best bb bacteria to dose and why?

[ddc0715]

i dose dr tims eco balance weekly and biodigist prodibio pro, bi weekly. have been for a year now. tank looks amazing. is it due to the bb i dose? cant say. does bb bacteria dosing help? i cant say. but i have had zero outbreaks that are bb related like cyano etc.

do you dose bb? weekly or bi weekly. i see alot of the big names doing it. so it cant be snake oil those guys are smart.

 

[tnw50cal]

do you dose bb? weekly or bi weekly. i see alot of the big names doing it. so it cant be snake oil those guys are smart.

" those guys are smart" are the some of the same people that told us to use Vibrant, and Vibrant sure as h e double toothpicks is snake oil.

 

[Troylee]

I couldn’t tell ya if it’s snake oil or not… I can tell you since the early 2000’s when mb7 and vodka became a thang I never looked “bac” haha… I’ve had nothing but great experiences to this day and I use zeobak and bacto balance and my tanks never looked so good! I could just be throwing money away I’ll never know, but I have a routine and it’s paying off and I’m happy!

 

[exnisstech]

Hard to say. I have 3 systems running. I dose bacteria in two of them. The one I do not dose is 8 years old and has never looked better. One that I do dose BB in has gha and cyano. It's not terrible but it's bad enough that many folks here would be freaking out. I'm not so sensitive to nuisance algae / bacteria. The second tank I dose is doing very well. I have some type of green algae that covers the rocks but is only visible under white lights. Sticks are encrusting nicely so I don't even pay attention to the algae on the rocks because I never see it unless I turn the lights to white. So my anecdotal evidence says maturity plays a larger part vs dosing BB.
I will say tho one tank I have has been running only 9 months, barebottom and started with dry rock. I used fritz 900 along with MB7 to cycle. It is my first time starting a tank barebottom with dry rock and I am very happy with the results. I had a little cyano for a while but it pretty much disappeared. I think one key factor is to stay the course and not make changes based on a little algae or cyano whether BB is being used or not. Be patient and many thing tend to take care of themselves if given enough time.
But alas it seems this is the age of instant gratification and patience in the hobby seems to be lacking especially with newer hobbyists. Add a bottle of this a pinch of that and your tank can look just like the photoshopped images seen online. Just my observation hanging out here for the last few years.

zeobak and bacto balance

Would you be willing to share your methods? I actually use MB7 and zeobac but I use them seperately MB7 in one tank and zeobac in another and only twice a week.

 

[Troylee]

Hard to say. I have 3 systems running. I dose bacteria in two of them. The one I do not dose is 8 years old and has never looked better. One that I do dose BB in has gha and cyano. It's not terrible but it's bad enough that many folks here would be freaking out. I'm not so sensitive to nuisance algae / bacteria. The second tank I dose is doing very well. I have some type of green algae that covers the rocks but is only visible under white lights. Sticks are encrusting nicely so I don't even pay attention to the algae on the rocks because I never see it unless I turn the lights to white. So my anecdotal evidence says maturity plays a larger part vs dosing BB.
I will say tho one tank I have has been running only 9 months, barebottom and started with dry rock. I used fritz 900 along with MB7 to cycle. It is my first time starting a tank barebottom with dry rock and I am very happy with the results. I had a little cyano for a while but it pretty much disappeared. I think one key factor is to stay the course and not make changes based on a little algae or cyano whether BB is being used or not. Be patient and many thing tend to take care of themselves if given enough time.
But alas it seems this is the age of instant gratification and patience in the hobby seems to be lacking especially with newer hobbyists. Add a bottle of this a pinch of that and your tank can look just like the photoshopped images seen online. Just my observation hanging out here for the last few years.


Would you be willing to share your methods? I actually use MB7 and zeobac but I use them seperately MB7 in one tank and zeobac in another and only twice a week.

I follow sunny x routine.. diy coral snow with a few drops of zeo back and a cap full of mb7 with some zeo coral food and reef roids cause my po4 keeps bottoming out.. once or twice a week.. . . bacto balance I dose daily 5ml on a doser… I also run 1 liter of zeovit stones in a zeo reactor which is about half of what my tank requires and I shake it once a day. it’s working out great!

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

IMO, the primary usefulness of bottled bacteria, after cycling, is to outcompete cyano, and act as a direct food source for filter feeders.

 

[exnisstech]

I follow sunny x routine.. diy coral snow with a few drops of zeo back and a cap full of mb7 with some zeo coral food and reef roids cause my po4 keeps bottoming out.. once or twice a week.. . . bacto balance I dose daily 5ml on a doser… I also run 1 liter of zeovit stones in a zeo reactor which is about half of what my tank requires and I shake it once a day. it’s working out great!

