Bacterial Additives...

[Caprichoso]

I only tested in the beginning(first month) and the reading was always 0. I never tested every day after the first week because everything was going fine.

 

[KISSfn]

Anybody have any thoughts on Seachem Stability? I keep hearing about the same two products. I have used Seachem for my last 5 tank set ups and I feel like the product has worked. I did a fish in cycle for all tanks, adding the fish within the week. I usually only add about 50% of the fish that I want from the start up. I always wait 2 weeks, then start doing weekly water changes of 50%. I did not ever suffer any ammonia or fish loss due to new tank syndrome. I use de-chlorinated tap water. I used the product for about the first 10 days then stopped. I add the remaining fish after about 6 weeks. Seachem claims to have a 4 year shelf life from the date stamped on the bottle. It doesn't need to be refrigerated(so it says) but I do put it in the fridge because I used to buy Cycle and that's what it recommended. So I know many of you think that all these products don't work but then how can you explain my success with it for all 5 of my tanks in the last 5 years? Not to mention the 10+ years prior to this where I used Nutrafin Cycle? Can one person really be that lucky? I better buy a lotto ticket if that's the case. Sorry about the sarcasm, I just find it hard to believe that there is no value to these products especially when I have had continued success with the product. Although, I would really like to know for sure. Okay, I'm done , my apologies for keeping the thread going.

You know I've tried it as I try everything! It did not establish a bio filter for me in the time frame that it claims. But I think it was useful in preventing New Tank Syndrome. From what I've read about it, it works but you have to continue to add it constantly. Supposedly it has the wrong type of bacteria. They work, but don't last and have to be constantly added. Why are you apologizing? This thread may be able to save some people some money. Fly on Eagle!

 

[TwoTankAmin]

I am sorry eagle, you are still wrong. So lets look at the actual indepth results for that study which can be accessed using the link at the end of the abstract I quoted.

Identification of putative Nitrospira-like NOB.
Five samples were screened for NOB by either clone library development or DGGE. A total of 96 clones or excised bands were partially sequenced. Of these, 11 were highly similar to members of the Nitrospira group but none were similar to Nitrobacter spp.

Detection of NOB in aquaria.
Table 3 summarizes the re-sults from the probing of several aquarium biofilms with the NOB probes. Probe S-G-Ntspa-0685-a-A-22 yielded a positive signal with all freshwater and saltwater aquaria tested. The probe S-*-Ntspa-0454-a-A-19 detected Nitrospira-like bacteria in all freshwater aquaria, but not in all the saltwater aquaria (Table 3). There were no cases of positive detection by a probe which targets a proteobacterial Nitrobacter species

Results regarding the beneficial effects of the addition of a bacterial additive containing Nitrobacter species were equivo-
cal. While nitrite levels in treated aquaria decreased earlier than those in nontreated aquaria, there was no evidence that
Nitrobacter species were actively growing in these aquaria. It is possible that the levels of Nitrobacter species were below the
limits of detection of our techniques. However, since Nitrospira-like bacteria were readily detected and that their establishment coincided with nitrite oxidation we postulate that Nitrospira-like organisms, and not Nitrobacter species, are the major nitrite oxidizers in the freshwater aquarium environment. It is possible that the addition of bacterial mixtures supplies vitamins and other nutrients which generally stimulate the growth of the nitrifying assemblages, fostering their growth and development and indirectly stimulating nitrite oxidation.

Basically he could prove Nitrospira worked to convert nitrite to nitrate but could not do so with Nitrobacteria. The latter does nothing in an aquarium including reproduce in the presence of nitrite as food.

There is not a huge amount of active science that is directly related to our hobby. So when folks like Dr. H actually do serious research, the least we as fish keepers can do is to be sure we get the facts right

 

[eaglesaquarium]

I am sorry eagle, you are still wrong. So lets look at the actual indepth results for that study which can be accessed using the link at the end of the abstract I quoted.

Nitrobacter is a known nitrifying bacteria. It is known to convert nitrite to nitrate. (I never mentioned whether it did this in a home aquarium or not. You made the assumption that that is what I was saying. It was not. I merely pointed out that that is the role of nitrobacter.

Nitrobacter hamburgensis is an example of nitrite-oxidizing bacteria. This bacteria has the capability of metabolizing nitrogen in nitrite form in its environment. It is found mainly in soil and freshwater.

