by Mr. Aquarist

Created on: February 04, 2009

Beneficial bacteria are necessary for any aquarium. They maintain the delicate balance of nitrogenous compounds in the water and regulate your aquatic ecosystem. There are several well-known methods for seeding or culturing these microscopic communities. The two most important components to a successful culture is air and water; the third is obviously time.

Of the plethora of methods available to the aquarist, the most effective is to probably introduce a pre-established wet-dry filter. A wet-dry filter is the most important tool the aquarist can have. The point of a wet-dry filter is to force water over some medium (porous ceramic cylinders, rocks or filter fiber to name a few) like a waterfall. The medium is designed to harbor your microbial ecosystem. The bacteria need the water for food (in the form of the various nitrogenous compounds) and the air to carry out their cellular respiration. Locating an established wet-dry filter that has been in use on another aquarium will greatly speed up the establishment time for your aquarium. Pre-established or not, a wet-dry filter is paramount to a successful colony of beneficial bacteria.

To help aid your wet-dry filter, there exists an entire industry of products that increase colony establishment times. One of the few that is not a chemical is simply fish. Introducing about one inch of fish (lengthwise) per ten gallons of water will naturally establish your colony of beneficial bacteria. This is probably the quickest and surest method for seeding a new aquarium. However, the aquarist must be sure not to change the medium of the wet-dry filter. It is important to change or clean only the cartridge or the medium that is actually filtering the water. If you discard the medium that is meant to harbor the colony of beneficial bacteria, then you will have to re-establish the colony of beneficial bacteria.

Other methods involve adding a concoction of chemicals, namely ammonia and water-activated bacteria "dust," to the water. After dosing the aquarium with ammonia on a daily basis, the aquarist must continually test the water on a bi-weekly schedule which, put bluntly, is down-right unneccessary. These methods, though numerous and popular, are often less-successful than the good old, aforementioned natural way. Professional aquarists live to gloat about establishing a colony of beneficial bacteria by making measured dosages of chemicals and performing daily water tests, but for the amature, the best method is patience.

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