bugs in a bottle...?

[esoxlucius]

I am attending my local fish club meeting this Friday and the speaker will be Jay Wilson from North Fin USA, he also handles social media and sales for Fritz Aquatics and his topic will be "Bacteria- The good, the bad, the misunderstood".

Maybe I'll toss some of these questions at him regarding bio-bacteria products.

I wouldn't mind going to that, if it weren't about 5000 miles away

 

[DrownedFishonFire]

That sounds very very odd that you've got all that bottled bacteria going on, haven't done any water changes and yet your parameters are 0,0,0. You should have some nitrate by now if that bacteria's working to show that your tank is indeed cycled.

Im using seachem stability too. So it might also be part of the magic formula. I know my levels are insane. Waiting for it to spike nothing yet. Theres 4 brand new pieces of driftwood in there that was added last week too.

the filters showing the normal bacteria buildup as well. I attempted to add seachem clarity to the water and it made the water so cloudy. Never again will attempt this. It discolored the filter flosses etc


With the QT tank:
I was having ammonia spikes at first then zero the last two weeks on the clown loach QT tank and nitrates at 40-80ppm and nitrites T 0.25ppm on a daily basis doing 85% water changes to get the nitrates back into safer range when home from work being frustrated. Now its zero zero zero since adding the bottled bacteria crap.

Stability is also added as a measure too.

Im speechless myself

 

[DrownedFishonFire]

This is a off a brand new AC 110 thats been running since I started the tank. I just changed the filter floss to try to clear up the cloudy water and rinsed off the sponge filter this morning due to clarity making it worse yesterday and hasnt subsided today.

 

[DN328]

Im using seachem stability too. So it might also be part of the magic formula. I know my levels are insane. Waiting for it to spike nothing yet. Theres 4 brand new pieces of driftwood in there that was added last week too.

the filters showing the normal bacteria buildup as well. I attempted to add seachem clarity to the water and it made the water so cloudy. Never again will attempt this. It discolored the filter flosses etc


With the QT tank:
I was having ammonia spikes at first then zero the last two weeks on the clown loach QT tank and nitrates at 40-80ppm and nitrites T 0.25ppm on a daily basis doing 85% water changes to get the nitrates back into safer range when home from work being frustrated. Now its zero zero zero since adding the bottled bacteria crap.

Stability is also added as a measure too.

Im speechless myself

Assuming your tests are accurate, I'm not completely surprised you still had 0, 0, 0 in a completely new 75gallon tank, after days. This could mean you just didn't have enough source of detectable ammonia. I don't think the bottled BB had anyting to do with, yet, if Nitrate was also 0.

The last two tanks that I cycled (in different periods) were both basically 260 gallons. Both times I used Stability. The first tank took nearly 2.5-3 months to cycle! I suspect because I didn't create enough source of ammonia relative to the size of the tank. EDIT: I tested regularly and never saw traces of Nitrite in the first tank. At one point I had 0, 0, 5ppm, and called it good.

This second time I tossed in a couple of raw shrimp (in sump filter socks), and the tank cycled in 6 weeks. I know for sure that the ammonia source is a key variable here, and likely influence the cycle time. If anything, the amount of Bottled BB, was fairly consistent as I just followed the directions the same way in both cases.

As this isn't a controlled environment in anyway, I do wonder how much the bottled BB helped speed up the cycled process. That is, would it have even taken longer in the cycled tank if I didn't have it? I will continue to use bottled BB, because I do think it will help. Just don't really know how much it does in terms of building a BB colony in less the time.

If anyone has results of such controlled test, I'd be interested.

 

[RD.]

I am attending my local fish club meeting this Friday and the speaker will be Jay Wilson from North Fin USA, he also handles social media and sales for Fritz Aquatics and his topic will be "Bacteria- The good, the bad, the misunderstood".

I recently watched a youtube video, something I rarely do regarding aquatic products, where Jay was promoting Fritz's new water conditioner, which as far as I can tell is pretty much identical to Seachem Prime. He had some slant as to why the Fritz product was better, I'm sure it had nothing to do with getting cases of free product to sample, give away, and promote in his videos.

Maybe ask him about the S. bacillus strains of bacteria found in low cost septic cleaning products, like I promote, vs the expensive products with fancy labels, that Fritz promotes & sells?

 

[DrownedFishonFire]

Assuming your tests are accurate, I'm not completely surprised you still had 0, 0, 0 in a completely new 75gallon tank, after days. This could mean you just didn't have enough source of detectable ammonia. I don't think the bottled BB had anyting to do with, yet, if Nitrate was also 0.

The last two tanks that I cycled (in different periods) were both basically 260 gallons. Both times I used Stability. The first tank took nearly 2.5-3 months to cycle! I suspect because I didn't create enough source of ammonia relative to the size of the tank. EDIT: I tested regularly and never saw traces of Nitrite in the first tank. At one point I had 0, 0, 5ppm, and called it good.

This second time I tossed in a couple of raw shrimp (in sump filter socks), and the tank cycled in 6 weeks. I know for sure that the ammonia source is a key variable here, and likely influence the cycle time. If anything, the amount of Bottled BB, was fairly consistent as I just followed the directions the same way in both cases.

As this isn't a controlled environment in anyway, I do wonder how much the bottled BB helped speed up the cycled process. That is, would it have even taken longer in the cycled tank if I didn't have it? I will continue to use bottled BB, because I do think it will help. Just don't really know how much it does in terms of building a BB colony in less the time.

If anyone has results of such controlled test, I'd be interested.

Maybe I will report back after next weekend after I throw in more fish. Currently have 20 red blue Colombian tetras, 12 melon barbs, 8 ariluius barbs and 8 clouded archerfish currently in a 40g QT holding tank that just came in yesterday from wetspot. Ofc WC on a daily basis.

My next tank to set up is a 60x18 tank sitting in the garage until I find a stand for it for the loaches and the archerfish its only mere 70g with 15.5" height.


The seachem stability states: prevent new tank syndrome so would assume cycle is complete? Im heavy on feeding my fish trust me i had to change my filter floss out this morning


Another thing. I am super heavy with PRIME maybe thats another factor in keeping the spikes at bay? I literally pour in 5x the doseage everyday. Would love to see controlled experiment myself too on what the hell Im doing differently. Im sure its cycled as food is sitting on the bottom like i said i overfeed. I feed various stuff tho.

 

[DN328]

Even with 5x the prime, you should still detect it with the water test. It doesn't remove the ammonia, etc.

 

[DrownedFishonFire]

Just saying from seachem site:

Prime is the complete and concentrated conditioner for both fresh and saltwater. Prime removeschlorine, chloramine and detoxifies ammonia. Prime convertsammonia into a safe, non-toxic form that is readily removed by the tank's biofilter. Prime may be used during tank cycling to alleviateammonia/nitrite toxicity.



Just reporting what I did prime is a significant player in the cycling process. I use the API test kit though. Maybe thats why API isnt registering it?

Makes no sense cuz I had high readings at first with same test kit when I first started up the Clown Loach QT tank? It was alot of water changes on a daily basis until i added the bacteria and the stablizer in addition to the prime its now zero zero zero

 

[BIG-G]

Ditto to heterotrophic bacteria, which are something that I add weekly to assist me in my maintenance of my tanks. See sticky on probiotic bacteria. Those bacteria keep for years in a dry state, and come alive when added to my tanks.

If im not mistaken this is the same kind of technology used to make “live” dry rock for saltwater tanks that have been coated in heterotrophic bacteria to kick start tanks without having to use actual wet aquaculture rock .

 

[squint]

The discussion and experiments performed here satisfied my curiosity on this subject.