[Pogthefish]

First, how to preserve that bacteria in a bottle stuff? putting fish food it to give it amonia and nitrites to eat? idk..

also, if u had ur own cup of water and treated it liek a little aquarium and fed it to put in amonia (or just used old fish water but first way si cleaner)could you use this bacteria you keep in her for when you are doing large emergency changes 9like sick fish) to keep some preserved bacteria and is it worth your time?

 

[MrVampire181]

It needs to be aerated and similar to a filter in order for it live.

 

[Pogthefish]

ok.. and you put a bubbler in ther? but y a filter if the only thing thre is water, food, and bacteria?

 

[MrVampire181]

Because bacteria need a place to grow. If the cup had gravel, sponge, filter floss and a bubbler it would work but that would technically be a homemade sponge filter.

 

[Pogthefish]

hmm :/ maybe ill stick to not doing such big changes wat about feeding the bacteria in a bottle?

 

[Micho]

This wouldn't work, simply because there's not enough surfaces for the bacteria to grow on. Your substrate, decorations, and filter are places where the majority of the beneficial bacteria colonizes.

A cup simply won't do it.

 

[freemike]

I thought about this myself mainly because it would be cool to sell if I was ever in a position to sell fish supplies. Not exactly a cup but close parallel idea maybe. I would set up filters in 55 gallon drums or even use a tank and dose them with pure ammonia to 4 ppm daily. A person could get this down to a science using the same ammonia and amount of water on a consistent basis. That way when someone new was getting into the hobby you could get a cycled filter. Of course you couldn't cycle some of the extra large filters in large quantities, but you could cycle filters for the average home aquarium 10-30 gallon tanks.

 

[Tamyu]

It couldn't be done in that way, as others have said.

For one thing, the bacteria in the starter bottles is not the same bacteria that will populate your tank for it to become cycled. The proper bacteria could not survive. What is in the bottles is a different bacteria that, while it can survive for long periods in a dormant state, does not survive well in an aquarium and multiplies poorly. But it *does* revive and eat your ammonia and nitrites... As your tank properly cycles though, it dies off and is replaced by the familiar tank bacteria.
It will not instantly cycle your tank for you - but it will put a culture of bacteria in there to keep things in check while the real and required bacteria hopefully populate your tank. The optimal scenario is for them to be replaced as they die off with the proper bacteria, eliminating the sudden spikes of a normal cycle.

Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't. Unfortunately it doesn't seem possible to cultivate and sell the proper bacteria as they require a flow of oxygenated water to survive. I have heard six to eight hours as the longest they can survive without water flow... And that they begin to die off in as short at thirty minutes. With low temps and an oxygen tab, you might manage overnight shipping.

I have cycled media only before - I filled a tiny tank about half full of filter media for my canister filter and "cycled" the tank with my little hob filter running on it. I didn't have any spikes when I used the media in the actual tank (I wanted to shorten the cycling time by cycling before I actually had the tank and filter.)

 

[IndeedPanda]

It's an interesting idea, but it might be more cost effective just to get a small hospital tank. Just 2.5 gallons you could keep fish supplies in until you need it. Then your sick fish would have a small tank to heal in and your larger tank could keep cycling and be ready when your fish gets better.

 

[Pogthefish]

ok XD

 

[Oldfishlady]

Once your nitrogen cycle is established you can remove or make as large of a water only change that you want....
Very little of the bacteria is in the water column.....
The bacteria is sticky and adheres to all the surface areas within the tank-like the walls, decorations, plants both fake and real, in the top layer of the substrate and in the filter media....

You could take all the water out of the tank daily and replace with fresh dechlorinated water and the nitrogen cycle will be fine....just don't scrub the non-viewing walls, decorations every day or change the filter media or vacuum more than one time a week.....

But, you still need to vacuum at least weekly and maintain good water flow by rinsing the filter media a couple of times a month so you don't suffocate the good bacteria with a build up of mulm/debris....