What is a bacteria bloom in your words

Matt Nace

Superstar Fish
Oct 22, 2002
1,470
1
38
Pennsylvania
#1
I see this/read this/ hear this used often.

What is a bacteria bloom?

Is it when your filter is not sufficient for the size fish load or it's wastes?Thus the excess ammonia or/and nitrItes cause a haze in the water?

Is it excess nutrients in the water? Such as from nitrAtes or fertilizers.

Is it the sight planted tank may see just before(or after) the great algae bloom hits their tank?

Is it ammonia clouding the water such as when the tank is cycling? If so...what exactly is forming the haze, free floating nitrifying bacteria?

I read "its just a bacteria bloom no problem it will pass"<--good.
I read "do a water change now."<---uh oh..must be bad

"It must be a bacteria bloom" <--- well what the harry is it?

It is used in both good and bad.....lets clear it up or agree what exactly it is and why it isn't bad or good.

;)
 

colesea

Superstar Fish
Oct 22, 2002
1,612
0
0
NY USA
#2
Hmm...very intersting debate. This gets played and replayed at least seven times every shift for me. Here's my best explaination.

When a customer walks up to me and says, "I have a cloudy tank" the first thing I ask them is "what color is it?"
Usually the reply is, "A hazey, foggy type color. Not the crystal clear of your tanks." ;D
Me: "Is it white? Is it green? Is it brown? Yellow?"
Customer: "White, yeah, what is that?"
Me: "How long have you had the tank set up for?"
Customer: "Oh, only a few days. You know, we tried using that tank clear stuff. You know, the drops you put in to make the water clear. Well, it didn't work. We've tried everything..."

Then I go into a whole speal on the nitrogen cycle, "new tank syndrome," and bacterial blooms. The "tank clear stuff" is only meant to clump minute particulate matter together so that it gets caught in the pre-filter media. Using it to help settle out a sand tank is really all it is good for.  If the haze has not gone away after using tank clear stuff, then I've always assumed it must be bacterial. If it is chemical in nature, that's something new to me, because all the knowledge that's ever been handed down to me says it is the nitrifying bacteria having a reproductive field day in an environment happy for them before normal rules of population vs available space apply. Monitoring ammonia, nitrite and nitrate will tell you went to expect the blooms during the cycle.

The only time I reccommend drastic water changes during a white, hazey tank is if the ammonia or nitrite levels are so off the scale it is more toxic for the fish than to bother worrying about disrupting a cycling tank. But that requires using a test kit before making the assumption that all white hazey tanks are bad.
~~Colesea
 

R

ronrca

Guest
#3
"Green water is cloudy but cloudy water is not necessarily green. There is a difference with a distinction. Both are frequently caused by unabsorbed organic matter due to too many fishes and an excess of fish waste. Suspended algae feeding and prospering on it cause green color, while the gray cloudiness is produced by bacteria doing the same thing. Nature is always trying to balance water. In light places she uses algae; in darker ones, bacteria. The treatment for both, up to a certain point, is the same. That is, the use of more plants to absorb the organic matter, and a reduction in the number of fishes producing it. On the other hand, there may already be enough plants but insufficient light to stimulate them into action, so that in this case more light is needed.

Newly set aquariums are likely to be clouded from sand that is not well cleaned. Also they are particularly subject to gray cloudiness because the plants have not yet begun to fully function."

Taken from Exotic Aquarium Fishes by Dr. William t. Innes, 19th Edition Revised.
 

colesea

Superstar Fish
Oct 22, 2002
1,612
0
0
NY USA
#4
It is all in the color of the cloudiness. Brown, green, white, yellow, chunky (yeah, I had somebody asky why their tank was cloudy. Seems they stirred up their bottom and all that uneaten food went into the water column. yuck).

Also what people percieve as cloudy isn't always cloudy.  I had some guy come into my store once asking why his tank was so cloudy. Well, when you look at a light through the corner glass obliquely, the refraction of the glass and water make it appear cloudy, especially if you've got a nice healthy bacterial/algae growth on that corner of the glass.
~~Colesea