Re-cultivation of bacteria

[benetay]

I'm wondering, if lets say i've stop keeping fish for a while and the filter is wash and put to dry, lets say i'm going to start the hobby again do i need to change all the filter media and re cultivate the bacteria or should i use the existing media and re cultivate ?

From what i know the bacteria in the filter dies off after 4 hrs without circulation meaning off it.(correct me if i'm wrong)

I'll really know if there is any harmful side effects if i don't change the media and run it.(which is what i'm doing now.)

Current suitation , tank cleared in 3days after filter is up and running.

Can any of you guys shed some light to this problem?

[sherchoo]

Bene,
From what I know, reusing the media should pose no problems. Something you should look out for is the H2S due to rotting matters in the filter which I think could be quite toxic to fishes. Since the filter media it's cleaned and later stored, it should be ok.

[benetay]

Yup, i think it doesn't pose any possible danger because, the filter has being stored dry for roughly about 4months.

The fishes in the tank are perfectly okay! That means if anybody wants to discountinue the hobby for a certain period of time, restarting is like a breeze!

It's something which i feel that it's like a jump start for me, i'll have cloudy tanks up to 1-2 weeks if the filter is brand new. Now my tank is cleared after 3 days.

[naturetan]

That's an interesting finding. It happens too when I ever leave the filter not running for several days, even when the media is washed and filled up with pure tap water. But the tank water clears on a new setup within a week.

Something which I don't seems to understand?

[benetay]

Yup, me too, don't quite understand the result in this finding.

Maybe someone will share their valueable information with us.

[juggler]

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On 7/30/2003 3:24:40 AM

That's an interesting finding. It happens too when I ever leave the filter not running for several days, even when the media is washed and filled up with pure tap water. But the tank water clears on a new setup within a week.

Something which I don't seems to understand?
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Are you referring to stopping a filter in a mature tank and restarting it later? There shouldn't be big problems because your substrate has a huge store of bacterias as well.
The filter additionally provides circulation and trap bigger pieces of debris.

[naturetan]

Theoretically, those bacteria should have died after few days keeping it dry, but in reality, it didn't completely. For benetay case, which is more dramatic, he kept it dry for 4 months before reusing, but tank cleared in few days time. Unless he's not using the new substrate?

[benetay]

New substrade, basically it's new base fert new gravel. Addition of Clear super,bacter 100 and tourmaline bc. I guess it is either one of it that actually help in the process of the clearing up of the tank.

Just to summarise, everything in the filter is old but everything in the tank is new.

My guess will be either the extra addition of clear super etc. actually proves well to a new tank cycle.

[AirStern]

hi benetay, long time no see man!

hmm, thats really an interesting topic here ... but i just thought of this interesting perspective, thinking i might just share with everyone here

for new tank setups, water will normally cloud for the first week due the bacteria bloom and rise of nitrite before it goes into 0ppm, thats the general agreement for being of the cloudy water

now for an intereting viewpoint of mine (which might be wrong), partly of the cloudiness results from bacteria bloom, but i guess what contributes to it is also the white powdered stuff from ceramics rings and gravel (which i am sure many aquarists tried to really wash them during initial setup, but simply just cannot get super clear results

as for benetay's case, i can only assume the the filter media is all cleaned from the 'very new' syndrome, and thus result in clear water in a much faster manner

food for thought