This Is Interesting

[This Old Spouse]

Do they work?

 

[willowstwin]

I have an Interpet version of this... I've been dosing as suggested and 6 days in and my ammonia reading hasnt changed.

Mature media is surely better? then again, I guess that could start the argument of organic vs inorganic lol

 

[Smells a bit fishy]

Hmmmm......... Again very bold claims, so basicky what these products do is turn ammonia and nitrites into nitrates for a few days until the longer lasting bacteria eats them. Sounds a bit iffy to me, ask eagle whether he saw a drop in ammonia and nitrites in the first few days? As he did experiment on here.

 

[This Old Spouse]

I was kind of playing devil's advocate by putting that link in here. I still don't believe you can get good bacteria out of a bottle, but some other research I was doing led me to that little bit of info.

 

[MBOU]

TBH i think, people who only have one tank... have minimal claims to say it *does* or *doesnt* work. You need to have multiple tanks and/or systems up and running at the same time to see what does or doesnt work over a period of time.

Not many people have that...

Its not just... i tried this and it didnt work...therefor it is no good.... Maybe it was the wrong product and the wrong time. Doesnt make it a bad product.

I believe the bottled bacterial is really usefull stuff and despite the numerous boring posts about it, i have yet to see any actual proof they dont work. And yet every single day... i test water and see it does work. Go figure.

Some work better than others, some are better for adding to a more mature tank to just 'keep going', others are better for new set ups and others still are better for seeding the filter. Ok, maybe not all they claim to be, but with the right advise, they can do the job just as fast if not far quicker than with neat Ammonia which tbh 99% of customers wouldnt consider, let alone do! and tbh nor woulf i if there is easier ways of doing it.


Best products so far... Inerpets Ammonia Remover... (it does just that without causing nitrite spike). Cant bloomin find name of the bacteria... will get back on that one tomorrow...

 

[eaglesaquarium]

Some work better than others, some are better for adding to a more mature tank to just 'keep going', others are better for new set ups and others still are better for seeding the filter. Ok, maybe not all they claim to be, but with the right advise, they can do the job just as fast if not far quicker than with neat Ammonia which tbh 99% of customers wouldnt consider, let alone do! and tbh nor woulf i if there is easier ways of doing it.


Best products so far... Inerpets Ammonia Remover... (it does just that without causing nitrite spike). Cant bloomin find name of the bacteria... will get back on that one tomorrow...

First, not being all they claim is precisely the problem. The vast majority claim an "instant" cycle. Or add this, wait three days and add fish. But, as you read further you need to continue to add the product for every water change, every time you add more fish, every time there is an "r" in the day name, etc. If you need to continually add the product, then the tank isn't actually cycled.


Second, if the product cycles a tank "just as fast" as adding nothing, then what exactly is the point of adding it?


Third, "easiest" isn't always best. Best is adding mature media to your tank. Since you work at a LFS, maybe you can talk to your management about making mature media available to your clients so that the "best" method is actually available, rather than pushing products that honestly don't do what they claim to do. In my book, any product that has to make false claims to a bunch of uninformed customers is akin to selling snake oil. Either a product works as it claims, or it is false advertising.



I tried Tetra's SafeStart and I got ammonia to drop early, but didn't see any nitrite spike for quite some time. Overall, the cycle took about 4 weeks, which is "just as fast" as a standard fishless cycle with ammonia could have been. It would have been nice for me to do one 10 gallon tank with the product and a second 10 gallon tank without the product for comparison purposes, but that wasn't possible. But, the truth of the matter is that I CAN say that the product did not work as well as it claimed. There should be ZERO (or very minimal) cases of problems with the product. If I bought a filter that couldn't actually pump water as it claimed, that would be upsetting and I wouldn't need multiple tanks or anything to determine that the product was a bust. Same goes for a heater, if it can't maintain water temp at a certain level consistently, I can also draw a conclusion about that. And certainly, if a bunch of folks all have the exact same complaint about the product, then there MUST be some sort of issue with it. Perhaps some (or most) of them sit on the shelf for too long. Perhaps some (or most) of them get overheated during shipping, or frozen. Perhaps some of them are struck by harmful radiation from solar flares. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.... If a bunch of folks have all had significant trouble with a certain product, then I would say that it is a bad product. That doesn't mean that they are ALL bad, but it does mean that it is unreliable, and that is the mark of a poor product. For it to truly be "easiest", the bottled bacteria products (as a whole) need to become fool-proof and reliable for the uninformed hobbyist to be able to use flawlessly. Adding a heater and filter seems pretty straight forward. The bottled bacteria needs to be just as effective.

 

[Geoff-]

I was getting frustrated with frequent water changes to keep a fish-in cycle under control and had just hit the nitrite peak when I added Stability to my tank. The nitrite converted into Nitrate within a few days, cycle complete. That's not to say the tank would have done that on its own anyway, a sample size of 1 means nothing.

To really verify whether these products work one would need to set up at least half a dozen control tanks and half a dozen "dosed" tanks with a fishless cycle and monitor the results. The tanks would have to be new and identical so as not to have any traces of a previous colony left.

I do believe the plausibility of the Stability offering, if they are distributing spores then they will arrive ready to be activated. Live bacteria would certainly need a) a food source and b) careful care and the shelf life would be quite short. But with a reputable shop there's no reason why such an approach wouldn't work.