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

[Miller535]

That line of argument was always very persuasive, and in hindsight it seems blindingly obvious.

Let me turn it around another way. We add all kinds of goodies into our systems, and we keep adding it daily. We also have hundreds of strains of bacteria that come into our systems through livestock, rock, sand, algae (400 strains on average in the core aquarium microbiome see aquabiomics).
And yet, I'm going to buy a bottle of a handful of kinds of bacteria. And I hope that bottle is going to have the bacteria in it that will eat goodies that none of the other hundreds of strains in my tank every day are capable of eating.
That's a really big ask for a bottle!
oh, and also despite the fact that those bacteria in the bottle can presumably eat goodies that nobody else eats and that I'll keep adding those goodies every day, the bacteria will all die, and I'll have to get more of them.
What an unlikely proposition!

For sure! I totally agree! Yet I keep adding MB7 every week. Even though there's no discernable difference. Just out of sheer hope and other people's anecdotal claims

 

[Dan_P]

That line of argument was always very persuasive, and in hindsight it seems blindingly obvious.

Let me turn it around another way. We add all kinds of goodies into our systems, and we keep adding it daily. We also have hundreds of strains of bacteria that come into our systems through livestock, rock, sand, algae (400 strains on average in the core aquarium microbiome see aquabiomics).
And yet, I'm going to buy a bottle of a handful of kinds of bacteria. And I hope that bottle is going to have the bacteria in it that will eat goodies that none of the other hundreds of strains in my tank every day are capable of eating.
That's a really big ask for a bottle!
oh, and also despite the fact that those bacteria in the bottle can presumably eat goodies that nobody else eats and that I'll keep adding those goodies every day, the bacteria will all die, and I'll have to get more of them.
What an unlikely proposition!

Shoot! No Santa Claus.

I haven’t poured my bottle of WasteAway down the drain yet, thinking there is one more experiment to conduct.

 

[SMSREEF]

Has anyone grown Waste Away or microbacter7 in some sterile saltwater with carbon, nitratre and phosphate; and figured out if there are any bacteria in the product?

 

[taricha]

Has anyone grown Waste Away or microbacter7 in some sterile saltwater with carbon, nitratre and phosphate; and figured out if there are any bacteria in the product?

That's what I did here in experiment 8. The WA showed nothing (boiled and raw no difference) , but a drop of aquarium water from the sump cultured plenty of cloudy bacteria.

my initial post.

Experiment 8: on day 9 when the containers with waste away (boiled and raw) were equally clear, but those that had a drop of tank water added went quite cloudy - I also did direct microscope observation to confirm that the cloudiness was living microorganisms.

(first 30 sec is from the cloudy containers, Last 40 sec is from the Waste Away containers that stayed clear.)

 

[Bob Escher]

So if this product doesn’t work, why hasn’t it been debunked and why is it still being sold by so many people and not shut down

 

[taricha]

For sure! I totally agree! Yet I keep adding MB7 every week. Even though there's no discernable difference. Just out of sheer hope and other people's anecdotal claims

MB7 in particular has a lot of reports of positive effects with it. Would love to see it tested side-by-side with raw vs boiled version of itself to see if people report the same positive effects.

So if this product doesn’t work, why hasn’t it been debunked and why is it still being sold by so many people and not shut down

Interesting question. So I felt like I needed to address that in the post quoted below. WA actually does a LOT, just not for the reason people think it does.
Quoted post below shows how well it reduced nutrients - especially N, and how similar the effect is to a carbon source, vodka.

So What DOES Waste Away Do?
Most of my posts in this thread have been showing that bacteria in Waste Away bottle seemingly don't do anything measurable, but just as importantly - the media in the WA bottle does a lot.

So here's a demo of what WA (a carbon-rich media) does in terms of nutrient reduction and comparing that with a straight carbon source, vodka.

I started with a gallon of tank water, added Fritz F/2 media at half strength and half a salifert scoop of crushed fish flake then bubbled the result for a day or two to get the water nutrients semi-stable.