Thanks. Reading through SunnyX posts and seeing his tank is what got me to try the bac. I really think it made a huge difference in the start up of my recent tank mentioned above. I'm doing similar as you but no reactor and daily dosing the BB manually for now. I may have to read up on the reactor use one of these days

EDIT : @Troylee sorry I forgot to ask how long can you go between cleaning your glass? I'm not a clean freak by any stretch of the imagination but my glass on all of my tank needs cleaned every other day and really should be done daily. Just curious.

 

[rtparty]

I use MB7 as it is one of the only products that actually has merit to the claims. Prodibio has nothing in it BTW. Absolutely pointless and pure snake oil. Plenty of threads with experimentation to prove this

 

[ddc0715]

well, my reef tank is about 6 years old and it is what i have been bb dosing, looks great, im getting ready to run out of bb in the next month or two so im shopping for a different brand to replace either dr tims eco balance or the biodigist prodibio pro OR MAYBE BOTH.
FUNNY that someones non dosed tahnk is doing better than their dosed tank, because my fowlr that does not get dosed looks like worse than my dosed tank... lol. never the less this hobby is weird.

 

[amoore311]

I used MB7 and Vodka in every system since MB7 and carbon dosing became big a loooooong time ago.

The reality, the MB7 isn't doing anything. It's all the vodka. My current system was started like all the others. After a year I discontinued use of MB7 to see if anything changed. Vodka only.

2 years later, nothing has changed.

I don't think you will find anything even close to scientific that you could rely on to prove any of these bacteria products are worth using.

Everyone is just posting their own anecdotes.

 

[CBonito]

I used MB7 and Vodka in every system since MB7 and carbon dosing became big a loooooong time ago.

The reality, the MB7 isn't doing anything. It's all the vodka. My current system was started like all the others. After a year I discontinued use of MB7 to see if anything changed. Vodka only.

2 years later, nothing has changed.

I don't think you will find anything even close to scientific that you could rely on to prove any of these bacteria products are worth using.

Everyone is just posting their own anecdotes.

I agree. And you are only going to be able to support a bacteria level that the tank will support, no matter how much of that you dump in. Even vodka will only support an elevated population for a short while because it's a temporary food source. The moment you stop, they die back to pre-vodka levels.

 

[Dan_P]

i dose dr tims eco balance weekly and biodigist prodibio pro, bi weekly. have been for a year now. tank looks amazing. is it due to the bb i dose? cant say. does bb bacteria dosing help? i cant say. but i have had zero outbreaks that are bb related like cyano etc.

do you dose bb? weekly or bi weekly. i see alot of the big names doing it. so it cant be snake oil those guys are smart.

Dosing bacteria still seems like a fad with little or no science to back up the claims. Big names can still succumb to delusional thinking, so, yeah, bottle bacteria can still be snake oil.

But, it doesn’t seem to be harmful, so, dose your favorite product and see what happens.

 

[jda]

I cannot think of a single decade old successful reef that has needed to use BB. I am sure that there are some. I does not likely hurt, so use it if it makes you feel better - better than spending you money on stupid stuff like taxes and insurance.

I cannot understand the logic of a few strains in a bottle vs massive quantity that you could get from a diversity pack from IPSF or some real ocean live rock. To each their own.

 

[taricha]

I dose no bottled bacteria and my sandbed has been nice and white - cyano and nuisance algae free - consistently for a year or so. I also have never vacuumed the sandbed in like 5-10 years.

Is it because of all the bacteria I don't add? maybe!

(my rocks have consistent GHA on it, so I'm not giving advice there.)

 

[TWYOUNG]

I began dosing bacteria after encountering dinoflagellates three months in. I have used MB7 since then,(one year ago), and am currently also using Dr Tims EcoBalance and Pro Bio F. I've tried to rotate through products to provide diversity and have previously used Live Rock Enhance, Reef Enhance, and AF LifeSource mud.
Eighteen months in the tank is looking great so I plan on either stopping all except perhaps MB7. If any of this has helped my tanks diversity and microbiome I have no idea. The only thing I can see directly is an immediate ORP drop of 60 to 70 when I add PRO BIO F which returns to baseline within a couple hours. So there's definitely "some" chemical in it as that response would seem to be far too rapid to be biological.

 

[jackson6745]

Back in the day we used Microbe-lift Special blend for a 6 week cycle to eradicate cyano. It worked for many including myself. Whether or not the bacteria of any of these bottled bacteria supplements proliferate in a system, I think the 'dusting' layer that it leaves behind does fight off various bacteria that end up on rocks + sand, white film on glass etc....Some supplements also seem to have a flocculant effect in the water column. I never noticed it much with zeobak, but with special blend and MB7 it's pretty apparent within an hour of dosing. FYI I noticed even more water clarity for carbon sources whether is was vodka, vinegar, nopox, prodibio bioptim, or TM bacto.