Franco-Rivera A, Paniaqua-Michel S, Zamora-Castro J. 2007. “Characterization and performance of constructed nitrifying biofilms during nitrogen bioremediation of a wastewater effluent.” Journal of industrial microbiology and biotechnology, vol. 34, no. 4. (279-287)
Maron PA, Coeur C, Pink C, Clays-Josserand A, Lensi R, Richaume-A Potier. 2006. "Validation of the correct start codon of norX/nxrX and universality of the norAXB/nxrAXB gene cluster in nitrobacter species." Current Microbiology, vol 53, no 3. (255-257)
Aurelie Cebron and Josette Garnier. 2005. "Nitrobacter and Nitrospira genera as representatives of nitrite-oxidizing bacteria: Detection, quantification and growth along the lower Seine River (France)." Water Research, vol 39, no 20. (4979-92)

Moreover, I think you are completely missing the point of this thread. The point is to TRY some of the products available and report on the success (or failure). I don't have an ax to grind here. You are obviously a fan of Dr. Tim's, and that's fine. He has done some very important work. However, until that work ends up producing a product that works without fail, it still isn't really all that useful to the home aquarist.

You still haven't answered my question regarding YOUR experience with any of these products. Have you used it? What were your results? Do you have a log of your water parameters during the cycle?

Personally, I am finished with this discussion. If you are interested in following the stats of the tank I am trying this product in please feel free to, but I will not be commenting on nitrospira, nitrobacter or any other bacteria by name. Ultimately, this is a trial of whether or not the product works. If you would like to share YOUR experience with a specific product, please do. It could prove valuable to someone.

 

[eaglesaquarium]

Getting back on track to the issue at hand.


Starting the fishless cycle now. We shall see how it goes from here. Update made to the first post.

4/29/11 - 2200hrs
pH: 8.2 (raised with sodium bicarb), NH3: dosed to 4ppm, NO2: 0ppm, NO3: 0ppm, temp 82F.

 

[drobbyb]

Moreover, I think you are completely missing the point of this thread. The point is to TRY some of the products available and report on the success (or failure). I don't have an ax to grind here. You are obviously a fan of Dr. Tim's, and that's fine. He has done some very important work. However, until that work ends up producing a product that works without fail, it still isn't really all that useful to the home aquarist.

Exactly.

 

[BIG BAD BARRY]

My next tank cycle will look like this:

Day 1 added 1 bottle of yacult.
Day 2 added 1 bottle of yacult and 1 tub of low fat yogurt
Day 3 added added a knob of butter and a slab of cheese.

The horse has not only been beaten it has been cremated!

 

[Ronananator]

i use api filter start

 

[eaglesaquarium]

My next tank cycle will look like this:

Day 1 added 1 bottle of yacult.
Day 2 added 1 bottle of yacult and 1 tub of low fat yogurt
Day 3 added added a knob of butter and a slab of cheese.

The horse has not only been beaten it has been cremated!

I'm a little disappointed in you, Barry. In the other fishless cycle threads you are very encouraging and helpful. In this one all you offer is sarcasm. I am performing my first fishless cycle, and happened to use a bacterial additive. I am reporting my results for folks who are interested. No one is forcing you to open this thread. If you aren't interested, don't bother clicking it.

 

[waterdrop]

I could be wrong but I suspect BBB was just trying to lighten the mood rather than be sarcastic in a mean way. Every form of communication has its strengths and weaknesses. Forums are good at collecting multiple points of view from people with different backgrounds (not trying to compare but ironically sometimes that's a weakness in peer-reviewed journal circles, the very fact that a small group of well-educated individuals spend their whole career mostly just talking to each other and reviewing each other's papers. It gives higher assurance that the data is good but it can tend to reduce the number of fresh ideas about the problem or interpretation.) Forums are particularly difficult however in that they are both written forms and open forms of communication. Written communication lacks the vocal clues of spoken communication and both lack the really high bandwidth of person to person, across the table communication where you also get visual clues and many more ways to "feel" what the person really means. Open (as opposed to credentialed, as in peer-reviewed scientific journals) communication of course lets us all bring in our greatly varied backgrounds, complete with perhaps great prior knowledge or perhaps with little knowledge or even large misunderstandings of the various aspects of the topic.

One thing I enjoy about this discussion is that it brings together 3 "camps" or points-of-view-for-discussion that I've (we've all seen probably) over time.

