Bacteria in a bottle, Myth or Fact

[MnFish1]

Round 3
Dosed 1 ppm ammonia in each tank.
Again Day 1,2,3 did not show any change in ammonia and by day 4 Bio Spira tank was down to .5ppm and by day 5 it was 0.
Others did not show any change till day 5 and were stalled at 1 ppm.
Thinking every 5th day i added food and ammonia went down and it might be the point where at day 5 bacteria start to take hold i let the tanks run another 2-3 days. At day 8 i have 1 ppm ammonia still on Atm colony, Microbe lift and fluval cycle.
So on day 9 i placed fish food in the tanks and day 10 i had 0.25 on most all of them and by day 10 they were down to 0-0.25ppm

Curious - did you also add food to the control tank?? (pellets)

 

[Dr. Reef]

Curious - did you also add food to the control tank?? (pellets)

All tanks including cycled tanks with fritz and bio spira and control had fish food placed in them and cycled tanks did not show any increase in ammonia while control that was 1 ppm on day 4-5 went up on ammonia more than 1 ppm and under 2 ppm as the color chart does not have any levels between 1-2ppm. All i could observe was that color was darker than 1 and lighter than 2ppm.
Same goes for Red Sea kit.

 

[MnFish1]

Curious - did you also add food to the control tank?? (pellets)

It would also be interesting to see if adding pellets to turbo start, improved cycling time.

 

[Dr. Reef]

It would also be interesting to see if adding pellets to turbo start, improved cycling time.

that is something i have not tested but i am about to conduct my last round of cold vs room temp Fritz product and i can place pellets in the tanks from day 1 and see if it changes the cycling time.

I think this goes back to what you have been saying along, like in your case you add fish and bacteria together. I can see some of these products working in such cases then in a sterile tank, But seneye testing will be able to tell us a better story on such.

 

[MnFish1]

All tanks including cycled tanks with fritz and bio spira and control had fish food placed in them and cycled tanks did not show any increase in ammonia while control that was 1 ppm on day 4-5 went up on ammonia more than 1 ppm and under 2 ppm as the color chart does not have any levels between 1-2ppm. All i could observe was that color was darker than 1 and lighter than 2ppm.
Same goes for Red Sea kit.

So this implies strongly - that after 7 days that there is not enough 'environmental bacteria (from the tap, etc) that can help with cycling (i.e. the control did not drop). @brandon429 How long was it that you said it would take to completely colonize a tank with nitrifiers without adding anything? This would also be an interesting experiment

 

[MnFish1]

that is something i have not tested but i am about to conduct my last round of cold vs room temp Fritz product and i can place pellets in the tanks from day 1 and see if it changes the cycling time.

Just make sure that (if you have enough tanks) that you have one tank with ammonia and fritZ, one with ammonia fritz and pellets and one control with ammonia and pellets

 

[Dr. Reef]

@MnFish1 pellets were added on 4-5th day in all tanks on round 2 and 8th day on round 3.

 

[Adamantium]

Any thoughts on adding a big bottle of Biospira to an already cycled tank? I added some MarinePure, and I'm wondering if seeding it would help.

I can't seem to get nitrates to drop below 10-20PPM. The tank is about 5 months old.

 

[Dr. Reef]

Just make sure that (if you have enough tanks) that you have one tank with ammonia and fritZ, one with ammonia fritz and pellets and one control with ammonia and pellets

Ok great. its possible as my main studies are over with and only side studies are left. so i have 6 tanks to my disposal.

 

[Dr. Reef]

Any thoughts on adding a big bottle of Biospira to an already cycled tank? I added some MarinePure, and I'm wondering if seeding it would help.
I can't seem to get nitrates to drop below 10-20PPM. The tank is about 5 months old.

I have never tried that but my guess would be that in an established tank there will be enough bacteria and adding a bottle bacteria will only cause different strains of bacteria to compete against eachother and eventually the most stronger and most in number strains will colonize whipping out the rest.
None of these bottle bacteria will help in reduction of nitrates.
For reduction of nitrates you need a totally different type of bacteria that are found in extremely low to 0 oxygen levels. This will require coil denitrator or sulfur denitrator to reduce.

 

[brandon429]

MN
That's for sure correct, would love to confirm it. 60-90 is my guess, don't have an exact time frame to offer

Freshwater accomplishes it fast, about 30--40 days it's reef versions we still don't have charted

All Google cycling charts that show no ammonia compliance nor associated nitrite compliance by day two are based on freshwater works. Though it is 2019 we're missing large chunks of microbial data that relate to fish tanks, that's why this is NO waste of time for Dr. Reef, rather uncharted territory here. The saltwater details about bac are lacking.

unassisted cycle is the best term I can describe it with.

Dry materials are simply hydrated with saltwater, left to air contact but topped off, and then oxidation- tested at a given interval with ammonia nor any feed added during the event. The test is to establish aerial inoculation, cross contamination inoculation of filter bac, as well as environmental feeding only.

My guess is 60+ days in a saltwater tank the system can oxide some amount of ammonia, say true .25-.5 levels. My expectation is if anything it takes longer not sooner than 60 days for a full unassisted cycle to occur.

Just because fritz performs instantly well, full transfer to surfaces included, doesn't mean we're moving up before 10-15 days max speed time offered in big cycling threads. The knowledge moves the needle up, incrementally. It won't be long until we have a fast cycle demand in some way in the thread, and the reader will feel a little better about their quick start knowing transfer to surfaces is faster than predicted due to works linked here.

