Live Bactinettes Quickest Way To Cycle A Tank

[lexluth0r]

I used Live Bactinettes to cycle my hospital tank in 2 days, why are people not recommending this as a quick way to cycle tanks.

 

[Curiosity101]

How did you cycle the tank exactly? (step by step).
We don't recommend them because 99% of people who have tried them haven't had them work. I think one person may have plated them up and tried to see if anything grew. And there have been people who have specifically tried different types and kept detailed records of their findings just to find that it doesn't work.

You may be that 1%...but you might not. Depends how you cycled.

 

[lexluth0r]

I got the Bactinettes which was refrigerated from my LFS, I have an unknown filter with just supplied with the tank, just basic filter with no carbon, I made a hole at the top of the filter sponge and poured the Bacinettes into the filter sponge, to stop the Basinettes coming out I put some cotton wool to cover the hole which I made. Put a dead prawn in the water, Got some water from the tap, added Tetra Aqua Safe, done a test in 1 day with API Water Kit, had low ammonia, nitrite reading, removed prawn, day 2 test ammonia 0 nitrite was 0.25, done a 20% water change added x4 Fry Fish, checked water in a week and conditions ammonia and nitrite 0, 2 months later the tank is still going strong and hasn’t lost a fish, I bought this for my hospital tank but most of the time I just keep fry in there until there big enough to go to my LFS. If I have an ammonia or nitrite spike I will certainly be using it again.

 

[VaegaVic]

Well first off, I've used Bactinettes and at best, all it did was help speed up my cycle.
Secondly, when you removed the prawn, you removed any cause of ammonia.
Thirdly, when you added the fish fry, they only produce a very low ammount of ammonia anyway, so it's a good chance that there wasn't enough to register on the test, the same way fish food rots down in an established tank. As the babies grew, as did the bacterial colony.

I used Bactinettes when my I changed filters and substrate in my 64L, eventhough I moved the filter material across, I had a large ammonia and nitrite spike. I emptied an entire pot into the filter and it still took 2 weeks of daily 120L water changes til the filter had fully reastablished.

Not saying your results are invalid or inaccurate, just circumstancial.

I would also be curious towards the NitrAte levels in the tanks at these times as they would confirm the cycling process, but obviously, it's too late now.

 

[lexluth0r]

Could it be the product might be more effetive depeneding how old it was before you bought it. The LFS highly recommended this product over much more expensive fast cycling products, I paid £5 and used twice the recommended dose. Maybe it was the fry were not producing enough ammonia but if I was a newbie to cycling I would be buying this product.

 

[OohFeeshy]

I wouldn't go as far as to say '99%' haven't worked, the trouble is it's quite hard to get reliable data from it because people do different things, have different setups etc. It's likely to be the best 'cycling product' available, but even if we assume it's been kept properly I believe there's a bit of a debate about which bacteria species are actually used in it. Besides which, there's no guarentee it actually has been kept properly. You don't know until you buy it and use it. It's also not available everywhere.

Fishless cycling with ammonia, or an ammonia source, might take longer, but it's pretty much guarenteed to work, you build up a large bacterial colony and it's a lot cheaper. It also encourages people to take time over chosing appropriate stocking- you can be fairly certain that if people rushed out to buy fish as soon as they bought the tank, they'd all end up full of clown loaches, common plecs, silver sharks and lord knows what else.

 

[waterdrop]

Yes, I'm sure OohFeeshy remembers even more of this than me but as late as the first half of 2008 there were still some reports of success with two of the bottled bacterias: Bactinettes in UK and BioSpira in the US. I agree it wouldn't have been 99/1 but typically we'd only here of a very occasional case seeming to work vs. the vast majority of them still doing nothing. There was speculation that about 2 locations (2 LFSs) in the UK had worked out a tight enough distribution that the Bactinettes were staying frozen all the way through distribution and so there were a lucky handful of users that got some still working bacteria but during the second half of 2008 that seemed to die out for good. The BioSpira story was more complicated but I believe the product either went off the market or was changed and no longer worked, where previously a couple of people (out of many) had reported a success or two. All these things were notoriously difficult to track as people would start using the stuff in the middle of a fishless cycle and then report success, leaving you wondering if the bacteria was about to take off anyway.. things like that.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[Curiosity101]

Yeah sorry, I wasn't using 99% as an actual scientific value. It was meant to be more representative of the fact that most aren't worth the time.
Should've probably made that a bit more clear.

 

[lexluth0r]

I bought my Bactinettes from swallows aquatics I think there nationwide and they have a fridge which is just for Bactinettes with Bactinettes stickers on the fridge, maybe they just store it correctly???

 

[waterdrop]

I bought my Bactinettes from swallows aquatics I think there nationwide and they have a fridge which is just for Bactinettes with Bactinettes stickers on the fridge, maybe they just store it correctly???

The problem is usually not with the retailer, its with the truckers and loading docks.

 

[VaegaVic]

I bought my Bactinettes from swallows aquatics I think there nationwide and they have a fridge which is just for Bactinettes with Bactinettes stickers on the fridge, maybe they just store it correctly???

Yep, I bought mine from the exact same store as you did as we're both in Essex, Rayleigh.
The batch was in date and had only come in that day, I ended up buying 3 bottles all in all, one to recycle the 64L, one to cycle a small 13L and one to keep as a spare, which was then used on the 64L anyway, so the 64l got a dose worthy of 300L and it still took 2 weeks to recycle properly.