This aquarium concept challenges your views on microbiology, lets collect and compare answers

[Lasse]

The original idea is already tested. 5 pcs of one cubic meters filters with air and kaldnes filter media in a daisy chain. The first tank will be full of bacteria first. If there still any NH3/NH4 or NO2 in the water when it reach next tank will that be populated too and the same with next, and next, and next and. ........

Sincerely Lasse

 

[brandon429]

MnFish thank you for posting, the molly question is perfect.
yes I think it works in the opposite, that's why I brought up the 80s dry cycling thing and vs me just making claims I think this is testable, within 30 days in fact

someone with a paint bucket and some red bricks and some water, run an unassisted cycling test pls...the prediction is 30 days of sitting water + any reasonable surface area to activate, bricks are fine, equals cycled for more bioload than what you cycled it with. that's every freshwater tank Ive ever ran. will it digest 2 ppm? don't know, but it'll take down half or a quarter ppm, whatever the equivalent of a small batch of fish is that would darn sure crash the system within a couple days if they're added on day 1.

epoxy rocks, plastic plants, and corner bubbler no ammonia added. if you input 8 guppies into that mix on day 1, cloudy water and dead fish in three days.

wait 30 days with only hydration
can add fish, no cloud.

MnFish
Im literally thinking every freshwater tank Ive ever ran is the expression of your molly test. Im now going back to re read Lasse's biochemistry reading, that is great material thanks tons for posting as well L

unassisted cycling is directly tied to adding ten, ten thousand, or six million canister filters. Once unassisted cycling is agreed to handle more bioload than what you presented it with during ramp up (surface area is why) then the whole scenario works out where each filter just keeps self cycling to infinity. six million gallons of contaminated water is a LOT of bac feed, and its catching orders more every hour that imaginary tank runs in any home or non bac lab.

three fish was never actually limiting anything, the filters will cycle without the fish at all, they'll just take longer. they take whatever the length of time is for unassisted cycling, how most of us cycled in the 80s. I started out leading in with the hint that some ammonia was given, to please the angry crowd but where Im really leading is that no ammonia is needed (added and measured by US, it still gets in by contamination) all six mil self cycle if they're connected to any water loop in a home.

the big reveal was, we (our offerings, withholdings, api readings, etc) don't matter a darn bit to hydrated bac if the surface area is sufficient, and if we've got a little time. If six million canister filters can't self cycle unassisted in a giant imaginary home aquarium, in about thirty days, then neither did any of my 80s tanks even thought I tried things the hard way (day 1 additions) and death always resulted. the LFS manager could always tell when I was lying about trying to rush the wait...

 

[Dr. Dendrostein]

As long as bricks don't leech chemical? And bucket has aeration. Interesting observation

 

[brandon429]

Another way to frame it:

Anyone here who must attain sterile surfaces for a living, no matter what your industry is, automatically agrees without question that you cannot submerge a bunch of new filter mesh into an aquarium and leave it for a month, take it out, and it be sterile. A microbiologist knows that in that new mass matrix, that didn’t require extra base feed input, a mass of nitrifers also co existed


because you added surface area, not because you did anything else. divisions from bac in the first filter and all tank surfaces sloughed off, as water shear only allows so much stack...then aggregates and floc traveled to other open areas of new surface area, and were fed and continually inoculated by incoming water from not boiled zone, and no surface had to lose its bac in order to populate another.

the number one thing 98% of readers here thought didn’t occur is what occurs. that’s why microbiology is so fun, it causes us to change reefing just a bit when these core tenets sink in.



———————————

Circulation isn’t needed for my bucket test, that bucket isn’t deep enough to stratify with just bricks in it...open topped is fine exchange for the test
we cycle stilled beta bowls all the time by the time only method.




That filter mesh idea above is the best framer. Since we absolutely cannot submerge filter mesh thirty days in any water and it remain sterile after the first touch, much less with an animal in the loop, that’s acknowledged bac mass gain in steady state with only new surface area input.

***these are the heterotrophs Lasse is detailing for us, their biochemistry IS IS iS the feed for nitrifers in association. That, and the dead gnats from that brown banana that fell in the tank. gnat-hydration-heterotrophic bacterial digestion of gnat-> protein - amino- deamination then ammonia, all because they’re getting feed the whole time. Slower in some instances, by month five? All of em

Hope that motivates a test. Link it back



if anyone here thinks that added mass on a submerged filter floss ball won’t have new nitrifer mass after sixty days of sitting even in your dechlor tap water water only, not an aquarium, then please post up. People who have to autoclave for a living want to know this trick.

