Isolation of Aerobic Heterotrophic and Anaerobic Sulphate Reducing Bacteria from Model Water System by Filtration Method

The purpose of this study was to compare the efficacy of the filtration method with direct method (without filtration) for detection and enumeration of either aerobic heterotrophic bacteria or anaerobic sulphate reducing bacteria (SRB). In addition we compared the results of colony morphology types of heterotrophic bacteria performed by filtration-spread plate experiments with spread plate experiments (i.e. plating on R2A agar plates). We detected that there was no statistically significant difference in the mean of SRB and heterotrophic bacteria counts from unfiltered and filtered samples. The results of the experiments comparing the cultivation and enumeration success of the filtered samples with unfiltered samples clearly demonstrate that filtration method enables the cultivation and enumeration of SRB and heterotrophic bacteria. In addition, the numbers of distinct colony types recovered from filtered samples were usually higher than unfiltered samples.