Life span of transferred bacteria?

[MichiganMan]

I have two options for "seeding" my tank with established filter media and/or substrate.

Option one is a tank owned by my doc, kept in his office. I'm 90% sure it uses an undergravel filter and is about 20g. Community tank with mollies, cory cats, etc. I can grab some substrate and/or filter media from this one if I want.

Option two is a guy at work that keeps at least one large cichlid tank at home. He is completely meticulous and I'm sure his tanks and fish are 100% taken care of. I can probably get some media from him, and/or have him use my AC 50 filter on his tank for a while.

The question is, option one would be maybe an hour tank-to-tank. Option two could be a span of several hours unless we arranged to do something on a weekend. And would we have to keep the filter "wet" while transporting it?

I guess my question is really more on the mechanics of seeding a tank - I know the general theory, but not the nuts and bolts.

 

[ct-death]

Bacteria needs food, so even after a transfer the 'load' (amount of fish/food/waste/etc) is not the same balance, thus the bacterias will attain their own balance, which, when 'seeding' a tank should be less.

Secondly, bacteria should be transported in the same tank water. You can use an airstone, but honestly, it's not needed unless you are traveling a very long distance.

Bacterias in a filter media begin to die off soon, but at a slow rate. I'm not sure on the science, but after an hour I'm confident that one could detect some die-off. Now this is not to say that that is significant, as again when seeding a tank, the bacteria required is less anyways.

Really the concern would be if the media was allowed to dry (very bad), or if the media was left for 8+ hours (oxygen can help if the durations are long).

Simply transport the media to your tank, remove from the water, place into your own filter and wait a couple of hours before testing or adding fish. If adding fish go SLOW, and test often as small spikes are common in ammonai/nitrItes. If not adding fish right away add some fish flakes to decompose to 'feed' the bacterias (it only takes a few flakes!)

 

[THE V]

Here's the answer for some common misunderstandings that you find on the web.

Nitrifying bacteria can go 4-6 months at room temperature without food with no significant die-off.

Nitrifying bacteria can stand to be dried out. They go into a type of hibernation until water and nutrients become available. They can also take a long time to come out of the hibernation (weeks). When doing a fishless cycle without adding innoculum to the tank, the bacteria innoculum floats in on air currents (dust).

Some strains of the nitrifying bacteria can stand anaerobic conditions. They are actually classified as facultative anaerobes not strict aerobes as was previously thought.

Nitrifying bacteria grow exponentially at approximately one generation per day. 2^n where n = the number of days. So 1 bacterium with grow to be 512 bacteria in 10 days and 536,870,912 in 30 days. So as long as you give them food any amount of innoculum will meet the needs of your tank if given enough time.

Nitrifying bacteria can be frozen. They just don't convert NH3 to NO2 or NO2 to NO3 at less than 10C.

And so continues my quest to stop vicious microbiology rumors.:wall:

 

[KarlTh]

Fascinating. So it's not dieoff we're concerned with, but bacteria going into hibernation. It also implies that if you split the media from a tank with a given bioload between two tanks with that same bioload, within 24 hours both new colonies will have grown sufficiently to support their bioloads - which means moving significant fractions of media from an established filter to a new one will (a) not impact the existing tank for more than a few hours, and (b) allow the new one to cycle extremely quickly - which I have always advocated.

Can we add to your quest the information that "bacteria" is already plural ("a bacteria" and "bacterias" are pet hates of mine; "bacteriums" I could live with, but you never get that one)

 

[ct-death]

Great stuff here!

So it's not the die-off that causes the "crash" (spike in water parameters), but simply the 'bateriums' need weeks to become active again from hybernation? Or is this only if dried?

In otherwords, the end results are the same to the aquariest, but the reason and science why are different than most (me included) were lead to believe? Facinating.

Incidently, the above timetables I offered were based on personal experience in transporting media, both dried and kept in tank water. May I sumise that this answers my above Q? The bacteriums begin to hybernate in both dry and water environments under the abscense of food, air flow, etc.?

Regardless, the evidence that the biological functions fail rather quickly are there to be supported (the why i am beginning to learn), and I think these time tables are still rather accurate, however, based on the fact these bacterias double in 24 hours, the hybernating bacterias may never be needed, and would die off anyways as the tank would balance itself with the active bacterias.

Also:

Some strains of the nitrifying bacteria can stand anaerobic conditions. They are actually classified as facultative anaerobes not strict aerobes as was previously thought.

I was also told that the aenorobic nitrifying bacterias play a rather small role on the aquarium. The much larger function of nitrification is done via the vastly more abundant and efficient aerobes? Please correct me if I am wrong. I will also try to find the literature I saw on this a few years back.