 

[Dr. Dendrostein]

Circulation isn’t needed for my bucket test, that bucket isn’t deep enough to stratify with just bricks in it...open topped is fine exchange for the test

Aerobic bacteria consume O, and expel CO2, CO2 will lower ph, lower pH will reduce/stop bacteria activity

 

[Dr. Dendrostein]

Another way to frame it:

Anyone here who must attain sterile surfaces for a living, no matter what your industry is, automatically agrees without question that you cannot submerge a bunch of new filter mesh into an aquarium and leave it for a month, take it out, and it be sterile. A microbiologist knows that in that new mass matrix, that didn’t require extra base feed input, a mass of nitrifers also co existed


because you added surface area, not because you did anything else. divisions from bac in the first filter and all tank surfaces sloughed off, as water shear only allows so much stack...then aggregates and floc traveled to other open areas of new surface area, and were fed and continually inoculated by incoming water from not boiled zone, and no surface had to lose its bac in order to populate another.

the number one thing 98% of readers here thought didn’t occur is what occurs. that’s why microbiology is so fun, it causes us to change reefing just a bit when these core tenets sink in.



———————————

Circulation isn’t needed for my bucket test, that bucket isn’t deep enough to stratify with just bricks in it...open topped is fine exchange for the test
we cycle stilled beta bowls all the time by the time only method.




That filter mesh idea above is the best framer. Since we absolutely cannot submerge filter mesh thirty days in any water and it remain sterile after the first touch, much less with an animal in the loop, that’s acknowledged bac mass gain in steady state with only new surface area input.

***these are the heterotrophs Lasse is detailing for us, their biochemistry IS IS iS the feed for nitrifers in association. That, and the dead gnats from that brown banana that fell in the tank. gnat-hydration-heterotrophic bacterial digestion of gnat-> protein - amino- deamination then ammonia, all because they’re getting feed the whole time. Slower in some instances, by month five? All of em

Hope that motivates a test. Link it back



if anyone here thinks that added mass on a submerged filter floss ball won’t have new nitrifer mass after sixty days of sitting even in your dechlor tap water water only, not an aquarium, then please post up. People who have to autoclave for a living want to know this trick.

Either it's going to be an interesting experiment, or I see a denitrator in the making. Giving you a hard time

 

[brandon429]

Test it

It’s shape is large surface area not small, set the test up and see if it can’t take on ammonia in 24 hours after a good stewing wait time.

Interestingly, you’ll have to use circulation for the oxidation test... just not to set the bac. That brings in a wonderful point- the recurring theme is that when you hydrate, you’ve populated everything bacteria need. Both feed and bac and a means to catch more feed in a watery grave

I keep hearing arrangement restrictions that would supposedly suppress bac, but they don’t occur in nature nor the home, those are the misnomers we r after

So somebody get to testing. If you hydrate, you just made a biofilter. And if there isn’t a biofilter there in no rush of a submerged time, then you’ve employed meds or extreme temps to earn that status.


Many readers are thinking the more filters we add on the test tank, the slower it takes for each one to cycle due to shared limitation

no

there is no limitation... feed still gets in even if we don’t add it. Time to completion is all we control

Web posters would have us think we control the whole game



The only requirement for each filter to take on its new bio film community is that you install it inline in a home arrangement of water.


Ps all you eighties sloshy sleepers

All your water beds could oxidize prob a ppm that’s not a joke/

THE BLUE STUFF FAILED

 

[Dr. Dendrostein]

Is this 30 or 60 day test?

 

[Gregg @ ADP]

It seems to me that the way to test this would be to establish one sterile closed system, add a sample of Nitrosomonas sp. bacteria, then add 10mL NH3.

Do not add additional NH3, and allow the bacteria in the system to metabolize all available NH3 and set the carrying capacity for the system. Once that has been established, we would need to determine the population # for bacteria.

@Lasse has indicated that bacteria can and do go dormant. As such, we should be able to reasonably maintain that population for a period of time (let’s make it shorter than longer) without adding additional NH3.

If the hypothesis that these bacteria can continue growth and reproduction beyond K in the absence of the known limiting factor NH3, then we should be able to attach additional sterile closed systems and witness them being populated with bacteria without a) adding any additional NH3, and b) without seeing a diminished population in the original system (is recruitment to new habitat)

Maybe I read through too quickly or the subject is too far over my head, but it seems that we’re being loose with our experimental design and using ‘bacteria’ too generally. Obviously, once fish etc are added to a system, there are going to be all kinds of bacteria w/different limiting factors now in the system.

