Hi all,
Leading on from our discussion about the <"microbes that occur in aquarium filters"> I contacted, Ryan Newton <"Microbiology | Newton Lab Uwm">, one of the authors of "Bartelme RP, Smith MC, Sepulveda-Villet OJ, Newton RJ. (2019). "Component microenvironments and system biogeography structure microorganism distributions in recirculating aquaculture and aquaponic systems". mSphere 4:e00143-19. <"https://doi.org/ 10.1128/mSphere.00143-19">.
He has very kindly allowed me to post the correspondence: I'll start with his reply, and then I'll post my original email in the next post.
Leading on from our discussion about the <"microbes that occur in aquarium filters"> I contacted, Ryan Newton <"Microbiology | Newton Lab Uwm">, one of the authors of "Bartelme RP, Smith MC, Sepulveda-Villet OJ, Newton RJ. (2019). "Component microenvironments and system biogeography structure microorganism distributions in recirculating aquaculture and aquaponic systems". mSphere 4:e00143-19. <"https://doi.org/ 10.1128/mSphere.00143-19">.
He has very kindly allowed me to post the correspondence: I'll start with his reply, and then I'll post my original email in the next post.
cheers DarrelHi Darrell,
Thank you for reaching out with your questions. I am glad Dr. Bartelme’s work is of interest.
It is a good question to ask where the initial inoculum of nitrifiers comes from & it is a question that I do not have a definitive answer. Nitrifiers are present in many environments because they can live with comparably low external nutrients (carbon particularly). There are a couple of good possibilities, 1) the water - most municipal water systems contain some number of nitrifiers, which then come out of your residence tap; 2) the plants - nitrifiers are also commonly associated with plants. Or, it could be they drift in from the air - seems less likely, but it is not impossible.
If you do need to add nitrifiers the best source is from an aquaponics or aquaculture system that is already running and removing ammonia. Some water or sediment/soil or part of the biobilter (if there is one) is an excellent starter. Without this source as an inoculum then you could add some roots from plants from any other tank that is running - these are likely to have nitrifiers associated with them. A small clipping put into the tank would be enough.
In some lab tests we found that adding previous material from a running biofilter could reduce ammonia oxidation start-up time from 2-3 weeks to 2-3 days. We also tested a commercial product of nitrifiers & it did decrease the time to ammonia oxidation start-up. It was slower than our biofilter material transfer, but much quicker than doing nothing. However, the microbes present in the system from the commercial product disappeared over a few weeks and were replaced by those more common to our system. So, it seems some products could help “jump-start” the process, but it will be a lot less predictable and ultimately may not determine what microbe succeed in the long run.
Anyway, I hope that answered your questions. Let me know if you have any others.
Cheers,
Ryan