Pickled bacteria?

[Jollyblue]

OK, just an observation leading to some speculation. I recently re-started a tank that met with disaster about a year ago (cuke+powerhead). It has a 2-3 inch sandbed. I had simply let the tank sit after disconnecting everything, and the water level eventually dropped to about 1/3 normal through evap. So highly saline water and a 'dead' sandbed - sitting for ~year at room temp.

I bought a small chunk of un-cured live-rock and simply topped off the brine-water - thinking I would be doing a few water changes anyway during the cure. I fully expected the cure to last a couple of weeks, but I did have lighting (60watts floro 15g tank) and water flow on.

Ammonia:
day 1 .2ppm
day 2 .3ppm
day 3 .2ppm
day 4 .0ppm
day 5 .0ppm
...etc

The tank never 'cycled'. Within a week I have 2 cardinals, a hawaiin brittlestar, a cleaner shrimp and several snails. All are healthy, behaving normal, etc - and I never did change the water - just started dosing 2-part

No hair algae, no cyano, and pink corraline is starting to encrust an old bleached coral skeleton that was in the tank. I did not measure nitrite/nitrate.

So...what are the possibilities?

a) I'm a fool, all my critters are slowly dying of ammonia/nitrite poisoning
b) The rock was already cured (somehow magically, sitting in a dry box on a hot warehouse floor...)
c) The bacteria in the sandbed never died, but simply went dormant, perhaps encycsted? as some bacteria do?
d) Some weird chemistry due to hypersaline water trapped in the sandbed?

I find c) plausible, since you can buy bottled bacteria (or so the claim goes). Being able to quick-start a tank this way implies some interesting applications..a) is a possibility as well, but everything sure looks good and ammonia is still 0ppm. I don't buy the other 2

Anyway, just sharing. I've no clue how to test this further, or even whether it surprises anyone.

-Keith

 

[Anonymous]

Many species of bacteria can survive extremely inhospitable conditions so I wouldn't be surprised. On the other hand you're not out of the woods yet as I predict you'll see some very serious algae blooms in the very near future.
If it was me I would not have put any fish in that tank yet.

Regards,
David Mohr

 

[Anonymous]

Best thing to do is keep testing, since you have added livestock already. Are you using newly purchased test kits? Your old ones are prolly no longer any good.
You must test for ALL THREE!: ammonia, nitrite and nitrate, and keep track. Your ammonia could already be converting to nitrite, and your nitrIte phase could last for weeks and easily kill everything in there.
NitrIte is every bit as toxic as ammonia: Be careful!

That said, something that may have happened is that the living organisms on the rock died long ago, causing ammonia/nitrite spikes while the water was evaporating, and what you have left is just ordinary reef rock. In other words, the living stuff died, rotted off, and thus the rock was cured while the water was still evaporating. Sounds strange, but hey, I guess it's possible, given your current readings.
I would seriously double-check the readings

Also, I agree with David. Your "new" tank is just that: a new set-up. Take precautions, because you definitely will go through all the rampant algae phases :x

Good luck

 

[Mihai]

I think that your tank has all the needed bacteria in the rock. Because your salinity went down (and hopefuly up) slowly they didn't die, so they just got very happy that they got some food and started to have sex.

M.

 

[ZooKeeper1]

Nitrite is far less toxic in seawater than in freshwater. Fish can actually survive in saltwater with more than 100 ppm nitrite. I think you might be fine, like stated with the slow changes, you probably had plenty of bacteria in there.

 

[ChrisRD]

Fish can actually survive in saltwater with more than 100 ppm nitrite.

Really? I've seen clownfish act noticeably different and stop eating at a nitrite level of just 1 ppm. I can't imagine they'd survive 100 ppm. 100 ppm of nitrate OTOH I don't think would be a big problem.

 

[ZooKeeper1]

I certainly dont recommend it, but it is true. I dont believe nitrate to be a problem for fish either, just some serious algae problems, and stunted corals. But that is alot more common than 100 ppm nitrite.

 

[Rikko]

Fish can actually survive in saltwater with more than 100 ppm nitrite.

Really? I've seen clownfish act noticeably different and stop eating at a nitrite level of just 1 ppm. I can't imagine they'd survive 100 ppm. 100 ppm of nitrate OTOH I don't think would be a big problem.

There's actually a couple of studies online done on that.. I think Randy on RC references it constantly.. The lowest level of mortality in fish was at 40ppm NO2 and it was a species I wasn't familiar with at all... I only seem to have nitrate papers bookmarked.

 

[ChrisRD]

Interesting. I can't say I have much experience with keeping marine fish in water that has elevated levels of nitrite for any extended time period (which I guess is a good thing ) but I was not aware that marine fish could handle those types of nitrite levels and survive.

