Not all Cycling Bacteria are created equal. Who's who, and what do they need?

[brandon429]

@Dr. Reef

so glad to have that summary. Your cycling thread is in my top two favorites of all time, I cannot count the # of posters I've sent there to learn. We had Dr. Tim posting there, one of the rarest times I've seen him post and you collected really great statements from him about unknown microbial abilities (namely the ability of filter cells to step up and carry much more waste, instantly, without having to add to numbers)

your results found in that thread really helped us know ideal cycling bac brands to recommend, and nobody's tank has crashed on me yet

I am very very happy to see T work some results and add to yours, this is just great in my book.

 

[MnFish1]

I am feeling hot in here. lol
@MnFish1 @brandon429 I love you both, I personally know you both and I have worked on such expoeriments with you both. And I know on what side fo the coin you both tend to lean. Both are good people so lets share in the good info.

to OP, So i did just that few years back and @brandon429 Brightwell MB something i dont remember the name was part of the study.
There were 12 products if i recal. 8 from USA and 3 from Europe and 1 from Hong Kong.
Fritz Turbostart 900 ranked highest in dropping ammoni to 0 in any situation i throw at it. from off the chart to 0 in few days while others strugged or failed or stalled. Then more controlled 4-6ppm to 0 in 3 days in a 5 gal tank.
2nd position was tied between Bio Spira and Dr Tims one and only. Only problem with Bio Spira is to get a fresh bottle as I was lucky enough for IO to send me fresh bottle for free to test, hobbyists may not be that lucky.
Dr Tims worked well as well with no freshness issue like bio spira.

These above 3 I can confidently say are true nitrifying bacteria in my opinion. Rest all in my opnion and per my study seems like they are hetrtrophic or in simple terms sludge removers.

These other products stalled in sterile tank with just ammonia in them. Thats how I conducted the experiments. Hetrotrophis bacteria or sludge removers need carbon and phosphurus source to survive and in my studt 5 gal tanks there wanot much for them to live off. Thus stalling every time till i introduced some fish food later on like 3-5 days of stalled cycle and they kick back in and brought ammonia back down to 0.

I think it all depends on how and how you define a cycle. If you are in a hurry to setup a tank and wat to put fish in the first day after setting up the tank then first 3 mentioned will do the job just fine. Setup a tank dose Fritz or Bio spira or Dr Tim and add fish.
Others will also do the same but intially added bacteria will fade out over time making room for true nitrifying bacteria to colonize and take over. Basicaly they keep ammonia at bay.

All products will process ammonia faster if:
1. Salinity is low more like 1.015-1.017
2. pH and Alk needs to be high
3. Carbon source needs to present like in form of food or live fish
4. Phosphurus needs to be present.

This type of cycle is INSTANT CYCLE or EMERGENCY Hospital tank type, for perfect result good old method of introducing deli shrimp or some ammonia to tank and let it stew for a month is the best robust method.

Thanks

 

[MnFish1]

I am feeling hot in here. lol
@MnFish1 @brandon429 I love you both, I personally know you both and I have worked on such expoeriments with you both. And I know on what side fo the coin you both tend to lean. Both are good people so lets share in the good info.

to OP, So i did just that few years back and @brandon429 Brightwell MB something i dont remember the name was part of the study.
There were 12 products if i recal. 8 from USA and 3 from Europe and 1 from Hong Kong.
Fritz Turbostart 900 ranked highest in dropping ammoni to 0 in any situation i throw at it. from off the chart to 0 in few days while others strugged or failed or stalled. Then more controlled 4-6ppm to 0 in 3 days in a 5 gal tank.
2nd position was tied between Bio Spira and Dr Tims one and only. Only problem with Bio Spira is to get a fresh bottle as I was lucky enough for IO to send me fresh bottle for free to test, hobbyists may not be that lucky.
Dr Tims worked well as well with no freshness issue like bio spira.

These above 3 I can confidently say are true nitrifying bacteria in my opinion. Rest all in my opnion and per my study seems like they are hetrtrophic or in simple terms sludge removers.