1) We've got the "everymen cyclers" (somewhat represented here by eagle and kiss) who are trying see if something shows up by carrying out (with documentation) what the average customer of the BB would be doing and do a hobbyist-level experiment. I can't think of a better person to be doing this than a physics teacher! The one caution I keep thinking of is to remember that each case (hobbyist cycle "experiment") is only that, a single case, and of course it takes lots of them to begin to form a reasoned opinion. Even in the university scientific world (to take an example) it takes many repeats of large expensive experiments for scientists to begin to trust that new things are really correct thinking. I think all of us in the dicussion know that of course.

2) We've got the heavy science (I know that I and oldman47 and others have printed out (or whatever) and read in entirety all the Hovanec journal articles and any number of other interesting ones and I'm sure we and all the rest of us reading have studied the various aspects to different levels. TwoTank in particular has followed many other communications of Hovanec and I think that gives him added perspective on the topics that may be valuable.) I think the "heavy science" is fascinating and always one of the fun parts for me and other hobbyists. It adds to the pleasure of the hobby. It wouldn't be as fun without it. I always try to remain aware though, as others have stated, that our "science" in this area is basically next to nothing, since just one scientist, Hovanec, has turned some focus directly on it and virtually all the other stuff is "off-center" coming from the waste-water-treatment-plant (WWTP) body of literature (by the way, I think one of the problems there is that the ammonia concentrations are often much higher (in particular, way up past 8ppm) and you get the Nitrobacters and others that will build and sustain their biofilms up at that high level but then die when the levels drop down to 5ppm and below or something like that and so reading in ideas from their literature is complicated to say the least.)

3) we've got various takes from "the watchers" (RDD, Miss Wiggle, BTT, OM47, me, drobbyb, KK, Tolak and many others) who have done stretches of time where they followed large numbers of beginner section (this subforum and/or others) fishless and fish-in cycle logs and collected a "feel" (how non-scientific can you get, lol, and yet, this is exactly what scientists do.. often at dinner after a day of conference presentations!) for the trends in all the cases they've read. Ours is of course a huge mess and rarely has much that is needed for even elementary school science projects but as "aggregators" we humans are pretty good at putting together our "feel" of trends that we watch.

Well, guys, like the rest of you I have many thoughts on the actual topics at hand but everyday life pulls me away again (those kids we share the pretty tanks with have real needs, lol.) I shall be back to keep reading everyone's musings and I hope we'll all keep adding some things. Some of us like argumentative discussion as a way to "update" our current understandings, some of us probably really dislike it, but as hobbyists we should really value each other as the few human beings sharing a similar tiny particular interest and sharing it.

~~waterdrop~~
ps. see you guys later if the weekend doesn't get too busy -- oh, and boy do you guys know how to put on a wedding over on the other side of the pond, lol

 

[eaglesaquarium]

I could be wrong but I suspect BBB was just trying to lighten the mood rather than be sarcastic in a mean way.

BBB may have been trying to lighten the mood, but it didn't read that way for me. That's fine though, it doesn't bother me. I have thick skin, I just don't want whatever value may be contained within this thread to be lost due to sarcastic remarks. In my classroom, all it takes to squash a very rich discussion on any topic, is a single snide remark. That little thing can actually cause others to decide not to participate, which is a real shame. Hopefully the previous exchange does not dissuade folks from jumping in.

waterdrop,
You brought in an interesting perspective regarding the 3 groups. And I would consider myself to be "everyman", especially in this realm. What I know and understand about biology is extremely limited in practice, but a little wider by reading. I am a gardener, so plant biology (and the fauna required to have healthy plants) are something that I have quite a fair amount of experience with. Fish, and tank flora and fauna is a whole different ball of wax, which is why I started researching fish tanks almost 8 months before I plan to have a fully operational tank in my home. First, I didn't want to have a problem with my tank, and have the fish immediately die from a lack of understanding of the process. Explaining that to my 5 year old son, who desperately wants a pet (can't have dogs or cats given my wife's allergies) who be too difficult right now. He understands about death, about as well as any 5 year old can, but having him experience the struggles of the fish soon after getting attached to them would be very discouraging for everyone in the house. Secondly, this is an opportunity for me to broaden my knowledge base. I welcome any nugget of information that I can gain. I read non-fiction exclusively! Fiction can be compelling, but the true adventures are really in the non-fiction. There are so many nuances to every facet of life in the natural world, that you don't need the drama afforded by fiction. I have enough of that type of drama on a daily basis.