Accounting for the variation in elements of cycling home aquarists present in cycling threads, primarily test/param reading accuracy and chain of command/ safe handling of materials there still has to be buffer days added when guiding dry-start cycles. It's great to know exactly which product can do it

Fritz ought to comp you for some or all of your work, marketing even when not recruited is still marketing, fritz.

Dr Reef did you ever start that vase which was the unassisted cycle prep

 

[Dr. Reef]

@brandon429 Yes, remember a while back i bought a spaghetti jar with a sealed lid, placed fritz cycled water in it and spray painted the outside black.
Sealed the jar and drilled 2 holes on top, 1 for float sensor and 1 for 1/4" tube as ATO. and a small vent hole.
Its been sitting in my garage at room temp for over 2 months i believe.
Will test it after every year to see if its still cycled.

 

[brandon429]

Can you do the first test


Then change all its test water back out, back on starve mode. It's gold you did that setup, just gold for reefing knowledge advancement. I don't know of any other source for a marine unassisted cycle test


Three portions of influence make up my guess: 1. A Dr Tim genetic study from years ago online sampling common filter bacteria in freshly seeded and aged filter pads, freshwater. Marine species were found indicating both a presence in the environment and a vector into the tank when simply running a normal aquarium. Extremely low amount though, something like one or two cells out of the whole study... vastly outnumbered by species that colonizes freshwater. So a common unassisted cycle prep especially in Dr Reefs aseptic prep + handling approach doesn't bring in lots of marine bac, add time to colonize.

2. Freshwater works, familiar with unassisted cycles on freshwater though not fully sure how it upscales to a marine tank-I've only used live rock/skip cycle setups for reefs.

3. The extremely long fallow testing threads we collect showing 2/3 years totally unfed and bacteria still process ammonia overnight (via whatever means they accomplish that with) I'm thinking whatever environmental exchanges allow for fallow bacteria support (an unfed set of rocks for three years still functions as a full filter) the brand new unassisted cycle experiment begins accessing as soon as it's made, so all things factored I guess sixty or so days for marine bac to self-establish.

A large portion of readers do not know all these filters will self-establish anyway, without our help. They are under the impression that bacteria must be purchased, not the case.

 

[Dr. Reef]

A large portion of readers do not know all these filters will self-establish anyway, without our help. They are under the impression that bacteria must be purchased, not the case.

Yes i can perform a test on it. How would i go around testing water in the jar to be cycled? add 0.25 ppm ammonia and test next day or 2?

That last statement is so true. We dont need any bacteria to be added to cycle a tank. Bacteria is everywhere, in the air on the rocks, sand , water etc and every tank will eventually cycle without any aid or assistance.

 

[Ghost463]

Just a fun little story. But i support that bacterial stuff.
I had a leak in a 60 gal real bad. Almost the whole base or bottom had come lose.
I stripped the tank got a new 75 and rebuilt. This all started around 3 pm i had the 75 home from store built scaped and full of my fish by 9pm. The stuff really works folks.

 

[Dr. Reef]

Just a fun little story. But i support that bacterial stuff.
I had a leak in a 60 gal real bad. Almost the whole base or bottom had come lose.
I stripped the tank got a new 75 and rebuilt. This all started around 3 pm i had the 75 home from store built scaped and full of my fish by 9pm. The stuff really works folks.

Thank you for sharing. A good ending after a leaky start.
What did you use for cycling the tank? bottle bacteria or live rock etc? if bottle then which one?

 

[Ghost463]

Thank you for sharing. A good ending after a leaky start.
What did you use for cycling the tank? bottle bacteria or live rock etc? if bottle then which one?

I have bought bad bottles in the past. Tip always check the seal under the cap.
I live by this stuff. That was a fresh water tank! Good for salt as well but will not replace live rock or sand.

 

[Dr. Reef]

Yes these types of bottle bacteria that say to add fish immediately, in my studies, show they dont not work in sterile tanks and they actually do require fish or fish food to cycle, Which makes me assume that these are heterotorphic bacteria. They do work when fish or fish food is added to the tank.

 

[brandon429]

Dr. Reef in my opinion, a very small increment, .25-.5. It doesn't need to oxidize much to prove they're there, and active.

Then with a quick change that ammonia won't stay, back to nearly sterile and they get a minor boost in colony counts for a while, then back to steady state amounts, which are about to be assessed

 

[MnFish1]

@brandon429 Yes, remember a while back i bought a spaghetti jar with a sealed lid, placed fritz cycled water in it and spray painted the outside black.
Sealed the jar and drilled 2 holes on top, 1 for float sensor and 1 for 1/4" tube as ATO. and a small vent hole.
Its been sitting in my garage at room temp for over 2 months i believe.
Will test it after every year to see if its still cycled.

I think I missed this - what was the purpose? (or the 'theory' behind the experiment) that you're trying to prove? One problem - there is no control for this - ie shouldn't there also be a 'jar' - with just plain new uncycled water (ie non-fritz cycled) - then you could also have two jars (cycled water and uncycled water) - one containing some kind of substrate. etc etc. But again - Im not sure what your trying to prove.

If its merely that bacteria can last for long periods of time in the dark in water - I would think the best 'experiment' would be to take one jar with New saltwater with clean ceramic rings (for example) and in another identical jar place new saltwater with cycled ceramic rings from one of the experiments And perhaps one with water alone.