These other products stalled in sterile tank with just ammonia in them. Thats how I conducted the experiments. Hetrotrophis bacteria or sludge removers need carbon and phosphurus source to survive and in my studt 5 gal tanks there wanot much for them to live off. Thus stalling every time till i introduced some fish food later on like 3-5 days of stalled cycle and they kick back in and brought ammonia back down to 0.

I think it all depends on how and how you define a cycle. If you are in a hurry to setup a tank and wat to put fish in the first day after setting up the tank then first 3 mentioned will do the job just fine. Setup a tank dose Fritz or Bio spira or Dr Tim and add fish.
Others will also do the same but intially added bacteria will fade out over time making room for true nitrifying bacteria to colonize and take over. Basicaly they keep ammonia at bay.

All products will process ammonia faster if:
1. Salinity is low more like 1.015-1.017
2. pH and Alk needs to be high
3. Carbon source needs to present like in form of food or live fish
4. Phosphurus needs to be present.

This type of cycle is INSTANT CYCLE or EMERGENCY Hospital tank type, for perfect result good old method of introducing deli shrimp or some ammonia to tank and let it stew for a month is the best robust method.

Question - of the brands you tested - just for ammonification - which worked best. I.e. without any other chemicals except ammonia

 

[GARRIGA]

I’m more interested in testing if the use of products from various sources creates a biome equal to or better than live rock. Why I added different products but no clue on results. Just assumed good idea. Be great if we could convert dry rock to what we got in the 80s when we had no clue it wasn’t just bacteria like found in waste water treatment. Might solve the now dreaded ugly stage. Especially since we can now test for these assumptions.

 

[LRT]

@Dr. Reef

so glad to have that summary. Your cycling thread is in my top two favorites of all time, I cannot count the # of posters I've sent there to learn. We had Dr. Tim posting there, one of the rarest times I've seen him post and you collected really great statements from him about unknown microbial abilities (namely the ability of filter cells to step up and carry much more waste, instantly, without having to add to numbers)

your results found in that thread really helped us know ideal cycling bac brands to recommend, and nobody's tank has crashed on me yet

I am very very happy to see T work some results and add to yours, this is just great in my book.

Agreed this is awesome and I can't wait to see the findings in this thread!

I'm open to suggestions for starter bacterial products to test that may be interesting or widely used in the hobby. Here's the ones I intend to do at the moment.

BioSpira, Dr Tim's One and Only, Fritz turbostart will be used as positive controls. (If they don't work, then something in the experiment has gone badly sideways.)
API Quick Start
MicroBacter Start XLM
MicroBacter 7
Aquavitro Seed
Seachem Stability
TLC StartSmart Complete (very gimmicky one that my LFS stocks a ton of)
Nature's Ocean (live bagged sand)
Caribsea Arag-Alive (live bagged sand)
PNS Substrate Sauce

Thank you for another awesome thread. I wouldn't want to be a manufacturer selling "posion" or "magic" in a bottle these days.

 

[MnFish1]

I hope that the people replicating the experiment - are actually doing so. In other words - for example - a physics teacher vs a microbiologist may make a difference

This was an inappropriate statement. And I apoligize to @taricha. Anyone can post an experiment - and - IMHO - I made a somewhat mean comment. That said - IMHO - this topic is best approached from a biologic perspective.

 

[ZoWhat]

Why do Reefers has this deep seeded need to discover something that no one has ever thought of?

Its FASCINATING to watch

 

[MnFish1]

Whenever a post has "My hypothesis" ..... I stop reading..... lol

Why do Reefers has this deep seeded need to discover something that no one has ever thought of?