 

[brandon429]

That sounds good but my point was the non sterile prep is the hidden feed


Meaning don't boil your prep water, get it out of the tap or from an ro machine. Replicate how everyone sets up a tank..,just leave out the obvious feed part

Let the container exchange air with the environment as normal, as cyclers do.

Tap water has lots of bac in it from our piping in delivery, not from the treatment plant as their online water reports for all of us will show low to none colony forming units

How many cfus come out of the tap after passing that little black o ring that hasn't been replaced, ever? Millions. right into the lemonade, we drink nitrifiers daily.

So the test will work if you set up the test in the normal way you'd set up an aquarium, just withhold the deli shrimp, fish feed, fish, or ammonium chloride. 30-40 days it will process a nominal ammonia loading, say half a ppm which is quite a lot considering we added no ammonia above microbial contamination levels at prep time. It's the exact factor mnFish mentioned in his molly analogy. However much ammonia two platys and two swords and two guppies and a Cory cat produces, that's how much offset natural filtration bacteria self build over a month in any twenty to thirty gallon tank... anywhere, if you just use enough red epoxy gravel and plastic plants and filter floss on day one of submersion and wait a month to add them. If those fish are added on day one with setup, they're all ammonia crashed in a few days especially if any iota of feed is added.


After simple thirty days submersion, the system can take light feeding and fish loading without going cloudy... it's the first lesson in microbiology I was given in life thank you jerrys pet store, cielo vista mall el paso tx eighty four

 

[Lasse]

They can't grow if there is no energy. Energy for the nitrificators is the difference of energy levels between NH3/NH4 - NO2 - NO3. The oxidation process make this stored energy be aviable for the growth of the nitrificators. This is proven in many studies. But once established they can get into a dormant stage. Further - in an aquaria (or whatever Ecosystem) - there is more NH3/NH4 producers than the fish. All decaying heterotrophic bacteria release NH3/NH4 in their process. Coming back to this later on.

Sincerely Lasse

 

[brandon429]

Thank you tons and I'm following along with the info it's really good biochem

 

[MnFish1]

Please post on our questionnaire thread:

@Dr Reef
@Elegance Coral
@BoomCorals
@MnFish1
@Reefin Dude Geoff was who I'm trying to invite

If no more than three fishs ammonia is given, does that limit the amount of bacteria that can colonize new surface area if plumbed into an imaginary water loop, even if six million canister filters are added and now it's three fishs ammonia spread over six million gallons of water and as much new surface area? this isn't a magic sealed system, it's done in someone's home. All the dust and mulm that lands on your baseboards also gets in, this is like any other testing tank. It's only magic enough to support six million canister filters lol for testing and prediction purposes

does all the new added canister filters stay sterile when plumbed in, or do they self cycle in thirty days per all google cycle charts ever made?

all of us in this thread advise others on cycles...we should have a concepts check for fun and those we advise should see the collection.

Lasse already answered this question:
I have done multiple runs with cascade filters in order to understand how it works. IMO - the first filter will do the most if all parameters is ok for the nitrifying bacteria. When this filter is at its max capacity - unchanged NH3/NH4 will enter the next filter and start the process there and so one. If a filter has been at is max capacity and the environment make the bacteria get inactive/dormant - solving that problem will make them active again in a very short time (a couple of hours). I will come back to this later but I have to write about the heterotroph bacteria before I can give you a understandable explanation of what´s happen.

 

[MnFish1]

MnFish thank you for posting, the molly question is perfect.
yes I think it works in the opposite, that's why I brought up the 80s dry cycling thing and vs me just making claims I think this is testable, within 30 days in fact

someone with a paint bucket and some red bricks and some water, run an unassisted cycling test pls...the prediction is 30 days of sitting water + any reasonable surface area to activate, bricks are fine, equals cycled for more bioload than what you cycled it with. that's every freshwater tank Ive ever ran. will it digest 2 ppm? don't know, but it'll take down half or a quarter ppm, whatever the equivalent of a small batch of fish is that would darn sure crash the system within a couple days if they're added on day 1.

epoxy rocks, plastic plants, and corner bubbler no ammonia added. if you input 8 guppies into that mix on day 1, cloudy water and dead fish in three days.

wait 30 days with only hydration
can add fish, no cloud.

