Fritz-Zyme Turbo Start

[FreshwaterAfishianado]

Does anyone have any experience with this product? I know that most "bacteria in a bottle" products are snake-oil but the family owned lfs in my town, the owners of which I actually respect, claims that this product can make a filter fish safe right away. Now the only reason I even thought this may be credible is as I said this particular lfs owner has never steered me wrong and the bottles are required to be chilled, they even arrive chilled from the truck and only advertise a 90 day shelf life. Could this actually work?

 

[techen]

See when you said chilled that there tells me no. Bacteria will thrive in a fish tank at around 27c so if you chill the bottle I don't think you'll get acceptable results. It sounds like ammonia in a bottle.

 

[DrRob]

All of this is theoretically possible. It's always disappointing to see so little evidence published of their claims, which tends to lead me to believe that those big companies with products are either selling enough to not bother publishing to keep the experienced keepers happy (who are often in a position to seed tanks anyway, so are only a small business area for them) or that they don't have evidence (or, of course, that their evidence says that it doesn't work).
 
There are a number of threads on this in the scientific section already, have a mooch through what's there. Some of them get quite technical but that's not a bad thing.
 
Overall, the idea of refrigerating and short shelf lives is somewhat reassuring, but doesn't mean that it'll definitely work. Think of all of the bio yoghurt products in the supermarket chillers.

 

[Blondielovesfish]

You cod try I out, just be prepared to do a fish in cycle if it turns out to fail.
Keep us updated anyway.

 

[TwoTankAmin]

Actually, refrigerating the live nitrifyers will extend their life in a bottle. The refrigeration is not required from the outset- that was the old Bio Spira. They can not be frozen and if they spend much time north of about 105F they will die as well. Dr, Tim's product comes with a date on the bottle so you know how long it should last. At 6 months it begins to lose effectiveness in terms of the bacteria "reviving" and getting up to strength. By refrigerating it, that time will be extended to about one year.
 
And even after that one year time the bacteria are not all dead. They are just so knocked back that they take a lot more time to recover and reproduce. This makes them much less useful right out of the bottle, but they would still make a cycle with no other bacterial help go faster than without it. It would not be able to provide the sort of almost "instant" help with cycling issues it is intended to.
 
The only product I have seen where you can find out what bacteria are in the bottle is Dr. Hovanecs, and by extension, Tetra's Safe Start. There may be others in Europe, I know a product called ABIL is good- but that may not be available for aquarium use, I don't know.
 
If the label doesn't identify the bacteria and state they are live, and if I can not find this information online, I would be very dubious about its being something one wants in their tank long term. Another good clue is what the directions say. I mistrust anything that tells me I need to add it more than once at the outset. They all (even the ones that work) will suggest you add some after a water change etc. This is a sales come on, imo, since an established tank should always have enough bacteria in it. So ignore that part of the directions and focus on how they tell you start up the tank.

 

[daizeUK]

I've never heard of it but the product description is easy to find.  https/www.fritzpet.com/nitrifying-bacteria/
 
TTA this is an interesting claim:

Fritz Industries was the first to successfully produce nitrifying fresh and saltwater nitrifying bacteria in the mid 1970's . Presently Fritz Industries is the leader in the research and development of nitrifying bacteria and continues to improve on the commercial production, packaging and distribution of these remarkable organisms.
 

 
In the mid 1970's?  That pre-dates Bio-Spira by quite a while!
 
The page identifies several strains of bacteria with different products for saltwater and freshwater.  The freshwater bacteria are Nitrosomonas and Nitrobacter (the latter is not generally acknowledged as the correct strain in light of modern research).
 
The fact that it must be chilled is certainly encouraging that the product does contain living bacteria.  Whether they are the correct bacteria to ultimately colonise your aquarium when it has matured is not so certain.  However I would be willing to bet that they have a good chance of speeding up the maturation process in the meantime, so yes since you've got it it's definitely worth a try!
 
There's one strange thing in the product info sheet, there's no good reason I can think of for larger doses of live bacteria to be anything other than beneficial:

To decrease cycling time, Turbo Start 700 can be safely used up to 5x recommended dosage.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 

[TwoTankAmin]

Nice find daize- I didn't come across that one. Did you notice they make a version that contains 15 times as many bacteria as the one you mentioned above- Turbo? Try to figure out the difference from the description links.
 
Considering the actual bacteria in aquariums were not identified until the turn of the millennium, what do you suppose they were selling in 1977? As for their claim, they do not state they were selling bacteria for aquariums. They say "successfully produce nitrifying fresh and saltwater nitrifying bacteria". Strains of nitrosomonas and nirobacter have been used for a long time to treat wastewater. In treating both fresh and salt waste water, those bacteria are champs. In tanks, its not them.
 
So which nitrosomas are in their bottle along with the wrong niritite oxidizers?
 
For nitrite oxidation Nitrobacter isn't what is in tanks, its Nitrospira. I would quote the following from the Abstract from the research study where Dr. Hovanec et al identified them as what was in tanks:
 

 
Aquaria which received a commercial preparation containing Nitrobacter species did not show evidence of Nitrobacter growth and development but did develop substantial populations of Nitrospira-like species. Time series analysis of rDNA phylotypes on aquaria biofilms by DGGE, combined with nitrite and nitrate analysis, showed a correspondence between the appearance of Nitrospira-like bacterial ribosomal DNA, and the initiation of nitrite oxidation. In total, the data suggest that Nitrobacter winogradskyi and close relatives were not the dominant nitrite-oxidizing bacteria in freshwater aquaria. Instead, nitrite oxidation in freshwater aquaria appeared to be mediated by bacteria closely related to Nitrospira moscoviensis and Nitrospira marina.