TwoTank obviously is very interested in the work of Dr. Tim, and rightly so. But, to discount nitrobacter as a nitrifying bacteria is false. It does convert nitrite to nitrate. Whether it does it at low concentrations of nitrite (like in home aquaria) is a completely different topic, so I do not (and will not) comment on that. We weren't really in disagreement. He was misinterpreting my original comment. I tried to clear that up, and hopefully, it is now clear. Interestingly, most of the products on the market as instant cycling bacteria have nitrobacter, which may be why they don't work (as so many claim).

I will explain my research search to explain the reasoning behind my choice of test subjects. Upon my original research, I found that there were primarily two variables in the product that I wanted to focus on. One was the temperature of the product. The other was the bacteria responsible for nitrite to nitrate oxidation. Biospira - the initial product, as far as I can tell - required refrigeration and contained nitrospira. The refrigeration aspect made sense to me, as bacteria have certain temperatures where they metabolize rapidly, and others where they are nearly dormant, and in a few cases, where they actually go dormant. Secondly, nitrospira is the bacteria that Dr. Tim has shown to be the primarily responsible for nitrite oxidation to nitrate. Biospira is the only product that I have seen that gets much credibility among almost all groups, and so it became the product I wanted to test. However, Biospira is no longer made. So, I tried to find as similar a product as I could. That led me to the three products - SafeStart (formerly Biospira), One and Only (the product by Dr. Tim), and Turbo Start (Fritz zyme).

SafeStart and One & Only both contained the nitrospira bacteria. So, they met half of my criteria. TurboStart requires refrigeration, so they met the other half. As I continued my search, not surprisingly, the product that was hardest to find anywhere was the refrigerated product, which is apparently hampered Biospira as well, forcing the "reformulation" to a non-refrigerated product, in SafeStart. So, that product while holding on to the promise of live bacteria (seemingly) became less desirable as it was driving up the cost of purchase, due to increased shipping costs. So, it became a two horse race - SafeStart and Dr. Tim's One and Only. I chose SafeStart, partly because (perhaps wrongly) I assume that a company wouldn't switch from a formula that worked to a formula that didn't. So, I assumed that the product would be as effective (or not) as Biospira. The other reason was that I could get it for a little cheaper than Dr. Tim's from my online source - shipping was free. I am in no way bashing Dr. Tim's product or his research (which may have seemed to be the case by TwoTank), I just didn't choose it for my test. I want to believe that it works. I want to believe that SafeStart works. But, without documented proof, I can't. TwoTank has yet to provide documented proof, from an independent source, that it works.

So, to test the product, I decided to start my tank process a little sooner than originally planned. My brother is raising Amazon Dwarf Frogs, and will be able to keep my bacteria (no matter how long it takes to get them to be a strong colony) going while I am away this summer. I am using all new products, with a recycled tank.



*****
Now with all that said. Here are the results at 12 hours.

pH: 8.4, NH3: 4ppm, NO2: 0ppm, NO3: 0ppm. Temp:83F

(maybe a slight color change in NH3, maybe not... having mild color blindness doesn't help with these tests!) My wife believes that it is the same color, although with maybe the slightest tinge of difference.

 

[Tolak]

BBB's OK, and adds a sense of humor to what is a hobby for most here. We do this for fun, otherwise it would be too much like work. Actually a bit of thinking outside the box, looking at other bacterial situations such as yogurt is probably something Dr Tim has done to get where he has with his research.

 

[eaglesaquarium]

BBB's OK, and adds a sense of humor to what is a hobby for most here. We do this for fun, otherwise it would be too much like work. Actually a bit of thinking outside the box, looking at other bacterial situations such as yogurt is probably something Dr Tim has done to get where he has with his research.

I agree. He is ok.

 

[KISSfn]

I feel like I need to add that despite my profile pic, I am not just a person who enjoys impersonating his favorite rock star. I have an A.S. degree in electronics.(carried a lot more respect in the 80's than it does now) I work for the second largest semiconductor company in the U.S. and fourth largest in the world. I have been there for twenty five years. The processes and equipment I work with are valued in the multi millions of dollars. If my employer has trusted me to do things right all that time I think I can follow the idiot proof directions on a bottle of bacteria....

 

[ian]

hang on a minute it's my dissertation that brought the Yakult and yogurt aspect onto this thread! Also, it's not all about social standing, to who has which degree/qualification. It often takes a layman to find out solutions to problems.

Agreed, this is a very interesting thread which does indeed need to be injected with humour occasionally, hopefully this will be 'one' of those threads that get linked to in years to come.