You also bring up another good point. Chilling them on ice during transport, especially for long periods may be extremely useful!

 

[7itanium]

take the filter and put it in a ziploc full of tank water.. it would be fine for AT LEAST overnight

 

[coach_z]

take the filter and put it in a ziploc full of tank water.. it would be fine for AT LEAST overnight

I just did that for my GF's tank. i was under the impression that we would leave it in there for 2 days or so....but i guess 2 days is long enough

great thread!

 

[Veloth]

Here's the answer for some common misunderstandings that you find on the web.

Nitrifying bacteria can go 4-6 months at room temperature without food with no significant die-off.

Nitrifying bacteria can stand to be dried out. They go into a type of hibernation until water and nutrients become available. They can also take a long time to come out of the hibernation (weeks). When doing a fishless cycle without adding innoculum to the tank, the bacteria innoculum floats in on air currents (dust).

Some strains of the nitrifying bacteria can stand anaerobic conditions. They are actually classified as facultative anaerobes not strict aerobes as was previously thought.

Nitrifying bacteria grow exponentially at approximately one generation per day. 2^n where n = the number of days. So 1 bacterium with grow to be 512 bacteria in 10 days and 536,870,912 in 30 days. So as long as you give them food any amount of innoculum will meet the needs of your tank if given enough time.

Nitrifying bacteria can be frozen. They just don't convert NH3 to NO2 or NO2 to NO3 at less than 10C.

And so continues my quest to stop vicious microbiology rumors.:wall:

Thanks for the information. This is contrary to most of what I've read on various forums.

 

[THE V]

Yeah! I'm just happy that somebody is reading this.

I was also told that the aenorobic nitrifying bacterias play a rather small role on the aquarium. The much larger function of nitrification is done via the vastly more abundant and efficient aerobes? Please correct me if I am wrong. I will also try to find the literature I saw on this a few years back.

The process of coverting NH3 to NO2 then to NO3 is strictly aerobic (it needs takes hydrogen off of the nitrogen and replaces it with oxygen). The bacteria that do this process can sometimes do other metabolic process as well that do not need oxygen (fermenting organic molecules to form alcohols). This is what makes them facultative anaerobes.

There's an implied second part of your question that I think needs a little clarification.

There are three classes of bacteria aerobic, facultative anaerobes and anaerobic. This refers to the metabolic pathways that the bacteria can do. Aerobic use oxygen in their pathways, anaerobic do not use oxygen, and facultative anaerobes swings both ways with whats available.

There are two classes of metabolic pathways (the chemical processes by which organism gain energy): aerobic (with oxygen) and anaerobic (without oxygen).

As you can see the use of the same words can lead to confusion. Most of these myths that are propagated are due to similair confusions. Lots of innocent little mistakes that get quoted as facts that fly around these forums. I had to refer to the scientific literature and standard microbiological texts to figure out the truth.

Incidently, the above timetables I offered were based on personal experience in transporting media, both dried and kept in tank water. May I sumise that this answers my above Q? The bacteriums begin to hybernate in both dry and water environments under the abscense of food, air flow, etc.?

Bacteria will go into hibernation whenever some one of the required elements for growing is absent. These are temperature (too cold), food (none or very little), water, or lack of a major metabolic need (oxygen etc).

BTW "bacteria" is plural and "bacterium" is singular. "data" is also plural and "datum" is singular. Since we almost never refer to data or bacteria in the singular context people get confused (I had a guy rip into me for typing "this data" instead of "these data" this past week).

Fascinating. So it's not dieoff we're concerned with, but bacteria going into hibernation. It also implies that if you split the media from a tank with a given bioload between two tanks with that same bioload, within 24 hours both new colonies will have grown sufficiently to support their bioloads - which means moving significant fractions of media from an established filter to a new one will (a) not impact the existing tank for more than a few hours, and (b) allow the new one to cycle extremely quickly - which I have always advocated.

:thm: yeah!!! When you run two filters of equal size on one tank it has other benefits. Mainly, you can clean one filter completely (boiling hot water, bleach, lots of elbow grease) and kill off all of the bacteria in that filter and the counts in your tank will be exactly the same in 24 hours. Pretty cool huh.

 

[colinsk]

Yeah! I'm just happy that somebody is reading this.

It is quite interesting. Thank you.

What are the practical differences between bacteria that convert ammonia to nitrites and bacteria that convert nitrites to nitrates? I have noticed that the spices do not feel the same. But I only have two tank worth of experience to go by.

(I had a guy rip into me for typing "this data" instead of "these data" this past week).

I am sure this same guy would be quite content using access as a verb. I remind people like that that the dictionary was not designed to prescribe language but to document it. Language is by its very nature quite fluid and needs to be as it attempts to be a useful tool.