In this case its the reef experiment section - so questioning makes sense (to most people)

 

[taricha]

A couple of points.
The concept of this thread is using @Dr. Reef work as the starting point. What he found about the heterotrophs has been fascinating me for a long time, and I've had an itch to take a look at these myself ever since. Being able to take fish food and process it away to essentially no ammonia is super useful, and bacteria that can do that could have wide application.
There are some popular (by use) products that weren't tested - and it'd be nice to have clarity on what kind they are.
I also will be able to make some measurements to give hard numbers to ammonia, NO2, NO3 to further distinguish how these groups are behaving.

 

[Dr. Reef]

Question - of the brands you tested - just for ammonification - which worked best. I.e. without any other chemicals except ammonia

For sterile tank with nothing but saltwater in it and ammonia,
fritz turbostart 900 hands down, best product. It doesn't care for pH alk phos or salinity etc. It simply works and reduces ammonia.

Bio Spira and Dr Tim also work but are slower. For example if Turbostart took 3 days to go from 5ppm to 0, other 2 took 4 to 5 days.

 

[MnFish1]

A couple of points.
The concept of this thread is using @Dr. Reef work as the starting point. What he found about the heterotrophs has been fascinating me for a long time, and I've had an itch to take a look at these myself ever since. Being able to take fish food and process it away to essentially no ammonia is super useful, and bacteria that can do that could have wide application.
There are some popular (by use) products that weren't tested - and it'd be nice to have clarity on what kind they are.
I also will be able to make some measurements to give hard numbers to ammonia, NO2, NO3 to further distinguish how these groups are behaving.

Awesome

 

[taricha]

This more or less guided my choices of products I want to test. I'm willing to add others like I said.
https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/w...cling-bacteria-do-people-actually-use.987755/

Ok, this tells me basically what I was wanting to know.
Data from the big "Cycling an Aquarium" thread.
products used over the last 35 pages:

Fritz: 9
One and Only: 20
Biospira: 5
--------------------
Aquaforest Bio S: 2
MB Start XLM: 8
MB7: 9
API Quick Start: 3
TLC Startsmart: 1
Seachem Stability: 5
MicrobeLift Special blend: 2
Nutri SeaWater: 1
Aquavitro Seed: 1

Bag of Live sand: 3

 

[C4ctus99]

I meant - exactly what was shown in the prior experiment. 1. Most people equate cycling with nitrifying bacteria (oligotrophy). Nitrosomonas, etc etc etc. 2. the previous experiment showed that many 'bacteria products' for cycling PROBABLY contained heterotrophs - since they only result in ammonia reduction in the presence of other substances (containing PO4 and C. BTW - You've used Seachem "what" - I have used Stability multiple times as well,. I was merely trying to point out that there is a difference between autotrophs and heterotrophs - and when one does the experiment, one needs to be attentive to those issues

Ah, I think that’s probably something causing more issues than noticed. When I think cycled, I think ammonia is being processed consistently and I can add fish, regardless of the way it is processed.

Definitions are important and I guess that’s why when I saw dr reef saying other products are not very useful it was for a fishless cycle situation, as opposed to fish in cycles too.

Seachem stability, as mentioned by taricha in a prior post. Sorry, should have specified

 

[taricha]

What do you mean by useful for cycling? With fish, without fish, one week without them with? Or just general cycling?

It depends on how you define cycling - if it is to establish (robust) nitrification, then only some products are suitable FritzZyme, Bio-Spira, etc.

Definitions are important

Yes. Absolutely. By "cycling" I mean specifically - control of ammonia either introduced initially in a fishless cycle or ammonia produced by fish food breakdown. This is a good arena in which to test bacterial products because the goals are clear, easily testable, and verifiable in multiple independent chemical methods.
Testing "grunge eater" heterotroph products is much murkier because even the goals are ambiguous, and vary from one hobbyist to the next - and the tests for those goals are far more technically difficult (but also doable).

I’m more interested in testing if the use of products from various sources creates a biome equal to or better than live rock.

