we need a bacteria checker...

[Devaji]

Hey Hanna team!

you know what would be really really good? an awesome Hanna bacteria checker.
in the seahorse community we do weekly water changes to keep the bacteria out or really really low.
it would be amazing for all sensitive fish and the reefing community in general to have this.

so I challenge you to come up with one!

there is an untapped market ready and waiting for this....just saying. it would be great to add the the line up of Hanna checkers.

 

[mta_morrow]

Now this is an interesting request!

Good one!

 

[ReefInskeep]

Standard colorimeter tech wouldn’t work. They’d have to develop something that could count the number of bacteria in a given sample size, I assume, while not counting other microscopic organisms and stuff in seawater. I don’t know if technology like that exists at all, let alone at a price hobbyists could ever afford.

But, that is an intriguing idea. Being able to measure (accurately) the bacterial count in a given volume of water. That could have a lot of applications in reefing I imagine. Carbon dosing, cycling, etc.

I imagine one could use a microscope & obtain a very small sample of water, each time using a precise measurement (though I don’t know how much it would vary depending on location of water in tank), then visually count the number of bacteria in each sample. That sounds time consuming, though...perhaps more so than a water change.

 

[infinite0180]

In the food industry we use a swab to determine bacteria load. The concept, IIRC, is that you swab an area with a little wand. Next you manipulate the wand and it retracts the swab and mixes it with a chemical. The chemical interacts with ATP and changes color. The concept being where there is ATP there is certainly life. Then you insert the swab into a device which uses light to determine the concentration of ATP, thus giving you a bacteria load amount based on a known proportion of ATP to bacteria...

Food for thought...

 

[Breadman03]

In the food industry we use a swab to determine bacteria load. The concept, IIRC, is that you swab an area with a little wand. Next you manipulate the wand and it retracts the swab and mixes it with a chemical. The chemical interacts with ATP and changes color. The concept being where there is ATP there is certainly life. Then you insert the swab into a device which uses light to determine the concentration of ATP, thus giving you a bacteria load amount based on a known proportion of ATP to bacteria...

Food for thought...

That sounds pretty nifty.
https://www.bioshieldtech.com/ATP-Testing-Swabs-s/268.htm

It looks like $288/100 tests with a 4-week room-temp shelf life or 12-month refrigerated shelf life, plus the cost of a luminometer at $1,695. Thats really not hobbyist level pricing, but it also has features that we really wouldn't need. I bet that the luminometer could be made a good bit less expensive if it didn't have all the memory and functions included.

 

[Devaji]

well I thought if anyone could/should do it Hanna should be the ones that do it.
I doubt they will but hey you never know...

yeah that ATP testing looking interesting but like you said easier to do water changes at that price point. but at least we know the tech is out there!