Purposely making tank cloudier to test bacteria?

[SlugSnorter]

It was cloudy before I ever added sand.

yeah, I said it reacted with the sand making it mucky, not the other way around

also, the filter sock material could have been the contaminant collected within settling or getting stuck

 

[jDoSe]

I need a way of at least seeing if it is alive and moving so I bought a 2000x microscope. Hopefully i can see something later today when I get home.

Trying to tell how cloudy it is by eye is not going to work. I bought a phone adapter to take pictures, but i dont know how well that will work. I cant imagine very well, but I never tried. Phone is an iphone 13 so it has a decent camera. The iphone 13 pro has a 3x optical zoom lens which may have come in handy.

2000x doesn’t seem like much to me, but most consumer microscopes only go up to 2500x. Bacteria seems really small…
I always figured I needed an electron microscope to actually identify a bacteria. Guess we will find out.

 

[jDoSe]

Well, the microscope was a flop. There's no possible way to identify the bacteria using this cheapo microscope. I don't think a better/stronger light microscope would help. I don't know how you identify moving lines/dots.

I took out my small 2" x 2.5" piece of filter floss and shook it in a bottle of tank water. The picture attached is the "water" compared to a regular bottle of water. Sorry for the circle I had the microscope adapter on (which worked surprisingly well).

When you look at the slide with a drop on it, it looks clear/empty. I had to go to 2000x just to see something move. For reference, I couldn't find anything moving in a sample from the display tank. The videos below are from the grey slurry from the filter floss. Keep in mind this is a freshwater rodi sample that has been in the tank for maybe 6 days.

So there are some larger "particles". Some of them wiggle, but I'm not convinced these are alive. I'm pretty sure the reason they all move in the same general direction is suction/pressures caused by the glass cover on the slide. The question is are these organisms trapped in the flow or just random tiny particles.
What I do believe are alive are the even smaller "things" in the "background" that you see zooming around and changing direction. I know what you are thinking "man if you could just adjust the focus a little bit!". Trust me, I tried for hours. This is the best it gets to capture them.
You probably need to put the video in 1080p to see them.



This video is of the larger "particles". Some slightly charge direction, and there's one guy that just spins in circles (both directions). Alive or not, I don't think it would matter since there's no way of identifying any of this.



This pretty much tells me nothing. There's bacteria in the water! (There's bacteria everywhere...) Also, it's still possible that what I was seeing was bacteria on the slide itself.

Back to the drawing board...again...

 

[SlugSnorter]

tank pics?

 

[jDoSe]

tank pics?

I have drained it, yet again.

Last time i added the uv sterilizer and skimmer only after it got really bad.

My new plan is to add fresh rodi, raise phosphate to 0.1ppm, use esv salt to rule out precipitation, then immediately add 100 micron floss, uv sterilizer, and skimmer. If I can get to a week without cloudy water, I will then put the cleaned sand in a separate container and let it sit with dr tims for 48hours, then add the sand to the tank.

 

[SlugSnorter]

I have drained it, yet again.

Last time i added the uv sterilizer and skimmer only after it got really bad.

My new plan is to add fresh rodi, raise phosphate to 0.1ppm, use esv salt to rule out precipitation, then immediately add 100 micron floss, uv sterilizer, and skimmer. If I can get to a week without cloudy water, I will then put the cleaned sand in a separate container and let it sit with dr tims for 48hours, then add the sand to the tank.

okay if it clouds again please please please send a picture

 

[jDoSe]

Still battling this bacteria. Tank has yet to be actually started.
Once in stock, I am going to try the unscripted aquarium clarifier thingy. Already spent over $1000 trying to beat this bacteria, what’s another $100.

 

[jDoSe]

In a frankly surprising outcome, I may have a solution….established liverock…

So i set up a 2gal tank for three reasons. 1) So I didnt have to restart 25gal for the 100th time. 2) To rule out the tank itself. 3) Easily test different things on a smaller volume (cheaper/quicker).

So i set up the 2gal with only fresh saltwater. Day one clear, day two bit cloudy, day four super cloudy, and only getting worse. So that rules out the tank/silicone as the cause.

Next test was the external contaminants in the air test (dust/lint/etc). Highly unlikely as I have not a spec of dust anywhere, but have to try. So for this test I went and bought 2gal saltwater from a lfs and some rodi top off to get a long-enough test in.
Day one clear, day two clear, day three clear, one week…clear…
So nothing in the air…
Switch from topping off with the store rodi to my rodi. Slowly by slowly got super cloudy and had to dump the water…

Ok so next test is liverock test. I want to buy 2more gal saltwater from lfs and 1 lb liverock.
Like last time, clear for a week, which never happens with my saltwater. But here’s the important test…switching topoff from lfs rodi to my rodi (with the 1 lb liverock this time). Day one clear, day two clear?!?, day three clear?!?, one week clear?!?
Ok what the heck…1 lb established liverock and not even the slightest cloudiness?!?
Well, time to go all out. With the same 2gal tank, i am going to drain every last drop of water (which was the stores saltwater), and add my own saltwater.
Day one clear, day two…couldnt believe it…clear, one week…clear, two weeks… clear.