That is a very interesting question. But it's much fuzzier to answer - even if I had two very different sets of microbiome data and put them in front of a microbiologist and said "which one is better?" I think they'd reject the question and say that's not how microbiologists think about these microbiomes at all (barring pathogens or nitrogen cyclers).
For this sort of hard to interpret (but super interesting) speculative questions, here's a thread all about that.
https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/b...y-10-month-microbiome-data-from-brstv.974070/

But I like your live rock idea and do think I want to add the fakest looking purple painted concrete "live" rock from my local Petco as one of the tested media - as a representative of the worst you can do buying live rock. And see where it fits among the bottles and bagged sands.

I can't wait to see how Ken's substrate doser tests out.

PNS Substrate Sauce is included mostly for my entertainment and because I've been wanting to play with it. Its likes and dislikes are so different from the others that I think it could be a fun exercise in getting the job done in a totally different way.

Thus stalling every time till i introduced some fish food later on like 3-5 days of stalled cycle and they kick back in and brought ammonia back down to 0.

Yep. You talked about adding 10-15 pellets of crushed up fish food. Any chance you still know what the specific food was?

I also noticed that if I dose just ammonia, sometimes I may see a decline - sharply in fact, but then complete and sudden absence of any further decrease. Again, in line with the idea that there are heterotrophs and they could rapidly consume ammonia in conjunction with organic substrates, but then the moment organic substrates are depleted, ammonia is no longer consumed.

So yeah, totally agreed that one has to be very considerate about how one does the experiments.

Yep. And since some bottled bac are delivered in a very blank media and some in a very rich media with digestible organics, I will be stripping the media from the bacteria to see how they do without it - so what they are fed will be the same from one to the next.

 

[MnFish1]

Yes. Absolutely. By "cycling" I mean specifically - control of ammonia either introduced initially in a fishless cycle or ammonia produced by fish food breakdown. This is a good arena in which to test bacterial products because the goals are clear, easily testable, and verifiable in multiple independent chemical methods.
Testing "grunge eater" heterotroph products is much murkier because even the goals are ambiguous, and vary from one hobbyist to the next - and the tests for those goals are far more technically difficult (but also doable).


That is a very interesting question. But it's much fuzzier to answer - even if I had two very different sets of microbiome data and put them in front of a microbiologist and said "which one is better?" I think they'd reject the question and say that's not how microbiologists think about these microbiomes at all (barring pathogens or nitrogen cyclers).
For this sort of hard to interpret (but super interesting) speculative questions, here's a thread all about that.
https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/b...y-10-month-microbiome-data-from-brstv.974070/

But I like your live rock idea and do think I want to add the fakest looking purple painted concrete "live" rock from my local Petco as one of the tested media - as a representative of the worst you can do buying live rock. And see where it fits among the bottles and bagged sands.


PNS Substrate Sauce is included mostly for my entertainment and because I've been wanting to play with it. Its likes and dislikes are so different from the others that I think it could be a fun exercise in getting the job done in a totally different way.

Yep. You talked about adding 10-15 pellets of crushed up fish food. Any chance you still know what the specific food was?



Yep. And since some bottled bac are delivered in a very blank media and some in a very rich media with digestible organics, I will be stripping the media from the bacteria to see how they do without it - so what they are fed will be the same from one to the next.

My guess is that the reason certain bacteria are sent without certain chemicals is that they are not needed, whereas the other ones require what they are shipped in to work properly. If I were doing the experiment, I would consider doing it both ways - the way you propose as compared to just using the instructions.

Stability, for example is a product which I presume contains mostly heterotrophs/spores - since it has a long shelf life at room temperature.


@GARRIGA - in my experiment with live rock - within 24 - 48 hours, it processed ammonia at 2 ppm.

@GARRIGA EDIT PS - additionally, it was 2 ppm/24 hours. However, if you take a fish and bacteria on day one product, there is a question in my mind whether the heterotrophs work on the initial ammonia - after which, slowly - autotrophs (ammonia requiring) bacteria come in randomly.

 

[taricha]

Here's a data teaser. Back in March, I got some of the ARC Reef Pink and Purple Coralline algae.

