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Hi!
I just made again a bacteria test in five of my tanks with test kits for water beds.
I found, that I had a very low germ pressure in the “cleaner” tanks as well as in the “older” tanks! ;-). About that fact I had been thinking – even the ornaticauda tank, which is at the moment “the oldest”, here was the germ pressure even lower than in one of the recently “cleaned” tank. “Cleaned” means for me that I minimized the rests of old leaves and elder cones.I have payed 7,76 Euro for each .. the real name is: Stricker Dip Slide Combi Bacteria Test Water Bed (Combi because the back side has a fungi test).
If you search in the internet for the product, you will find it on a big american internet trading platform … ;-).
If you can get it anywhere else more cheap, I don’t know…Thanks for the info, Dorothee. It was feared that the tests are too expensive for many measurements.
Thanks for sharing! I’ll definitely try these. I love the fact that they also show fungal contamination.
Any expreiences on tolerated levels? I believe that rotting leaves, elder cones or any other matter will promote bacterial and fungal growth, which then can only be limited by very low pH and water changes. Am I right?
Also, I’ve read, that the fry of other blackwater fish feed on the mold (fungi?) that developed on decaying plant material. Is it wise to keep a tank close to sterile?Best, Thomas
Supplementing the other mailings:
There is not only this one test kit. Unfortunately, these tests are not supported by the aquarium companies; for them such tests are too complicated and not necessary because most usual aquarium fishes live in highly infested aquarium waters quite well. But it’s different with blackwater organisms as Paros are.
A very good test kit which I have used often with veery informative results is the “Cult-Dip-Combi” by the famous German Merck corporation (10 culture media dip-slides for the colony count of bacteria, yeasts and moulds, the can be stored quite long a time at temperatures between +15 to +25 degrees Celsius (protected from light). The product number is 1.00778.0001.
Look for the internet page of Merck and enter the name of the test. It may well be that in the meantime they have developed newer test kits that I have not seen and used hitherto, and there may be other companies with similar products. Merck is a forerunner and foremost developer of high quality products in that field. The principle seems to stay always the same, however. And there are suppliers of the Merck-products in other countries as well.
It is certainly advisable to keep a Paro-tank not sterile but free from the huge amounts of germs that live in normal aquaria. Therefore it is advisable to remove all decaying materials as soon as possible, for instance inconveniant wood or older decaying leaves. Dry Terminalia catappa-leaves, for instnnce, are of high value, but after some weeks they become a source of the opposite processes and must be removed or substituted by new ones. The same holds for older alder cones.
Use such a test like those recommended with a normal aquarium. It might look splendid and clean and a nive underwater garden, but you will be frightened by seeing the thousands of germ nests on your testing unit!
Thank you for the tipp, Peter! With googeling I didn’t find anything else than my kit above.
To Thomas: my kit didn’t show any trace of fungus.Hi everyone,
I find this conversation really interesting and informative. I remember having conducted similar water testing at school some years ago. We would look at different tapwater types from different spots around the city and it was rather shocking to see how many germs can be found there. However, it never came to my mind to do this with my tanks. I will have a chat with my biology teacher to see if he could give me the formula and ingredients with such we produced our own test sets as they worked very well. I think this might be a even cheaper way of conducting su h testings and I would love to see how my tank behaves.
I ‘ll keep you posted on the recepie
I was thinking…what value is there in such tests, if we dont have a rough idea of what is “acceptable” and what is “too much” for our fish ? Perhaps it could even be different between the different test sets ?
Of course, we don’t know. And these tests only show the bacterial load, nothing about the species, some of which are indeed helpful in the maintenance of water quality. Nevertheless, I’m curious to see the results.
@RafEg That recipe probably includes something like agar and some sort of nutrient, usually bovine serum albumin (BSA), but any beef broth will do. I guess all biology students had to do that at one time during their studies. Even me, and I’m not a ‘wet-lab’ biologist. Try searching the internet for ‘home-made petri dish’ or something like that.
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