Where does nitrifying bacteria come from?

[Toby_H]

I’m not sure how well that will work out…

From what I’m reading, concentrations of more than 5 ppm ammonia can inhibit even ammonia oxidizing bacteria…

Also keep in mind in proper aquarium conditions, the fish are constantly slowly creating ammonia and bacteria is consuming it at an equal rate… therefore there should never be a detectable level of ammonia in a tank. Not even with extremely high stocking levels…

When I get back to this experiment… I hope to move towards adding 5 ppm of ammonia twice per day… and if my personal schedule allows, 5 ppm 3 times per day…

My personal schedule will not permit 6 doses per day, but theoretically we could continue to to increase doses per day to learn additional information…

Going beyond 5 ppm per dosage will create compromising conditions for the bacteria, which will be testing it outside of the natural conditions it will experience in our aquariums. Which is why I promote dosing more times per day, as opposed to higher dosages…

Although once my experiment comes to a conclusion… and I have a tank slam full of healthy bacteria… I see no reason not to try it and see what happens…

 

[sostoudt]

certain micro-organisms such as archaea are supposed to be major consumers of ammonia more so then bacteria. and they can survive on just the smallest amount of ammonia.

equivalent to a teaspoon of ammonia salt in 10 million gallons of water.

perhaps we are looking at the wrong organisms by always refering to bacteria, instead we should consider archaea?
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/09/090930132656.htm

 

[12 Volt Man]

if I recall from microbiology class, archaea are bacteria, just a really old species of bacteria..

 

[Zander_The_RBP]

if I recall from microbiology class, archaea are bacteria, just a really old species of bacteria..

actualy there not. archea are about as close to bacteria as we are to bacteria theyre completly different

there no evidence pointing to the fact that there older either

 

[sostoudt]

if I recall from microbiology class, archaea are bacteria, just a really old species of bacteria..

they actually used to be called archaeabacteria but since that time biology has since abondaned that term and the idea there bacteria.


im sure if your mind wasnt blown from my prior comment it is now

 

[tcarswell]

Bump , I am learning a lot here

 

[swede]

hey nc nutcase.... any updates for us with your experiments? I think it would be brilliant if we could develop a rough calculation of how much surface area for BB is need in relation to the bioload of a tank. I know there are many variables to this, but it would be cool to figure out at least a rough guide

 

[Toby_H]

Long overdue but...

I ended up having to move and thus abandone the experiment. I'll restart it but it will take a few weeks to get it back on track. Actually I'll get it started this evening... I will also keep track of more details this time as it gained more interest than I expected.

But the general conclusion I came up with thus far...

At the end... I was adding 5ppm of ammonia every day... and after 12 hours the ammonia & nitrite were both at zero...

This was in a 10 gal tank which was consistnely kept topped off at 9 gallons of actual water volume... and had 1000 square inches of surface area (glass + heater + air line). There was no substrate and the only "filtration" was a single air line and an air stone.

The actual surface area was around 980 square inches, and I rounded that up to 1,000 both for easy communication and to account for the surface area of the air stone (3/8" diameter, 2.5" long porous stone).


Based on this... the belief that media with high quanties of surface area provide an unnecessary benefit to our system... and that filters set up "for bio only" or even "for bio mainly" are typically a waste of a filter...

I do not expect anyone to drastically change their filtration approach because of this 'study'... but I do hope it makes you think twice about their filtration beliefs...

I also hope it makes people think twice abou ttheir filtration recommendations. Feel free to filter your tanks as you wish... but please do not push people to filter their tanks based on the myths you embrace ;-)