Microbacter7 - does it actually do anything?

[DmitryB]

So is there any kind of consensus about a product like Microbacter7? We all know what Brightwell claims, but have there been any "studies" on whether this does anything at all? Is it worth to keep spending money or is it just a false sense of security? It's hard to prove a negative, but has anybody really seen a positive? I can't quite tell, to be frank, and that money could be spent on something else, right?

 

[exnisstech]

I can only say when I stopped using it nothing changed in the tank that I could see. It may be useful during and shorty after cycling but I don't feel the need to add bottled bacteria after that. I've ran enough tanks to know it's not needed. Maybe it's beneficial maybe not. There have been several people that have tested various bottled bacteria and posted here. I've only skimmed a few threads but didn't read anything that convinced me there was any reason for me to continue using it.

 

[JonasRoman]

So is there any kind of consensus about a product like Microbacter7? We all know what Brightwell claims, but have there been any "studies" on whether this does anything at all? Is it worth to keep spending money or is it just a false sense of security? It's hard to prove a negative, but has anybody really seen a positive? I can't quite tell, to be frank, and that money could be spent on something else, right?

My view of this is that all such additions are in most cases totally pointless. Only exception is in the beginning of a tank, where addition of bacteria may speed up mature process some.
I work with human biology (surgeon) and there is absolutely no evidence at all of any kind that dosing "good" bacteria can compete out bad ones or cure any diseases. We have antibiotics for that...
Also, I have seen studies of those products with an extremely variation of what it really contains...not what the bottle promise.
I do not think it hurts though, but in most cases probaly waste of money.

Jonas

 

[Dan_P]

If you go by the outrageous claims test, you would be right in calling BS on bacteria additives, the probiotics of the hobby world. While the premise of altering the bacteria population’s metabolic capabilities to deal with an aquarium “condition”, bottled bacteria suppliers fail to explain what capabilities your system will gain and most importantly utterly fail to guarantee that the bottled bacteria even contains bacteria with that capability. You will also have noticed, bottled bacteria suppliers never provide any proof that the product works. Just based on the lack of information about bottled bacteria, you might choose not to touch it with a 10 foot barge pole.

There might be a benefit of adding a specific bacteria genus to deal with a “condition”, like when @Randy Holmes-Farley added purple bacteria to discourage cyanobacteria growth. I don’t doubt that this was also a waste of money but at least the rational was more defensible than believing a manufacturer’s outrageous claims.

There is anecdotal evidence that bottled bacteria have an effect, but never any proof that the effect would not have been observed after dosing just the sterile liquid.

 

[Mr. Mojo Rising]

I'm in the snake oil camp too. Bottled bacteria can never compare to real bacteria. Just add a new coral to your tank, its the best and most fun way to add multitudes of new and different bacteria and biodiversity to your tank.

 

[Michael Hughes]

I haven't used microbacter 7, and probably never will as I generally agree with the consensus above.

But I will say that I skeptically dosed MicrobacterClean to see what would happen with a bad cyanobacteria outbreak I had been dealing with.

The theory here is that the bacteria in MicroBacter clean theoretically colonize the same surfaces as cyanobacteria, thus preventing them from growing on those surfaces. I'd seen repeated anecdotal cases on R2R of this helping. I tried it out of curiosity, not expecting much to happen. Within a few weeks the cyano was completely gone and has never returned.

I'm not saying bottled bacteria is a cure-all, just that in this specific case, it really did seem to outcompete the cyano.

 

[ChrisfromBrick]

the only bottled bacteria i trust are the ones that are kept cold like fritz turbo. I have used clean as well and it seemed to work well for my first cyano problem but not my second one.