Nitrospira Not Nitrobacter

[anon02]

How would 8.9 mmol of ammonia in a 30litre tank compare to the 5ppm that we dose ?

 

[Doc7]

8.9 mmol NH3 = .0089 mol

.0089 mol NH3 * 17.031 g NH3 / mol NH3 = .152 g NH3

.152 g NH3 / 30 L = .005 g/L = 5 mg/L which is approximately equal to 5 ppm.

 

[Katch]

Can you freeze the bacteria used in filters without killing them (I know many many bacteria survive freezing with no ill effect). If you can then surely a little bacteria ice cube is the way forward...

 

[anon02]

Thanks Doc, I`ve been looking through the text and graphs to try to spot a tweek that hadn`t been covered. The only 2 diierences left (that I can find) are that they didn`t dechlorinate the water and they didn`t reduce NH3 dosing at NO2 spike

Katch, the only way I can think to test would be to buy one of those small filters and run it in your tank for a couple of months then frezze/thaw the sponge and set it up in a small tank which you could dose with ammonia. My feeling is that the cells would be destroyed on thawing. Seeing that most of the research will be commercially driven, I would have thought that the freezing route will have been considered and discounted, but you never know

 

[Katch]

I just know from my understanding of food science, that the reason partially thawed and then re-frozen foods are dangerous is because small colonies of bacteria survive the cooking process and then go dormant after freezing. When thawed they reactivate, mutiply to dangerous levels which are then refrozen. When you finally thawn and consume said item it contains dangerous levels of live bacteria.

 

[waterdrop]

Can you freeze the bacteria used in filters without killing them (I know many many bacteria survive freezing with no ill effect). If you can then surely a little bacteria ice cube is the way forward...

I don't know what percentage of the original bacteria make it through but actually the only two examples of "stored bacteria" products that we ever got -any- percentage of success reports on were two (I think?) that were indeed frozen and transported in that state. The use of these two was dying out just as I joined the forum because production stopped in at least one case, can't remember the other. One was biospira, so one could probably search for posts by me with that word in them.

The jist of the story was that we had a handful of positive reports that turned out to mostly be coming from one particular LFS where the truck driver from the producer to the LFS was in on the importance and the frozen bacteria were not just dropped on the loading dock and allowed to defrost.

I don't have refs to cite but I do believe both of our species groups (all bacteria reproduce so quickly that their mutation rate is much higher than larger animals, so there is never just one exact animal type, but several slightly different mutations at any given moment (my crude understanding of bacteriology stuff)(ie. there is not just one nitrosomonas but a bunch of very, very similar cells)) can be frozen and then come out of their dormant state and a percentage of them be ok (both Nitrosomonas and Nitrospira.)

WD

 

[Katch]

Its almost like LFSs need to step up to prepare frozen cultures. If there have already been products of this nature I'd imagine something as crude as squeezing really mature filter media into icecube trays and then freezing would work.

It'd be interesting to see if someone could do this experiment when setting up and cycling a new tank.

 

[Doc7]

for an experiment like that, does "instantly fully cycled" mean :

a) able to support a small number of fish without seeing ammonia and nitrite rise to detectable levels, or
b) double-0s after first 5 ppm-dose of ammonia and able to handle immediate full stocking

or are we just looking for

c) significant decrease in time to accomplish (b) above

 

[anon02]

I`d settle for (a)