Bottled Bacteria

[CT_]

On 7/3/2021 at 5:42 PM, NanoNano said:

 

Helpful graphic, but when I look up pictures of nitrifying bacteria,  the majority seem to be rod or blob shaped bacteria without flagella (I get that there's multiple types of nitrifying bacteria and there *is* at least one type with flagella).  My layman's brain keeps having problems understanding why the bacteria wouldn't colonize all over the interior of the bottles and (like chickens crossing a road) only go free swimming to get to the other side (of the bottle).  Are we throwing away the vast majority of the beneficial bacteria we're buying if we simply dump the liquid from the bottle into the tank?

Yeah they're hard to see in a microscope since flagella are thinner than the diffraction limit.

Conditions influence what genes are expressed.  Lots of nutrients and they're better of free swmming rather than stuck in a biofilm. 

 

I'm guessing they'll grow planktonic in a shaker flask or mixed batch reactor in nutrient rich media.  If you stress them fast enough in that state they won't have the generations needed to make a biofilm.  They might flock and sink, but I assume that's why the bottle says to shake.

 

  Remember that it takes a lot of energy to make a biofilm so if they're dormant they can't really do that.

 

 

[Patrick_G]

Not an answer to the bottled bacteria question but a interesting paper on the role of Archaea in the freshwater nitrogen cycle. 
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3156731/#__ffn_sectitle

Edited July 4, 2021 by Patrick_G

[CT_]

On 7/3/2021 at 6:41 PM, Patrick_G said:

Not an answer to the bottled bacteria question but a interesting paper on the role of Archaea in the freshwater nitrogen cycle. 
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3156731/#__ffn_sectitle

Very cool!  That paper did look at two bottled bacteria as well and found only bacteria.