MnFish
Im literally thinking every freshwater tank Ive ever ran is the expression of your molly test. Im now going back to re read Lasse's biochemistry reading, that is great material thanks tons for posting as well L

unassisted cycling is directly tied to adding ten, ten thousand, or six million canister filters. Once unassisted cycling is agreed to handle more bioload than what you presented it with during ramp up (surface area is why) then the whole scenario works out where each filter just keeps self cycling to infinity. six million gallons of contaminated water is a LOT of bac feed, and its catching orders more every hour that imaginary tank runs in any home or non bac lab.

three fish was never actually limiting anything, the filters will cycle without the fish at all, they'll just take longer. they take whatever the length of time is for unassisted cycling, how most of us cycled in the 80s. I started out leading in with the hint that some ammonia was given, to please the angry crowd but where Im really leading is that no ammonia is needed (added and measured by US, it still gets in by contamination) all six mil self cycle if they're connected to any water loop in a home.

the big reveal was, we (our offerings, withholdings, api readings, etc) don't matter a darn bit to hydrated bac if the surface area is sufficient, and if we've got a little time. If six million canister filters can't self cycle unassisted in a giant imaginary home aquarium, in about thirty days, then neither did any of my 80s tanks even thought I tried things the hard way (day 1 additions) and death always resulted. the LFS manager could always tell when I was lying about trying to rush the wait...

This seems different than what @Lasse is saying. I agree if you add water to a tank with nothing but water and some sand in it 'stuff' stuff will fall in at a certain rate - and this will cause bacteria to grow - and produce ammonia - and nitrifying bacteria will be present. But - if the rate of 'stuff' entering the tank is 'constant' there will never be the same nitrifying bacterial mass as if 100 fish were in the tank.

 

[MnFish1]

Test it

It’s shape is large surface area not small, set the test up and see if it can’t take on ammonia in 24 hours after a good stewing wait time.

Interestingly, you’ll have to use circulation for the oxidation test... just not to set the bac. That brings in a wonderful point- the recurring theme is that when you hydrate, you’ve populated everything bacteria need. Both feed and bac and a means to catch more feed in a watery grave

I keep hearing arrangement restrictions that would supposedly suppress bac, but they don’t occur in nature nor the home, those are the misnomers we r after

So somebody get to testing. If you hydrate, you just made a biofilter. And if there isn’t a biofilter there in no rush of a submerged time, then you’ve employed meds or extreme temps to earn that status.


Many readers are thinking the more filters we add on the test tank, the slower it takes for each one to cycle due to shared limitation

no

there is no limitation... feed still gets in even if we don’t add it. Time to completion is all we control

Web posters would have us think we control the whole game



The only requirement for each filter to take on its new bio film community is that you install it inline in a home arrangement of water.


Ps all you eighties sloshy sleepers

All your water beds could oxidize prob a ppm that’s not a joke/

THE BLUE STUFF FAILED

I don't think the more filters added the slower the cycle occurs. I haven't heard anyone say that? All I said is whether you have 10 or 1000 filters the total bacterial mass will only grow to the amount of ammonia present - whether its from air, dust, fish waste, heterotrophic bacteria or ammonia added to the tank.

 

[Gregg @ ADP]

Thank you tons and I'm following along with the info it's really good biochem

The thing to remember is that this isn’t a biochem issue as much as it’s an ecological issue. As an ecological issue, there are some rules that govern population dynamics and must be accounted for.

You are correct that available space is a limiting factor for many organisms. The more sessile the organism, the more real estate comes into play. But, in the case of Nitrosomonas sp. bacteria, I believe it’s not a significantly limiting factor.

However, NH3 is the limiting factor. Here is why NH3 availability is going to determine your bacterial population more than available surface area:

It’s known that nitrifying bacteria prefer hard surfaces (and ‘hard’ is relative to bacteria, not humans) for colonization. But the population certainly isn’t limited by the available surface area for colonization.

The population absolutely is, in the case of Nitrosomonas sp., limited by the availability of NH3. Once carrying capacity (K) for the system is reached based on availability of NH3, that is your population. Unless the [NH3] increases, your population is set. There simply will no longer be reproduction beyond the established K because, as @Lasse pointed out, there is no longer available energy for reproduction. You can’t make something out of nothing.

However, if your system has a population set where all available surface area is occupied, and you increase [NH3], your bacterial population will increase as well. These bacteria prefer hard substrates, but certainly don’t require them. If our available surface area for additional colonization = 0, no biggie. The bacteria will still grow/reproduce. But now, they will occupy less desirable substrates (e.g. particulates in the water column), if not just be free flowing in the water column not associated with a substrate.

