11-Hour W/o Aeration Kill Bacteria?

[Kevin_AK]

I had just neared finishing cycling my quarantine tank (QT) last night, and I did a water change at about 7:30 pm and I forgot to turn everything back on (filter, heater, airstone) until 6:30 am this morning.

I do not have any fish in the QT tank but I have been monitoring the ammonia \ nitrite \ nitrate. I had finally gotten ~30 ppm nitrate but also had very high nitrite, hence the reason for the water change last night.

I hope I did not kill the bacteria in the aquarium. Would a 11-hour aeration outage kill them? Thanks.

 

[ZoddyZod]

11hrs should not have killed off the colony. I've seen reports that 24hrs might see the colony size drop by only 15%, and they can apparently double in number in just 24hrs (with enough food) so it should be fine. Any loss should quickly be replaced.

 

[fishyfeet]

i would say partial at best, even after several weeks some bacteria survives, should be fine di

 

[N0body Of The Goat]

You may have lost some of the bacteria, but not too many, your "fishless cycle" stats should give you a good indication over the next few days.

Given it appears you are "fishless cycling" your QT tank, why did you do a water change last night? As long as you are never increasing the tank concentration of ammonia to much more than 4ppm, it is usually best to keep the same water at 30C to quicken the cycling process and have a 7 day qualifying week, before lowering the temperature to a suitable level for the fish and doing a big water change in the region of 75%.

 

[Kevin_AK]

I did a hybrid fish - fishless cycle. I started off with just transferring some plants, wood, and coconut shells into the 20G QT tank from my main 100G tank. I also added some algae wafers + shrimp pellets since letting them rot without fish may have created some ammonia. I then tested the ammonia / nitrite / nitrate and monitored the QT daily for about a week. I then got 5 nitrite "tolerant" fish, gold barbs, and again carefully watched the water parameters + did water changes for the week they were in the tank. After a week in the QT I transfered the gold barbs to my main 100 gallon acrylic (this was just over 1 week ago) and have been doing just great with my other tropical fish.

So, for the last week the QT has been empty but once I stopped doing water changes the nitrite level raised. Also at the start of last week I added some Tetra safe start (enough for a 30G tank). I saw the nitrite levels go sky high but the Nitrate stayed at about 30 ppm and the ammonia to 0 or <0.25 ppm.