"Coralline Algae in a Bottle ® Purple Helix
Contains both live coralline algae spores and nitrifying bacteria to help you quickly add beautiful colors to any aquarium."
"Pink Fusion® Coralline Algae in a Bottle contains 6 species of live coralline algae spores in varying pink varieties along with beneficial nitrifying bacteria."

So I wanted to know if these were the classic nitrifiers who need only ammonia or not.
Unfortunately I got my bottles at the printed expiration date. They certainly weren't fast but, they indeed contain these bacteria in the category with Biospira, Fritz, and One and Only....
Both replicate bottles of purple and replicates of pink dropped ammonia in the dark on an orbital shaker while producing significant NO2. NO2 was produced for the first time between day 10-15. Sterile Control and tank water did nothing to ammonia over the 20 days time frame.

I also took a more concentrated amount and repeated. A decent portion of the solid material from the ARC bottles in small volume of media.

It was a bit faster, but not too much.

ammonia noticeably oxidized to NO2 stating within a week, and NO2 oxidation was clearly occuring by day 14. (ammonia method used in these were very approximate, so detection of NO2 was much more sensitive.)

The low amount may mean the nitrifiers are just a byprodut of how they get coralline material into the bottle, but regardless - it is there.

So maybe there are more products than just Fritz, Biospira, and One and Only with these types.

 

[taricha]

The test results the other day resulted in this pleasing array of tiny colored cuvettes, so I thought I'd take a pic and share.

 

[MnFish1]

Here's a data teaser. Back in March, I got some of the ARC Reef Pink and Purple Coralline algae.

"Coralline Algae in a Bottle ® Purple Helix
Contains both live coralline algae spores and nitrifying bacteria to help you quickly add beautiful colors to any aquarium."
"Pink Fusion® Coralline Algae in a Bottle contains 6 species of live coralline algae spores in varying pink varieties along with beneficial nitrifying bacteria."

So I wanted to know if these were the classic nitrifiers who need only ammonia or not.
Unfortunately I got my bottles at the printed expiration date. They certainly weren't fast but, they indeed contain these bacteria in the category with Biospira, Fritz, and One and Only....
Both replicate bottles of purple and replicates of pink dropped ammonia in the dark on an orbital shaker while producing significant NO2. NO2 was produced for the first time between day 10-15. Sterile Control and tank water did nothing to ammonia over the 20 days time frame.

I also took a more concentrated amount and repeated. A decent portion of the solid material from the ARC bottles in small volume of media.

It was a bit faster, but not too much.

ammonia noticeably oxidized to NO2 stating within a week, and NO2 oxidation was clearly occuring by day 14. (ammonia method used in these were very approximate, so detection of NO2 was much more sensitive.)

The low amount may mean the nitrifiers are just a byprodut of how they get coralline material into the bottle, but regardless - it is there.

So maybe there are more products than just Fritz, Biospira, and One and Only with these types.

Did you remember a control with nothing? I.e no bacteria - 10-14 days seems long to me. In other words none of them did anything - or was that your conclusion?

 

[MnFish1]

Your results contradict other experiments - I think - though it's not completely clear what you're actually measuring/doing. The question would be - how did every vial start at 2PPM exactly? Because - if you follow the directions for Dr. Tims - it can often be much higher - assuming you used a measured amount of ammonia.

 

[MnFish1]

I'm open to suggestions for starter bacterial products to test that may be interesting or widely used in the hobby. Here's the ones I intend to do at the moment.

BioSpira, Dr Tim's One and Only, Fritz turbostart will be used as positive controls. (If they don't work, then something in the experiment has gone badly sideways.)
API Quick Start
MicroBacter Start XLM
MicroBacter 7
Aquavitro Seed
Seachem Stability
TLC StartSmart Complete (very gimmicky one that my LFS stocks a ton of)
Nature's Ocean (live bagged sand)
Caribsea Arag-Alive (live bagged sand)
PNS Substrate Sauce

I would have used Fritz 9000 - which has already been proven to be one of the best. It was posted on the site a year or more ago