Nitrifying germs - how long can they live beside the filter unplugged?
I am referring to the Nitrifying bacteria that turn ammonia into nitrite, the ones that turn nitrite into nitrate, and the anaerobic ones which turn nitrate into nitrogen gas (note the anaerobic are actually low O2, not no O2).
How long can they live with the filters/water flow turned rotten (out of tank filters, not in tank)?
Minutes, hours, days? How long till most or adjectives are dead from either lack of O2 or of starvation?
Answers: Well, what's the defence we're talking about this? I don't know an exact die off rate, but I reflect some of what you'd need to know is going to depend on a few more factors here. Keep in intellect, again I don't know the rate of die off once the components needed to sustain the bacteria go absent.
What is the filter size? The bigger the filter of course, the bigger the colony bed possible, which leads into, what is the stock in the cistern? A big filter + a big stock = a big colony bed. A big colony bed means say in an hour or two, you start losing germs, you don't lose the entire colony and once you start returning the proper conditions, it'll regrow again with little to no disruption in your tank conditions. If this is a short spell of time we are talking about, you should see a very small spike within ammonia then nitrite, possibly no spike at all.
Now if you're conversation about an extended period of time, you risk losing the whole colony and restarting the cycle. I'd expect to see bacterial die stale at maybe 1-2 hours? I don't know for sure. How much you'll lose really depends a lot on what I mentioned above though.
I don't even factor into the anaerobic microbes either. If this were a major component of the unharmed process, we really wouldn't need to bother much with water change. Even in tanks that are years old, you never can achieve enough anaerobic bacteria in a cistern to keep nitrates from going above 40 ppm over time, so I personally see little use in worrying approximately them. Just my .02 cents on that one.
I honestly don't know but if you have a decent adequate sized filter, and an AC 110 certainly is, maybe within an hour or 2? Not certain where you'd find any statistics on that.
