Cycling With Fish Food

[VanillaShake112]

Well, it has been three days so far and the ammonia readings are STILL 0ppm!!!!!! I wish I would have been able to have gotten some ammonia. And the entire tank really stinks.

 

[Colin_T]

you can use a raw or cooked prawn or whitebait instead of the fish food. Drop one in and watch the ammonia levels skyrocket.

 

[Miss Wiggle]

need to be careful though, ammonia levels of 8ppm+ will inhibit bacteria growth so monitor it and do water changes if need be

 

[waterdrop]

the bacteria are called Nitrosomonas sp & Nitrobacteria sp. Originally it was thought there were only the two species involved. Now they believe there is up to 6 or more species of bacteria involved in the break down of ammonia to nitrite to nitrate.

Well, Bignose & I have made a couple of comments over it (science section?, can't remember) - I've been carrying around the Hovanec article, rereading it off and on, the one in Applied and Environmental Microbiology and I've been trying to figure out whether Hovenec is actually saying, near the end of the paper, that the 2 species of interest -do not- turn out to be those, that his study in fact now shows this to still be an open question and the species names not yet known. Take a look, kind of interesting.

Now, there is another article he wrote for a regular fish magazine that I haven't got. Have you got that one? I'm interested in knowing what it says.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[VanillaShake112]

(This is probably a weird question ) but what is a prawn? Can I use a defrosted eating shrimp?

 

[Miss Wiggle]

thats what a prawn is, that's what we call them in the UK

(bl**dy americans, with their half hearted use of the English language) .... lol just kidding!

 

[Colin_T]

Not sure what you’re talking about waterdrop, sorry
I need a link coz I’m really lazy and can’t be bothered looking for stuff on this forum

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For VanillaShake

Prawn is shrimp, like cocktail shrimp or eating prawns. You can also get them from a bait and fishing tackle shop. Eating shrimp are fine
Just monitor the ammonia levels as Miss Wiggles Poppins said, if the ammonia levels get too high the bacteria won't develop. Most people try to keep the ammonia levels below 5ppm.

thats what a prawn is, that's what we call them in the UK

(bl**dy americans, with their half hearted use of the English language) .... lol just kidding!

LOL
you tell em Poppy babe

 

[Miss Wiggle]

you tell em Poppy babe

you should see me watching american idol shouting at the telly

'It's pronounched niche Paula, not nitch. There is no T in the word Niche'

it does wind me up a little, but i still love y'all (see what i did there ) americans.

 

[waterdrop]

Not sure what you’re talking about waterdrop, sorry
I need a link coz I’m really lazy and can’t be bothered looking for stuff on this forum

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<shrimpies and poppie babe stuff...>

Sorry Colin, see if you can pull in this PDF, its the full article (not sure if pubmed locks it up outside university, just let me know.)

http/www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/picrender...mp;blobtype=pdf

(Aug 1996 issue of Applied and Environmental Microbiology p. 2888–2896)

The significant quote in the last paragraph is:
"The data from our study indicate that the bacterial species responsible for nitrification in simple freshwater systems remain unknown."
and these are the guys that all these other hobbiest web sites are quoting a lot of the time...

~~waterdrop~~

 

[Colin_T]

if it is from 1996 then it is outdated. I heard info about something similar early this century, and the people doing the research said they found a bunch of different bacteria doing the job in fresh and salt water tanks.

 

[waterdrop]

Oh good, well if you find a journal and date, let us know. I had been told this one was the most recent and indeed one of the only articles published in a scholarly journal about the chemolithoautotrophic bacteria in our filters. I'm still anxious to get to see a copy of the article Hovanec wrote for a tropical fish magazine - it would have to be easier reading!

~~waterdrop~~

 

[Colin_T]

I didn't read it from an article, I heard about it from someone at Fish health or one of the universities, can't remember which one. I just remember being told they had discovered at least 6 species of different bacteria that feed on ammonia and nitrite in aquariums. And they were different to the commonly known Nitrosmonas and Nitrobacters. I think some of them might have been in the same genus.
Sorry, becoming a bit vague to help.

 

[pastabake]

If its an important article you can do a search for citations and thus find more up to date research. Personally I doubt its down to one or even two, there could be a whole ecosystem going on down there.

 

[Colin_T]

that's what they are starting to believe

 

[waterdrop]

Yes, the Hovanec article isone of the ones that discusses the whole set of them: there are 6 species of AOBs, 5 species of NOBs and 10 species of related heterotrophs, 21 species in all discussed in the article.

I suspect confusion bounces around from people in the hobby discussing these type of articles - in the case of this article, some of the species have to do with salt water only, some with fresh and some are discussed for scientific comparison purposes. In aquarium filters, even though a number of side species may exist in small numbers, it is probably a single AOB and a single NOB that are predominant or maybe just a couple in each case.

One of the more interesting things to see was that they waited 76 days to be sure their filters were cycled (they started with 6 indentical systems, switching 3 to salt water part way through.)

[Edit: While writing this post, I felt I should take a harder look for other Hovanec articles and indeed I have just now found that he wrote another followup in 98 and this is indeed the one where he finds that it must be various Nitrospira species (its definately Nitrospira, but the species, the second part of the name, may remain unknown - it not being the specific known ones) that are our friend, the Nitrite-Oxidizing-Bacteria. So I'm going to have to make corrections to some of the statements I've made and now study this second article.]