Back in the early 90s when I first started keeping marine fish, and it was still common for people to use live fish to cycle a tank, they certainly seemed to show a reaction to elevated ammonia and nitrite levels during the cycle. I have seen fish hide for several days and stop eating, even after ammonia levels are down and only nitrite is elevated. Apparently they're sensitive to levels that are far short of lethal. I always assumed levels much higher than a few ppm would kill them.

If anyone has links to the studies I'd like to read more about it.

 

[ZooKeeper1]

I've been looking too. It's too bad alot of these studys are not available to the average guy. Randy Holmes Farley is writing a paper on this subject, it will probably be published soon.
Here is an interesting quote from an article by Matt Clark


Research on fish that can live in both marine and freshwater like the Chinook salmon, Oncorhychus tshawytscha, has shown that the death rate go down as salt and calcium levels increase. In freshwater, 50% of the salmon will die after 48 hours exposure to levels of about 19 mg/l. However, it takes a massive 1070 mg/l to kill the same number of fish when they’re kept in saltwater.

 

[ChrisRD]

I'll send Wade (our resident aquatic toxicologist) a PM to see if he has any information about it...

 

[ZooKeeper1]

It is his june article in Reef Keeping mag

 

[wade1]

I actually recall reading a paper on this some time ago, but cannot find it at the moment. While studies like that indicate many fish can indeed survive at higher than (we'd) expected levels of nitrite, I would definitely not recommend allowing them to do so.

I will look around more early next week and see if I can find any of my old references to this... I do believe that ZooKeeper is correct though.

Wade

 

[ZooKeeper1]

While studies like that indicate many fish can indeed survive at higher than (we'd) expected levels of nitrite, I would definitely not recommend allowing them to do so.


Wade

No doubt, that should be stressed. If you have testable nitrite, you have other problems that need to be addressed.

 

[Phil D]

What you have observed might seem unbeleivable for many but is in fact quite normal and indeed bacteria will remain alive in those conditions.
I have done this with a marine tank and restarting it half a year later as a freshwater tank, and like in your "experiment" the biological filter was fully operational within less than a week, indicating no ammonia, no nitrites and little nitrates just showing. The new livestock never had any problems, but watch the phosphates as these will be very high.

Later and out of curiosity I did the reverse, back from freshwater to marine, and again without any problems.
After knowing this, I started flushing the filters of commercial seafood tanks (in restaurants) with FRESH water, and refilled them with sea-water and NEVER lost a biological filter.
Because bacteria have almost no biomass they do not suffer from salinity shocks, only livestock with soft bodies containing high amount of water will suffer from salinity shocks.

 

[ChrisRD]

It is his june article in Reef Keeping mag

Looks like the June issue isn't available yet, but I'll keep an eye out for it. Thanks.

 

[Anonymous]

I think all that happened is you had enough bacteria and plant life to almost totally handle the bioload from the live rock and fish. After all you did get a small spike in ammonia. Anaerobic bacteria probably still survived in the sand, and the sand and lr had plant life.

So even though you thought is was all "dead" there was still the "stuff" in there that make for a mature system.

 

[Bucktronix]

Fish can actually survive in saltwater with more than 100 ppm nitrite.

Really? I've seen clownfish act noticeably different and stop eating at a nitrite level of just 1 ppm. I can't imagine they'd survive 100 ppm. 100 ppm of nitrate OTOH I don't think would be a big problem.

isn't a 100ppm basically fish swimming in urine?

 

[Anonymous]

Are you guys sure it is 100ppm nitrIte not nitrAte? I dont think my test equipment goes that high ffor nitrItes but does for nitrAte. and fish survive just find at 100ppm+ total nitrates.

To phil I also rinse my filter media (oystershells) in Fw each week. With no ill effects. but then I also have tons of plant life maintaining the system so the bacteria is not critical.

 

[Phil D]

A short anecdote about nitrate tolerance in marine fish.
I was once called up by a Pet Shop for a water change in their marine tanks. They had never done one since opening 8 years before!
Just to know I tried to test the water for nitrates but the test came out completely off scale, so I did a 95% water change, refilled with clean sea-water and tested again, and believe it or not, the second test result was still off scale!
So I had to do another 95% water change, despite not being paid for it, and only after this second water change did I get a readable test result but still quite high. (sorry, I don't remember the amount in ppm but it was almost at the max)
I leave it up to anybody to guess what the nitrate levels were before the waterchanges, but some "old" fish still survived in that "soup".
However, the owner of the shop could not understand why most of the fresh stock he bought were dying so fast !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!