So I go and buy 5lb of florida mariculture liverock (with the algae on it and everything) and add it to the 25. Fill it up with the exact same saltwater like ive done 10+ times previously, and no cloudiness after a week…which is where i am at now. Pretty much in shock. Didn’t think I’d see the day. I forgot what it was like to see over 2 inches into the tank.

When making the 25gal water, i had some leftover, so i drained the 2gal, removed liverock and put in only saltwater from the same batch. . After, a few days, 2gal was cloudy with the exact same pattern.

So to me, the only difference is I added bacteria to the tank from liverock. I had only ever previously used dry rock, dry sand, and bottled “bacteria”. If dr tims contained bacteria, wouldn’t I have have the same outcome as when i had a small amount of liverock? Without having to go into past thread history, I tried three separate bottles of one and only (among others like dr tims clear up, dr tims waste away, and brightwell microbacter7).

So now this begs the age-old question…is there actually bacteria in dr tims one and only and other manufacturers’ bacteria products?? People have done other tests and they believe that they do not contain live bacteria like the kind from the ocean. My tap water may be cursed, but i may be the only one to easily and reliably test the different bacterias…
I can potentially set up a dozen small tanks (with multiple controls) and add my saltwater and a different bacteria product to each one. Whichever one stays clear actually had bacteria in the bottle…

 

[taricha]

So to me, the only difference is I added bacteria to the tank from liverock. I had only ever previously used dry rock, dry sand, and bottled “bacteria”. If dr tims contained bacteria, wouldn’t I have have the same outcome as when i had a small amount of liverock?

Not really.
A bottle provides a few strains while live rock provides hundreds. A bottle of one and only is providing bacteria that do one thing, nitrification.
Live rock contains bacteria of virtually every nutrient strategy. So without live rock, there was little to process the nutrients down except your annoying cloudy bloom bacteria.
The live rock contained established biofilm capable of handling whatever.

 

[jDoSe]

Not really.
A bottle provides a few strains while live rock provides hundreds. A bottle of one and only is providing bacteria that do one thing, nitrification.
Live rock contains bacteria of virtually every nutrient strategy. So without live rock, there was little to process the nutrients down except your annoying cloudy bloom bacteria.
The live rock contained established biofilm capable of handling whatever.

Hmm, this seems plausible, but isn’t the point of that bacteria in a bottle partially to start a tank without liverock/livesand? Not just nitrification?

 

[taricha]

Some bottled bacteria ( one and only, biospira, etc) are just for nitrogen cycle. Others (mb7, waste away etc) are intended as grunge eaters.
No bottled product claims to be live rock biofilm in a bottle (fortunately) because that would be nonsense to say a bottle of a few strains does everything that the hundreds of strains on live rock do.

 

[corand76]

Hmm, this seems plausible, but isn’t the point of that bacteria in a bottle partially to start a tank without liverock/livesand? Not just nitrification?

Not really.
A bottle provides a few strains while live rock provides hundreds. A bottle of one and only is providing bacteria that do one thing, nitrification.
Live rock contains bacteria of virtually every nutrient strategy. So without live rock, there was little to process the nutrients down except your annoying cloudy bloom bacteria.
The live rock contained established biofilm capable of handling whatever.

perhaps this explains my dry rock vrs. live rock. Due to removing sand and most all but one dry rock that's been in the tank for two years. I've been battling two tag team algae's for a year and thought I was coming out of it after using Tim's. so I bought Two small pieces of clean established rock out of a clean tank. after a couple of months the algae came back to cover the dry rock really heavy and the established rock is remaining free of the nasty stuff so far. So the thought is , should the dry rock be ejected and see what happens?

 

[taricha]

perhaps this explains my dry rock vrs. live rock. Due to removing sand and most all but one dry rock that's been in the tank for two years. I've been battling two tag team algae's for a year and thought I was coming out of it after using Tim's. so I bought Two small pieces of clean established rock out of a clean tank. after a couple of months the algae came back to cover the dry rock really heavy and the established rock is remaining free of the nasty stuff so far. So the thought is , should the dry rock be ejected and see what happens?

I think it's sensible to pull problematic rocks and deal with the algae outside the tank. They can be put back later.