After cycle question :)

[Discus lover]

Hi guys,

After you have done a fishless cycle and you have to wait a while to get your discus, say a week or more, wouldnt the bacteria in the filter die off without any amonia? also if you do a cycle with fish, say neon tetras and then you move the tetras back to another tank and add discus, wouldnt the discus produce more waste than the tetras thus leading to more ammonia than your filter can handle at that moment?

Thnaks alot in advance i sound like such a newbie :-[ we all gota start somewhere right :P
Luke

[ronrca]

Yes to both questions! ;) If you are done the cycle and waiting for discus, keep adding ammonia.

[tgomearajr]

Luke,

What you will find is that after the cycle is started, the bacteria do not actually "die off" if the food source is greatly reduced or eliminated. They seem to go into a state resembling hibernation and are very quickly rejuvenated with the addition of a food source, i.e., fish waste.

You can test this with your fishless tank now. I do not know the size and capacity of your particular filter, so I'll use as an example a simple fluidized bed unit with about a pound of media. This unit will pretty easily consume 12mg per day of ammonia. (This is a huge fish load by the way). After your find your system is processing this load for a while, and assuming you keep the filter working correctly (good water flow, resonable temperatures, etc.), if you remove the ammonia load the bacteria do not "die".

After a week without adding any ammonia, re-inject a full bio load (12mg) and see what happens. The bacteria "wake up" and the filter returns to full capacity very quickly. Some filters respond more quickly than others, and the fluidized bed filter example I used rejuvenates VERY quickly indeed. Same with sponge filters, but you would need a huge sponge system to process 12mg of ammonia so if you want to try this experiment, use MUCH less ammonia. Wet/Dry filters seems to come back more slowly for some reason... perhaps if someone knows the answer to that, they will chime in here?

Tom

[Discus lover]

Thanks a bunch ronrca and tgomearajar, great asnwers.

Luke

[Howie_W]

Hi Luke,

If you're cycle is complete, you contine adding ammonia until your fish arrive.

Regarding an established filter, there are always variables to consider;

-How many Discus you'll be getting, and how big they are.
-The size of your tank.
-How many filters you're using.

Your first week placing the fish in the tank is an adjustment period for the fish and their environment. Starting from day one, you'll be monitoring the water, and changing it as needed. Over time, your bacteria colony will continue to increase.

HTH

Howie

[Discus lover]

It is a 57gal barebottom tank, with 2 spunge filters and a %50 water change everyday with 5 discus going in :)

[Sean Buehrle]

not trying to start a ruckis but

bacteria colonies are constantly dying off in your aquarium, without food they die quickly. bacteria colonies bouble in size every 24-36 hours,if fed enough. they do not go into hibernation.
marineland has a extensive library, hundreds of pages on the nitrogen cycle and nitrobacters research.

[tgomearajr]

No ruckus Sean. :) I love to learn more.

Perhaps I was over simplistic when I said "They seem to go into a state resembling hibernation" but that is, indeed, pretty much the case. The more correct term could have possibly been "a state resembling dormancy" but that is splitting hairs. If denied access to either carbon, oxygen or organic (ammonia) sources, the bacteria shut down. If denied some of those things (for example, oxygen) for a long enough period of time, it dies.

This particular reference is primarily a study of Nitrospira, the bacteria that actually reduces ammonia, not Nitrobacter converting the result into Nitrates, but both are practically identical in their environmental requirements.

My cite is "Microbiology of nitrite oxidizing bioreactors", by Burrell, Keller & Blackall, in the journal of Applied Environmental Microbiology"

I think this was in the late 1990's. Perhaps more literature has been published since then? If you could point me to your sources I would love to read up on it a bit more.

Also, (and I have misplaced the cite for this), another interesting tidbit of information I ran across was that recolonization of a substrate that once held a viable bacteria colony, even if that substrate was subsequently sterilized, was MUCH faster than colonization of a virgin substrate. Now THAT is a puzzle. :)

Tom

[ronrca]

Both may be correct! Bacteria go 'dormant' for a period of time however its the time that they 'wake up' that is a concern. In my experience, this wake up time can be from a couple of days to weeks. Hardly a reason to justify not feeding the bacteria when the tank is to be home to my discus. Even a day or two is a day or two too much for my discus to be subject to possible ammonia levels. Buying ammonia is much cheaper than buy and replacing discus. ;)

[Discus lover]

Well said ronrca and thanks for all the advice u guys

[Sean Buehrle]

if you use a product like prime, and have chloramines in your water it will split the chloramine molecule into the chlorine and ammonia molecule. your bacteria should be able to live off the non-toxic form of ammonia if you keep doing water changes.

marineland has a place on their website called Dr tims library with extensive research on benificial bacteria.

marineland has a product called bio spira that they are claiming is doing the same thing as we are discussing.
now if anyone has a strain of benificial bacteria in their tanks that can go dormant i would suggest you contact marineland because they have spent millions trying to come up with it.

[tgomearajr]

Ah Ha!

Interesting reading, the good Dr. Tim

After reading all the information on his site two things become noticeable. First, some of his material and cites are contradictory, as a matter of fact, he contradicts *himself* in several places. :) This is NOT meant as a put down and is quite common in scientific literature as individual theories develop over time. It is the nature of scientific investigation that ideas held as 'truth' are sometimes replaced with more up to date knowledge as scientific discovery makes advances in time...

What is NOT common is that his older material is not footnoted with his recent 'truths'. In other words, his work published on the Marineland site should be updated, or, at the very least annotated with reference to his latest findings, or removed altogether. This is not a trivial complaint. He has a responsibility to his readers to let them know the current state of his findings.

Second, I started researching Dr. Tim's references and lo and behold, there appeared Burell, Keller and Blackall! It seems Dr. Tim is building on their research and that is gratifying, as I followed their papers closely several years ago. It turns out THEY, and not Dr. Tim, actually identified the importance of nitrospira bacteria as opposed to (what has now been found to be the case) involvement by any bacteria(s) in the nitrobacter family! This, again, is not a slam against Dr. Tim as the purpose of these papers is to build a body of knowledge on a subject, not to (necessarily) claim ground breaking discoveries as your own.

Here is a site listing some of the reference material Dr. Tim used in HIS research. Lots of good reading here:

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/tocrender.fcgi?action=cited&artid=168074

A lot has happened since I was away from the hobby a few years. Lots of new stuff! Life is good. :)

Tom

PS: By the way, nothing on either Marineland's "Dr. Tim" site or in the references noted deny bacterial dormacy states occur. I am going to keep looking but would appreciate any direct cites you might have on the subject.