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| Microbes The title of this page may appear to exaggerate things, but every biome on the Earth cannot exist without the function of microbes. Particularly for the people like us -- enjoying nishikigoi -- microbes have a very special meaning. Water in your pond that is generally a small closed environment soon become green after you feed your koi. If you want to make the water clear in color, you need to apply either of the following: (1) To replace old water with new water by continuous fresh water in-flow (2) To get rid of the dirty material (detritus) physically (3) To decompose the detritus by means of bacterial activity. For example, we have a river that is about 100 km in length near our town where more than 15000 people live in its drainage. While we have much better filtration system for the sewage nowadays, the river near residential area is still polluted. However, as you go downstream only a few kilometers from such polluted reaches, the water become very clear. This is a commonly observed phenomenon where the stream is not altered by channelization such as concrete bank and stream bed. In the city area that is populated, streams provide very few habitat for the microbes (bacteria) and a large amount of polluted water flow into the reaches and the it is too much to be decomposed by the bacterial activity. Thus, the bacteria clearly function this way in our familiar environment. It is not too much to say that anything made of natural process (organic matter) can be decomposed by the bacterial activity. Like our koi that unfortunately died and buried under ground disappear in 3 months if this occurs in the warm summer season. Our communities would soon be surrounded by a lot of garbage if we do not have the microbes on the Earth. |
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