that the surface area of every single grain of sand or piece of gravel is covered with bacteria.
Can't get more surface area than that unless you use something like a pool sand filter.

Curious, Where do you think the majority of bacteria live?
Click to expand...

PBSmith, I don't know where most of the bacteria is in an aquarium, but I know for a fact that people disagree about this, I've seen the arguments :)

What I've seen said is that it differs from tank to tank, and that because the nitrifying bacteria need oxygen to survive, and like a lot of food, the filter is the place they are most likely to thrive in great numbers, because of the flow of water through the filter media. Lots of oxygen and food supply, presumably.

For myself, I think it depends. For example, if you compare a heavily planted tank that's been around for years, with a bare-bottom tank , or with a tank that has sand as a substrate and no plants but only plastic ornaments, or with a tank that's only a few months old... and each of these tanks has different kinds of filters with different flow rates, and different bio-loads ...well... I suspect they'll each have a different answer for where the most bacteria is.

But I don't really know - I'm enjoying reading about it though, and seeing what different opinions other people have. :)
 
Masha said:
PBSmith, I don't know where most of the bacteria is in an aquarium, but I know for a fact that people disagree about this, I've seen the arguments :)
Click to expand...

Yeah, I've seen some rather ludicrous "discussions" here myself, but you can't argue with the science and that would indicate that the bacteria live in the greatest concentrations in the first couple of inches of substrate for aerobic BB, or the entire depth of it if using an undergravel filter ;), and deeper in the bed for anaerobic BB.

honestly, without even doing the math it should be rather obvious to anyone where the largest amount of surface area resides in the average aquarium, and it's not in the filter media.
 
Hmm, 70 kilos of gravel vs (can't remember) 5 to 15 kilos of ceramic biomedia (you beaut stuff with supposedly large surface area). My bet has always been the filter. Although since I'm not allowed to talk about this stuff at the dinner table, I've never done the calcs.

However I have wondered. My filter cleans are lets say pretty major. I've always thought some bb would be in one filter and the rest in the other. However after a filter change I don't get any increase in ammonia even though I'm thinking the bb population has halved (or even quartered if say 50% bb in gravel and 25% in each filter). Never understood that - either bb breed quicker than literature allows or they are more hardy than thought.
 
Delapool said:
Hmm, 70 kilos of gravel vs (can't remember) 5 to 15 kilos of ceramic biomedia (you beaut stuff with supposedly large surface area). My bet has always been the filter. Although since I'm not allowed to talk about this stuff at the dinner table, I've never done the calcs.

However I have wondered. My filter cleans are lets say pretty major. I've always thought some bb would be in one filter and the rest in the other. However after a filter change I don't get any increase in ammonia even though I'm thinking the bb population has halved (or even quartered if say 50% bb in gravel and 25% in each filter). Never understood that - either bb breed quicker than literature allows or they are more hardy than thought.
Click to expand...

Delapool, I've seen some people argue that because the bb glues itself to the surfaces - whether gravel or filter media - it's actually not that easy to remove the bb just by doing a gravel vac or rinsing your filter. The water flowing through that filter is fairly forceful as it is...or at least, it is in many filters...so if it was that easy to wash the bb off, it wouldn't stick to the filter media in the first place. No idea if that's true, but it's reassuring!
 
It seems to me that BB would grow *faster* in the filter media because of the higher degree of oxygenation. Over time, though, I would expect a lot more to grow on the top layer of the substrate.
 
Thanks, Marsh, for the links! I saved them to home page and will read them tonight. I find all the articles on BB very interesting and helpful... especially when often we need to medicate fish.

To the posters who think greatest is in the substrate, do you remove some of your gravel/sand b4 medicating? If yes, about what %?

I don't really have an opinion, other than when I removed biofilm from my air hoses, briefly, I got trace ammonia in a fully cycled tank. So, my guess is like one poster wrote... Each tank has it's own special composition that effects the% of where BB located.


(Friend of Bill W., One day at a time)
 
Most articles I have read seem to support the idea that nitrospira are the true nitrite oxidising bacteria.

As for the filter vs gravel debate I've always swayed more towards the gravel. Under a microscope 1 tiny piece of gravel wouldn't be a perfectly smooth piece. There would
Be tons of tiny gaps and crevices etc. as for media, I've read a really good article that I just cannot seem to find again that states how many cubic feet of surface area a simple filter sponge provides as well as ceramic rings etc. it was in the hundreds of cubic feet.

I also don't believe that disturbing the gravel will cause bacteria to fall off.

As for the original article. It is a very good article and has done the rounds a few times during many of mine and a few others research topics. It provides some really sound info. Scientific papers are where it's at though for research. The latest one I tried to research was the toxicity of nitrite on fish. Some interesting finds there.




Sent from my iPhone using Aquarium Advice
 
I think the filter area has the highest concentration of nitrifying bacteria colonies for the simple reason that it's the best place for them to be. It's the point in the tank where the most water turnover happens, so the highest o2 levels and largest amount of nitrogenous waste is flowing through there. How large of a colony the filter area can hold depends on the amount of surface area for them to live on, which comes down to biomedia choice.

Look at how successful dr. hovanec's biowheel is (the biospira => tetra safestart guy), although tbh I feel like it's overkill in most of our home aquarium situations.
 
Masha said:
Delapool, I've seen some people argue that because the bb glues itself to the surfaces - whether gravel or filter media - it's actually not that easy to remove the bb just by doing a gravel vac or rinsing your filter. The water flowing through that filter is fairly forceful as it is...or at least, it is in many filters...so if it was that easy to wash the bb off, it wouldn't stick to the filter media in the first place. No idea if that's true, but it's reassuring!
Click to expand...


True, true! Interesting posts. I'm running three filters now soooo a filter clean for me (which I don't generally recommend) is out there with the garden hose, spray all the gunk off everything (media, sponges, wool - the lot) and put it all back together again. I've doubled the ceramic biomedia in each filter but stacked it for good flow so I think the hose water is penetrating well to clean. The tap water has either chlorine or chloramines (it's hard to tell from the water report as they seem to do different dosing by distance from plant).

I've read the bb can stay alive for a bit if wet, etc, etc but I would think the tap water kills off everything. I assume it kills off everything so leave the other filters alone for a bit to allow everything to recover. I've tested for ammonia from say 3 hours to next night and never get anything. Maybe a hint thinking about it but never anything that sends me rushing for the prime. Just thought I'd share experiences to date.
 
jetajockey said:
Look at how successful dr. hovanec's biowheel is (the biospira => tetra safestart guy), although tbh I feel like it's overkill in most of our home aquarium situations.
Click to expand...

Speaking of Hovanec, here is his argument for Nitrospira over Nitrobacter.

I haven't read the literature on this topic and can't add much to the discussion. However, I will say that Hovanec's Nitrospira-containing bacteria successfully cycled my tank.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

C
Please Send Help!
Replies
2
Views
365
Andy Sager
Andy Sager
N
very upsetting ...
Replies
6
Views
466
nlifs
N
I
Growing Beneficial Bacteria
Replies
4
Views
670
Colin_T
C
G
Complete Newbie - done a bit of research and now overwhelmed a bit
Replies
13
Views
862
huma-huma
huma-huma
S
Are these Celestial Pearls emaciated?
Replies
2
Views
162
Andy Sager
Andy Sager

Latest posts

Back
Top Bottom