Beneficial bacteria

[Sammy]

Howdy,

I have been reading quite a few reports on the net lately that The beneficial bacteria from the freshwater filter will do the same job on a saltwater tank if transfered over. I was under the impression that it would not work on a reef tank once seeded by a fresh water tank? Anythoughts?

Cheers,

Mike

[fatpuffer]

As far as I know, If you go from FW to SW, as long as you do not increase the salinity by more than .002 per week, there will be a conversion of bacteria from the FW to brac to salt. There will be die-offs but not as much.

Js

[midgetwaiter]

The bacteria in your FW filter will die in SW.

What FP is talking about is the method people use to move a brackish tank up to higher salinity. The rather slow change is done to keep the dying FW bacteria from overwhelming the tank and to give the SW bateria time to establish itself.

Where are you seeing these reports?

[albert_dao]

What are you trying to do? Cycle a SW tank? SW shouldn't even use a filter.

[Sammy]

Good Morning,

Thank you all for the quick reply. The reason I am curious is yesterday was day 8 of my mini reef being setup and all my readings are were they should be and I havent went through any ammon spikes at all. The setup is a 20gal seamless currently with about 7lbs of cultured Vanuato and 7lbs of cured Jakarta live rock (6 weeks curing). I added 2 new powerheads and Pengiun 150 that was running on a freshwater tank for about 2 months(New filter pad original bio wheel). Also added about 2lbs of seeded live sand from 2 different source to my 20lbs of new Marine/Agragonite.. Now I have read with using cultured/cured rock I may not go through a spike at all and I also read that freshwater bacteria is still usefull in a saltwater tank to some degree. I ask here cause this is like home for me when it comes to my aquatic adventures and I value your input alittle more then other forums. Here is one of the links talking breifly about converting from fresh to saltwater. http://www.algone.com/fresh_to_saltwater.htm

I will keep you posted with my progress.

Thanks again for the help,

Sammy

[albert_dao]

You should do yourself a favor now and remove all the media from your power filter.

What kind of powerheads are you using? How big is the tank?

If this is your first SW tank, it might also be prudent that you ditch your sand and opt for bare bottom. 2093482383094x easier to keep clean during your initial six months. You can always add a thin layer of substrate after this critical period.

Edited December 20, 2005 by albert_dao

[midgetwaiter]

I dunno what that guy in the link is talking about.

I know from very painful personal experience that if you fill a brackish tank with the bucket you were mixing for the reef tank that 0.08 increase in sg will kill your bio filter dead dead dead.

going from fw to 1.020 or something? fuggedaboudit

[Sammy]

Good Day,

As for the filter its a peguin 150 which I added a new media pad and kept only the original bio-wheel from it. My very first aquarium setups were 2 75gal FOWLR saltwater systems and that was abut 12-15 years ago. AS for the sandbed... Im not jumping on the No sand bandwagon that seems to be lingering around some other forums. Sand beds have worked for many people for many years and I intend to make it work here. Im pretty serious about my tanks/fish and not into the easy set and forget attitude, Anyone that has seem my fish room knows what Im talking about so Im not worried about alittle extra work to keep my sandbed in check.The new powerheads are Zoo med Powersweep 212 x 2. I have witnessed several new saltwater setups that never went through a cycle when done properly. I guess i wanted to cover all angles before lighting up a fatty. Granted that the bac that was living on the bio-wheel has died off but is there any problems I should watch for down the road by using that media? There was virtually no build up on the bio-wheel at all. The HOB is really just for extra flow and I intend on moding at later date. Currently I am using a setup method that is very popular in the UK... Seems to me they are light years ahead of north america whe it comes to thier salt/reef setups.

Thanks again for the feed back,

Sammy

Edited December 20, 2005 by Sammy

[Sammy]

I found the info I was looking for and it makes more sense then just saying that the Benifical Bac from a freshwater tank works on a saltwater.

Saltwater systems have other bacteria involved, besides Nitrosomonas and Nitrobacter.

Namely Nitrosococcus mobilis, N. oceanus, and Nitrospira spp.

I would think that if you started off with a seeded FW filter, you would have an imbalance of too much of the Nitrosomonas and Nitrobacter and not enough of the others.

Sammy

[albert_dao]

Actually, the UK is light years behind us...

[Sammy]

pfff

[albert_dao]

What's your projected success timeframe?

[midgetwaiter]

I found the info I was looking for and it makes more sense then just saying that the Benifical Bac from a freshwater tank works on a saltwater.

Saltwater systems have other bacteria involved, besides Nitrosomonas and Nitrobacter.

Namely Nitrosococcus mobilis, N. oceanus, and Nitrospira spp.

I would think that if you started off with a seeded FW filter, you would have an imbalance of too much of the Nitrosomonas and Nitrobacter and not enough of the others.

Sammy

The problem with that being that moving it from fw tank to sw kills it. DEAD. If they could explain away that one little emperical observation I just might believe it.

Albert is big on the BB style, his bias is not what one would call subtle. I've had some success both ways, I'm of the opinon that BB is easier for small tanks. The BB or belin stuff has been around for decades it just wasn't "cool" for a few years while people went off on the DSB fad. Most important thing to understand about this hobby is that setup and equipment choices are driven 90% by trends, fads and marketing. The return of the berlin style, or maybe fall of the DSB concept, is a great example.

For your setup I'd probably recommend ditching the bio wheel as well, mostly because they don't work for sh*t in the first place. You will probably find over time that salt creep gumming up the wheel will drive you crazy. Put another powerhead or maybe a closed loop type deal there.

Best way to tell for sure if your tank is cycled is to give it somehitng to eat. I didn't see mention of any animals in there yet so you could just put some food in there and see what happens as it breaks down. Even better would be to add some ammonia, safeway sells a pure household ammonia for about $2.

[albert_dao]

The fall of the DSB wasn't simply the end of a trend. It was a hard proven fact that DSB's are not a viable long term solution. This is especially true in Canada where we don't even have access to the one of the basic ingredients of a DSB, real live sand.

[midgetwaiter]

The fall of the DSB wasn't simply the end of a trend. It was a hard proven fact that DSB's are not a viable long term solution. This is especially true in Canada where we don't even have access to the one of the basic ingredients of a DSB, real live sand.

I never really tried the full on several inch layer of sand long term (>1 yr) so I suppose this is comming from a position of ignorance to a certain degree. I had the same algae problems everybody else did. I still like the looks of a 1cm argonite bottom on my FO tanks but my reef is BB, I find that the shallow layer is manageable.

I use the term trend because I think a lot of people grabbed onto the idea when it was more or less untested. For the past few years it has really been THE THING. Recently opinion has been moving away from it for all the reasons we are familiar with and it's not like there has been an evolution of the concept. Everybody is looking at it, saying this actually kinds sucks and is going back to older methods. Real live sand or not (good point btw).

So I'm comfortable with calling it a trend, it got jumped on with the fanatical fervor that surrounds new ideas in this hobby and is now being dumped just as quickly.