One very overlooked aspect of water chemistry is the number of bacteria found in the water of the aquarium. The bacterial water count is probably the most important part of keeping a fish healthy in an aquarium. All fish are healthier in water which is very clean, with very few bacteria in it.
Note that “bacteria-free” is relative on something called a logarithmic scale. A milliliter (or cubic centimeter) of dull, “normal” aquarium water will have roughly 105/ml of bacteria (100,000 bacteria per milliliter). A milliliter of cloudy water can easily have a total bacterial count of 7 x 106/ml bacteria (7,000,000). And a milliliter of “crystal clear” water can have as little as 6 x 103 /ml bacteria in it (6,000). So “bad” water has 103 or 1, 000 times more bacteria than “good” water. This is what “logarithmic” means.
This gives one an idea as to why reducing the bacterial count can be so effective in improving the immune systems of the fish.
One often sees where fish are dying one a week or one a day for no apparent reason. If a lot of biofiltration surface area is added or a UV unit is added the problem goes away. What happens here is that the fish’s immune systems can only handle just so much at once. If the organism count in the water is high, then fish must devote significant immune resources to the organisms in the water. This leaves fish open to attack by all sorts of pathogens.
If the bacteria count in the water column is low the fish can put all their immune system resource towards keeping pathogens at bay. So fish in bacteria-free water are far more healthy than fish in bacteria-laden water.
The Key to Good Fish Health is Clean, Bacteria Free Water
Note that, contrary to popular myth, this does NOT mean water which is changed frequently. Going from ten million bacteria to five million bacteria isn’t going to be that much help to the fish. Large water changes cannot compensate for poor filtration because of the way bacteria are logarithmically present in the water.
Blackwater Fish
This bacterial account is very important for some varieties of “difficult” fish. One well-intentioned but ill-informed individual lamented that the neon tetras found today in the pet store have been bred to where they are very fragile and don’t survive in the aquarium. They say, “It’s a breeding problem”. This is incorrect.
Neon tetras are from the Rio Negro which is a blackwater river. This river is very acidic and very soft in its make-up, like a pH of 4.5 to 6.0, virtually free of salt and with a dGH of 1. Everyone incorrectly thinks the pH is what is important. It is the dGH and salt level and their effect on bacteria that are important, not the pH.
What people don’t realize is how incredibly clean the Rio Negro is. The water has very few bacteria in it. The water has few bacteria in it because bacteria require a dGH of at least 3 and some salt to survive. Indeed, 90% of the world’s freshwater fish species would die in the Rio Negro because of the low dGH and low salt. Their gills simply cannot prevent the salts inside the fish from being sucked into the surrounding waters.
Neons are fish that should never be in anything but very clean, crystal-clear, bacteria-free water in an aquarium that has been established for at least four months. Yet many unfortunate hobbyists keep putting them in the bacteria-laden water. Then they say that breeding is at fault when they die. The same holds true for rummy nosed tetras, hatchet fish, uaru, rams, apistos and discus.
Getting Bacteria Free Water
There are several ways to get relatively bacteria-free water:
- Use over-filtration, at a rate of at least 100 ft2/ft3 of biofilter surface area per pound of fish, established for at least four months without cleaning (this is required even with the two elements listed below).
- Add a UV light at a rate of one watt for every ten gallons of water, with reservations (see below).
- Add some fine polishing filtration which can remove the bacteria by mechanical filtration, with reservations (see below).
Water changes do not significantly reduce the bacteria counts. Surprisingly UV also often does not reduce the bacterial count in the water. The bacteria can reproduce so fast that they can typically out-compete a UV light. It will all depend on how often the water goes through the UV unit. A 2X turnover might not reduce the bacterial count while a 8X turnover might well significantly reduce the bacterial count.
Note that UV treatment and polishing filtration cannot eliminate dissolved organic compounds (DOCs). Over-filtration can eliminate DOCs. Since DOCs are what feed bacteria in the water column it is important to eliminate them to produce really crystal clear water that is free of bacteria. So UV and polishing filtration need to be accompanied by very good standard media filtration to produce crystal clear, bacteria-free water.
We discuss how to obtain low bacterial count water in depth in “Crystal-Clear Water”. The same things that clear the water also reduce the bacterial count.
6.4. Crystal Clear Water
Also, UV sterilization can sometimes be very useful in the fight against bacteria in the water column. This is explored in more depth on this web page:
14.1.1. UV in More Depth
Startpage Aquariumscience
Source: Aquariumscience.org – David Bogert
