What the Beginning and Advancing Aquarist Absolutely Needs to Know and Do When Starting An Aquarium

What A Beginner Needs To Know About Scavenging Bacteria In The Water

There are gram-positive bacteria that continually come into the aquarium through the air looking for food to eat.  They come in and reproduce by the millions and billions establishing themselves as a significant, yet mostly unseen, part of aquarium keeping.  New aquariums are particularly prone to be out of balance at the start with excess food and dying organisms that attract these "cloudy-water" bacteria.  They can be detected because when in over abundance they make the water cloudy or milky white, a phenomenon that is particularly common in new aquariums.  When this condition is observed, the causes of such bacterial "blooms" need to be found, particularly by looking for excess food or dead organisms that need to be removed.  This can be a good time to use a water siphon to stir up the bottom gravel or sand to be sure that it is clean.

Often this cloudy water caused by bacteria is a temporary occurrence.  Once the food source is consumed, the bacteria die off and the aquarium becomes clear.  If this does not happen, there are several ways to suppress the presence of these "cloudy-water" bacteria..  One way to do this over time is by the use of Kordon's freshwater TransClear or for saltwater Sea Clear, whereby the bacteria are adhered to by the clarifier's sticky molecules that become filtered out of the water by the aquarium's filtration.  Another way is by using an ultraviolet sterilizer attached to a water pump that kills the bacteria as they pass by the ultraviolet light. 

There is a way to get rid of these bacteria quickly, although it needs to be used with extreme caution, because it greatly disrupts the entire natural biology of the water micro-environment.  This is by adding an antibiotic such as erythromycin to the water that kills gram-positive bacteria.  (There is more about erythromycin that you need to know about in the section "What a Beginner Needs To Know About Antibiotics".  The use of such an antibiotic as erythromycin should not be used after the aquarium is established, because it means starting all over in going through the "Nitrogen Cycle" of the aquarium.  The best time to consider using an antibiotic that kills gram-positive bacteria is when the aquarium is first set up.  Do not use it if cloudy water caused by bacteria is not a problem. 

However, this does not answer the question of why the "cloudy-water" bacteria are in the water, multiplying and feeding on excess food.  It is best to try to find the source of the problem and solve getting rid of the "cloudy-water" bacteria by eliminating what has caused them to be there.  Without a food source, they will decline in number and the water will clear.

Continue to "What a Beginner Needs to Know about Aquatic Plants"