 
I also believe you have seen the patent filings for One and Only. Didn't they include results from other products in their tests? I can not say for sure but I have seen numbers for Fritz-zyme. I am not sure where (maybe even in something Hovanec did). I dimly recall posting links to them on this site somewhere a while back. (OBS strikes again.)
 
I have not looked carefully enough, but I think Dr. Hovanec and associates hold a patent on the specific nitrospira in some fashion and a method for detecting them. This makes it hard for others to sell them.
 
So while I missed that page you linked, what it states about the product convinces me that I would not use it. I spent some time on the Fritz Industries site out of curiosity. They are big in waste treatment bacteria. They are big in other areas but I saw nothing re aquariums. I think for them it must be an insignificant part of what they do. They are big in oilfield related things as well.
http/www.fritzind.com/

 

[daizeUK]

Yes you are right... I knew it rang a bell!  Dr Tim included results for Fritz-Zyme in his patent application.  http/www.timhovanec.com/Publications/page7/assets/EP1282688_pdf.jsp  - Page 27, table 13
It did have poor results for nitrite cycling.

 

[TwoTankAmin]

OK- I don't feel so bad. I thought it was Must me not remembering where I saw it. It seems if I remeber right the Fristz stuff was no faster than anything else including fish in cycle. But back then there wasn't the Turbo product. I think they did test it double or thriple strength too?
 
I think Fritz is likely a good company in many areas. I think they likely got involved with aquariums as an offshoot of other things way back when and then the rest of the company got really big. I am sure they are a force in waste water treatment, they make dechlor too. But I am not sure they did any cutting edge research into aquariums and the bacteria in them.
 
Me personal preference is for the few things I have been able to see the science behind over those where the best the maker can do is generic statement but not specifics and no links to peer reviewed research. So I avoid products like the one here or Stability which contains no live bacteria in favor of things I understand and in which I believe. Clearly some people must derive some benefit from their use as they are not the sort of thing that lasts in the market if they fail completely. However, the benefit may not be long term and may not be worth the cost.
 
I still want to know why they have the two versions at such different strengths.

 

[daizeUK]

Yes - it is odd that they have different strength products.  I found a discussion on another forum which posted an email conversation with the guys at Fritz.  They stated that it was more difficult and expensive to bottle higher numbers of bacteria because they use up resources in the bottle faster.  This seems contrary to the methods we know which are more about starving the bacteria rather than keeping them fed!
 
Dr Hovanec's test also indicated that a triple dose of Fritz-Zyme actually performed worse on nitrite cycling than the standard recommended dose.  On that basis I'd have to view the 15x strength product with some scepticism, unless they have improved the formula since 2005.

 

[TwoTankAmin]

Well when you bottle bacteria they are not dead. I can understand that there can be issues in such circumstances. What I do not understand why they would need that many bacteria if they were the preferred kind.
 
But the discovery of the of nitrospira bacteria strain central this hobby was published in 1995 in Moscow, until then nitrobacter was thought to be the dominant nitrite oxidizer.
 

 
Arch Microbiol. 1995 Jul;164(1):16-23.

A new obligately chemolithoautotrophic, nitrite-oxidizing bacterium, Nitrospira moscoviensis sp. nov. and its phylogenetic relationship.
Ehrich S, Behrens D, Lebedeva E, Ludwig W, Bock E.


Source
Institut für Allgemeine Botanik, Universität Hamburg, Germany.



Abstract

A gram-negative, non-motile, non-marine, nitrite-oxidizing bacterium was isolated from an enrichment culture initiated with a sample from a partially corroded area of an iron pipe of a heating system in Moscow, Russia. The cells were 0.9-2.2 microns x 0.2-0.4 microns in size. They were helical- to vibroid-shaped and often formed spirals with up to three turns 0.8-1.0 micron in width. The organism possessed an enlarged periplasmic space and lacked intracytoplasmic membranes and carboxysomes. The cells tended to excrete extracellular polymers, forming aggregates. The bacterium grew optimally at 39 degrees C and pH 7.6-8.0 in a mineral medium with nitrite as sole energy source and carbon dioxide as sole carbon source. The optimal nitrite concentration was 0.35 mM. Nitrite was oxidized to nitrate stoichiometrically. The doubling time was 12 h in a mineral medium with 7.5 mM nitrite. The cell yield was low; only 0.9 mg protein/l was formed during oxidation of 7.5 mM nitrite. Under anoxic conditions, hydrogen was used as electron donor with nitrate as electron acceptor. Organic matter (yeast extract, meat extract, peptone) supported neither mixotrophic nor heterotrophic growth. At concentrations as low as 0.75 g organic matter/l or higher, growth of nitrite-oxidizing cells was inhibited. The cells contained cytochromes of the b- and c-type. The G+C content of DNA was 56.9 +/- 0.4 mol%. The chemolithoautotrophic nitrite-oxidizer differed from the terrestrial members of the genus Nitrobacter with regard to morphology and substrate range and equaled Nitrospira marina in both characteristics. The isolated bacterium is designated as a new species of the genus Nitrospira.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)

from http/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7646315
Here is another quick read of an abstract that compares nitrobacter and nitrospira- Competition between Nitrospira spp. and Nitrobacter spp. in nitrite-oxidizing bioreactors. http/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16703620
 
It took a while for Dr. Hovanec's research after that. The first step was discovering it was not nitrobacter in tanks. then came the ID of the notrospira strain in tanks. So exactly how effective could any tank bacterial product from the 1970s, 1980s and most of the 1990s have been?