Good Bacteria

[farne230]

One question I have is how long would it take for good filter bacteria to die off if our pumps stop working, 1 hour ... 12 hours...24 hours... ect..?

Case in point-the other day the two 7500gph pumps feeding my bakki showers and 200kg of bakki house media turned off. I suspect the water flow was off for 12 to 24 hours before I noticed it. Our water temps are low to mid 50f. Pond is 8,300 hundred gallons (US) plus water for filters (200gallons). One third of the circulation water remained active feeding through my skimmer, 9.0 alpha one bead filter (used mostly for pollishing-backwashed once or twice per two weeks), UV and back and to pond via four TPR's.

At first I noticed with bottom drain air on the pond developed greater amount of surface foam which I removed. After this one removal in 12 hour after problem this symtom stopped. Water clear, koi loading 10 koi medium size (18" to 30"). I have not tested water perameters yet. I will add this information tonight (48 hours after filters resumed activity). Koi appear fine.

[PapaBear]

Two factors that would make a big difference would be the specific media type and air temperature surrounding the dry media. Cold air on Bioballs would likely produce a massive die off as water retention on the media would be minimal at best. A media like Lava Rock or better still B.H. would retain internal moisture much longer allowing at least some of the colony to survive much longer. After all, it is the wetted surface area that is colonized with biofilm.

[JasPR]

If you read old school info on aquarium biofilter bacteria you will see that the answer used to be- bacteria begins to die off immediately when a filter is shut off. But as time passed, aquarists realized that filters would rebound in a matter of days even after being submitted to unbelievable conditions- including being drained of water and dried out!

So today we realize that in OPEN pond filters the answer of how quickly a filter dies is not the right question! The question should be, after a filter is 'knocked down' what is the rebound time?

This answer depends on :

1) time out of service
2) organic content of the biofilm media
3) age of the biofilm


IF your system is mature and if it is not rich in organics, a filter should come back on line within three days at normal temperatures.

What does happen is your filter begins to die back immediately when it is disrupted by power failure, clogging or draining ( or no ammonia or too much ammonia, for that matter). But bacteria are the ULTIMATE survivors! So they have many techniques for making it through had times. As long as they remain somewhat moist they will rebound and it takes about 72 hours to get back to normal numbers. One technique for coming back on line involves resting cells coming on line and also sloughing to remove the younger cells at the top of the matrix, which die first. So a cleaning ( gentle rinse) of the media is a good idea. This also removes some organic material that will encourage the wrong species to come back quicker than the nitrifiers and possible disrupt the environment for a time.

Hope this helps. JR

[Russell Peters]

If you have an open system and your pump fails but you can put airstones in your filter, if you don't already have them, would that keep your filter from slowing down at all?

[l113892]

This folds in with the subject of fish load. I am confident that there is not any time of the year that I could loose power resulting in a fish loss, even in the warmest part of the summer. Sure, the filter could get set back a little and waste would not get processed for a time. But when an argument is made to use this product or that, have generators on hand(a good thing), add baking soda to compensate for an overactive filter, etc., all due to the fact that one's fish load is too high, I think about the "what ifs", what is there is a power failure while you are away?