Raising the PH of a new tank to start filter bacteria.

[JohnC]

forgot to add i'll be using mature filter material too.

Snake oil in bottles... this hobby is full of it.

yup deffo. as i mentioned at the start it's not the normal way id do things.

i'd actually pondered this on a whim and using some of the other ATM products thought id do some research of user experiences. From that i thought id give it a shot. Now some may be true but I have to hold my hand up and say during a review of reading on the product today I've discovered a large number of posts on forums by users with 1 or 2 posts. Coming on to said forums JUST to post about it. i.e agressive marketing forum spam by ATM.

this does also remind me of the discussion I had with the LFS owner (a very respected guy in the marine world) whom had used it successfully a number of times. He'd had the rep from ATM give him the full low down (ie hard sell).

Hi all, Don't do it.

I can post you as many floaters as you like for the cost of P&P. Put them in, wait a week, add the fish. Keep changing a reasonable volume of water. If you only have Anubias you don't need to add fertilisers regularly (or any as very small doses), and you are better off with some floaters to diffuse the light.

cheers Darrel

It shall be so.

-----

So with some further reading, i ceed to the advice (which is always why I come ask here) and go back to doing it the normal way.

I'll mature the filter media in tanks here this week. Set up tank add floaters then leave instructions for the owner based on a week.

-----

Drilling down into what the colony instructions do, you add the "oil" with the bacteria with the fish (which i was never going to do) and a tiny bit of food. Then no feeding for a period of days. With this technique (if the bacterial colony is live) you are rapid cycling the tank with the fish exposed to slowly raising amounts of ammonia. Not completing the cycle before adding the fish, cycling with the fish in the tank. With obvious risks.

The bottle is a month old and unopened so probably does contain the bacteria it states. So i'll chuck it in anyway.
----

Thank you for all the contributions always a joy,
John

 

[Andy Thurston]

I've discovered a large number of posts on forums by users with 1 or 2 posts. Coming on to said forums JUST to post about it. i.e agressive marketing forum spam by ATM.

you should report these posts to the forum admins and get them removed along with said members profiles

 

[alto]

So with some further reading, i ceed to the advice (which is always why I come ask here) and go back to doing it the normal way.

if you hang out with the African cichlid crew, adding bacteria in a bottle + fish all in one go, IS "normal"
- the only consideration is investing in the right bottle (back in the day it was Dr Hovanec's version, if your bottle is decent, it should have a it's fan club ... of course, like anything else, there's a technique & always the possibility that bacteria were impacted during storage/shipping etc but cycle failures should be the exception)

 

[Mr. Teapot]

I'm coming round to the idea that while one or two species of bacteria are important, the microbial biofilm as a whole is critical to keeping a tank healthy. Healthy biofilms are made up of hundreds of species each supporting the colony as a whole - a complex web of bacteria, bacteriophages, fungi, algae… I would suspect a bottled monoculture would be very fragile, seeding from old media sounds a better solution.

The reef hobbyists have it right with their live rock model. Big chunk of pre-conditioned media.

 

[dw1305]

Hi all,

I'm coming round to the idea that while one or two species of bacteria are important, the microbial biofilm as a whole is critical to keeping a tank healthy. Healthy biofilms are made up of hundreds of species each supporting the colony as a whole - a complex web of bacteria, bacteriophages, fungi, algae… I would suspect a bottled monoculture would be very fragile, seeding from old media sounds a better solution.

I'm 99% certain that this is the answer. "Microbial biofilms" are a really hot topic in Biology at the moment, partially because you can now use rRNA analysis both to separate the Archaea from the Bacteria, and give you measure of microbial diversity. The answer this approach has given is that things are a lot more complex than was originally thought. One of the problems in microbiology is that the in vitro culture methods are only suitable for a very small fraction of the organisms present in the initial innoculum.

I think this one should be available <"Relative contributions of Archaeae.......">.

The reef hobbyists have it right with their live rock model. Big chunk of pre-conditioned media.

Exactly, this is really a water quality issue, where people have tried lots of different approaches, both chemical and biological, but have reverted to an integrated "ecological" approach using live rock for nitrification and deep sand beds for anaerobic out-gassing of NO3-. Reef keepers need to maintain high quality water, but haven't got easy access to higher plants in the way that fresh-water aquarists have.

Because plants remove nitrates, this give you the advantage of not needing anaerobic out-gassing of N2 gas, (which is difficult to manage), as well as creating surfaces (both in the water column and the substrate) where nitrification can occur. As roots grow within the substrate they are leaky structures, continually shedding cells and and leaking compounds and gases into the rhizosphere. One result of this is that in a planted fresh water aquarium a mature substrate can perform the role of both "live rock" and "deep sand-bed" without any intervention from the aquarist.

if you hang out with the African cichlid crew, adding bacteria in a bottle + fish all in one go, IS "normal"

As a long time cichlid keeper I belong to a few cichlid forums, and it would be fair to say that a post like this one would be quite likely to generate some comments, mainly unfavorable, and often quite abusive.

cheers Darrel

 

[alto]

Click to expand...
As a long time cichlid keeper I belong to a few cichlid forums, and it would be fair to say that a post like this one would be quite likely to generate some comments, mainly unfavorable, and often quite abusive.

nothing new there

Bio-Spira had a decent run, there are others on the market now - perhaps the use has fallen out of vogue

 

[dw1305]

Hi all,

mainly unfavorable, and often quite abusive......nothing new there

I think there must be something about keeping cichlids that makes people particularly argumentative.

Bio-Spira had a decent run, there are others on the market now - perhaps the use has fallen out of vogue

They don't make "Bio-spira for freshwater" any more. Presumably because it had to be kept refrigerated, and had a limited shelf life, it wasn't a big enough seller.

The replacement is "Tetra Safe Start", which doesn't need to be refrigerated. I think the premise that Nitrosomas & Nitrobacter (from Tim Hovanec's original work and patent) are the only organisms that matter has been largely invalidated by later research.

New techniques for investigating microbial communities are discovering a whole raft of different organisms:
<"Evaluation of autotrophic growth of ammonia-oxidizers associated with granular activated carbon used for drinking water purification by DNA-stable isotope probing">,
<"Low-ammonia niche of ammonia-oxidizing archaea in rotating biological contactors of a municipal wastewater treatment plant">,
<"Aquarium Nitrification Revisited: Thaumarchaeota Are the Dominant Ammonia Oxidizers in Freshwater Aquarium Biofilters"> (from <"Talking with Diana....">, and the best study we have access to.)
& <"Nitrotoga-like bacteria are previously unrecognized key nitrite oxidizers in full-scale wastewater treatment plants">.

Also have a look at this thread <"Alfagrog for reducing nitrate.."> for "Greg's Pea" posts.

cheers Darrel