Dr tims waste away bacteria

Chad Jarnigan · Mar 29, 2021

I bought some dr tims waste away bacteria and out of curiosity I wanted to look at it under a microscope... I found no bacteria at all.. has anyone else ever checked this?

Azedenkae · Mar 29, 2021

Chad Jarnigan said:
I bought some dr tims waste away bacteria and out of curiosity I wanted to look at it under a microscope... I found no bacteria at all.. has anyone else ever checked this?

I guess this should go without saying but, did you shake the bottle very well before checking?

If so, welp. I mean, if the concentration of bacteria is relatively low, it might take some time to find a spot with one, but I have never tried looking for these microbes under the microscope so don't know how often they should be seen or even what size they are. Some microbes can be pretty freaking small.

shootingstar_reef · Mar 29, 2021

Bacteria are difficult to see under a microscope even under a 40X objevtive. They will appear as floating specks.

brandon429 · Mar 29, 2021

Taricha did a full study on it one sec

brandon429 · Mar 29, 2021

Waste Away: Is it really bacterial? Or chemical? What does it do?

[Edits for clarity - 4/21 - shown in brackets] I've been looking into debris that accumulates in the sand (Dan's Thread for that discussion) in our tanks and ways to "clean it up" whatever that means. In the process Waste Away by Dr Tim and similar "grunge-eating" products became of interest...

www.reef2reef.com

shootingstar_reef · Mar 29, 2021

Do you know what magnification they used? I didn't see it in the post, and I am familiar with what bacteria look like under a microscope, and I am skeptical about that post.

brandon429 · Mar 29, 2021

400x I didn't know it was possible to see bacteria without oil immersion microscopy but they have updated ways apparently, I didn't know this. T is a solid scientist for sure