That’s where we get blooms. Increase in [NH3], increase in K, reproduction beyond what the available surface area can accommodate.

 

[brandon429]

Dormancy occurs in monocultures, lab prep isolations, nutrient deficient agar in the lab etc. It's clinical in occurrence, by design... it doesn't happen in the home. It never happens in a biofilter setting. We're off base in covering dormancy here, but that will proceed till we make a quorum breakthrough. It's a factor in microbiology agreed, we'll test further to see if that can be produced here for measure

Proofs on surface area limitation:

The going antitheme here is ammonia presence controls bac pop and you've agreed that without measurable ammonia, sleepy weak half awake bac have filled in all added surface area.. hesitantly accepting at least some bac action happens without our all-powerful offerings. They're dormant, less able in some way (claimed) but everyone agrees at least now that in any hydrated system in a home where extra filter floss is submerged, all added new bac mass populates that new surface area...with no losses to the original colonies in the tank, we agree there I think. Bac mass found what it needed without us adding more supports or anything past surface area...

can you unassist-cycle an empty ten gallon tank in thirty days? How do dormant bac get energy to divide and populate?

What if you maintained 3 ppm ammonia forever... Would it ever be able to oxidize it? That's plenty of ammonia to make bac. Once I get you to agree surface area matters, then we must navigate into how much bac can stack, literally, on surfaces and if that has limitations

The empty ten gallon tank analogy seems to indicate they can only stack so high...

 

[MnFish1]

Dormancy occurs in monocultures, lab prep isolations, nutrient deficient agar in the lab etc. It's clinical in occurrence, by design... it doesn't happen in the home. It never happens in a biofilter setting. We're off base in covering dormancy here, but that will proceed till we make a quorum breakthrough. It's a factor in microbiology agreed, we'll test further to see if that can be produced here for measure

Proofs on surface area limitation:

The going antitheme here is ammonia presence controls bac pop and you've agreed that without measurable ammonia, sleepy weak half awake bac have filled in all added surface area.. hesitantly accepting at least some bac action happens without our all-powerful offerings.

Ok, can you unassist-cycle an empty ten gallon tank in thirty days?

What if you maintained 3 ppm ammonia forever... Would it ever be able to oxidize it? That's plenty of ammonia to make bac. Once I get you to agree surface area matters, then we must navigate into how much bac can stack, literally, on surfaces and if that has limitations

The empty ten gallon tank analogy seems to indicate they can only stack so high...

He already agreed that surface area matters so do I. The issue is that let’s say you have infinite surface area unless you had infinite ammonia you would not have infinite nitrifiers. If indeed you kept the ammonia at 3 forever bacteria would grow until there was no more surface area. But again here your adding ammonia to keep it at that level

 

[Gregg @ ADP]

Dormancy occurs in monocultures, lab prep isolations, nutrient deficient agar in the lab etc. It's clinical in occurrence, it doesn't happen in the home. We're off base in covering dormancy here, but that will proceed till we make a quorum breakthrough.

Proofs on surface area limitation:

The going antitheme here is ammonia presence controls bac pop. Ok, can you unassist-cycle an empty ten gallon tank in thirty days?

What if you maintained 3 ppm ammonia forever... Would it ever be able to oxidize it?

Why wouldn’t dormancy happen in the original context?

Again, 3 clowns into a sterile system would generate x amount of NH3/day (assuming same food and quantity ea day). Absent nitrifying bacteria for a period of ____ days, that NH3 accumulates. When nitrifying bacteria show up, they are coming into an elevated [NH3], far beyond what those 3 fish could produce in a day.

That intial [NH3] sets the system’s initial carrying capacity. But we know that the [NH3] will be oxidized and the [NH3] will decrease substantially and level off at whatever is produced by clownfish (and whatever other amounts of NH3 produced metabolically w/in system).

[NH3]final < [NH3]initial

So, the system now has a bacterial population > K. Given the choice between dying and going dormant, I would think the bacteria would go dormant.

 

[Gregg @ ADP]

Let’s simplify.

Given a system where available surface area for colonization beyond current population = 0, but [NH3] is > than required by current population, will the bacteria continue to reproduce?

Given a system where there is an abundance of surface area, but [NH3] =/< what is required by existing population, will the bacteria continue to reproduce? If yes, then how?