Starting nutrient level: 51ppm NO3, 2.61ppm PO4
I then split it into 3 bottles that I bubbled continuously in the dark. Control got nothing, 2nd got double recommended doses of Waste Away, and the 3rd bottle got vodka that was 1/6th of the WA (approximately carbon equivalent based on earlier O2 consumption measurements)

So here's what it looks like

Stars indicate which days WA and Vodka were added.
The control became more Carbon Limited around day 5 and nutrient reduction slowed a lot.
The Waste Away and Vodka treatments behaved really similarly to each other. In Phosphate, after day 6, they stayed within about one test error of each other, though the WA was almost always the lower one.
In nitrate, the difference was a little more clear - WA was consistently lower and became (and stayed) zero/undetectable on days 11&12.

Maybe the data simply says that a little more vodka was needed to have same carbon content as the WA. But it also might suggest that Waste Away is better at lowering NO3 vs PO4 than an equivalent carbon dose. Why do I say that?
Well, a recommended dose of WA adds about 0.03ppm PO4, so my 4 double doses added ~0.24ppm PO4 total. Yet, the final WA PO4 level was the same or lower than the vodka. This indicates that more PO4 uptake is happening in the WA treatment, and therefore the NO3 uptake ought to also be higher, as the data appears to indicate it is.

Where did the nutrients go?
Biomass, mostly.
Although some N and C gasses off, most went into cells.
Every day I "skimmed" the bottles by submerging an airstone for 10 minutes and putting a paper towel at the bottle opening to absorb the foam that rose up the bottle neck. This removed a few tenths up to a mL every day. So some nutrients left by skimming.
But the biggest place the nutrients went was into bacterial growth.

This colorless filamentous fuzzy bacterial stuff was at the bottom of each bottle, and more at the bottom of the WA and Vodka bottles than the control. Also the airline for each bottle grew a biofilm thick enough to make it feel really slimy. The sides of the bottles probably have similar growth.

As far as how applicable this is, the nutrient drops here might seem extreme and the doses might seem heavy and perhaps they are. But not unheard of.
The bottles got a Carbon equivalent of 0.33mL vodka per L of water spread over 10 days.
For comparison, this Bacterial Method for Dinos (and cyano) using WA and vodka that I played with before results in a carbon equivalent of 0.35mL vodka per L of tank water spread over 6 days (and half of that is added in just 2 days)

Summary: Ongoing heavy Waste Away use can be expected to reliably create low PO4 and even lower (N-limiting) NO3 levels. This is most likely the mechanism for why Waste Away can sometimes blunt nuisance growth.

 

[mtnrunner]

So does WA work?

 

[NS Mike D]

So does WA work?

from @taricha post on page one

Summary: If there's viable effective bacteria in Waste Away that do anything important in an aquarium context, I have no idea how to prove it. All the tests that I can come up with show the opposite. On the other hand, the effects of Waste Away are easily demonstrated, but a close analysis shows that all those effects can be accounted for by the chemistry of the Waste Away media. (I have a hunch the same is true for some other bacteria products)


I think it was proposed that WA is a "carbon dosing cocktail" to explain how it works as the bacterial tests indicated otherwise. Also, it did not break down the sludge. However, carbon dosing would explain how it would limit nuisance algae from colonizing on detritus.

 

[SMSREEF]

That's what I did here in experiment 8. The WA showed nothing (boiled and raw no difference) , but a drop of aquarium water from the sump cultured plenty of cloudy bacteria.

It’s kinda crazy that they sell Waste Away as “strains of bacteria”.

I think we need to expect more of these companies because we are probably getting ripped off. Why do we not expect them to tell us what strains they use and prove they survive in the bottle?

I know I wasted a lot of money recently on bacteria in bottles hoping to fix my Dino problem. None did and it was probably because there is no real bacteria in the bottle.

UV on the other hand is working...

thanks for this thread and pointing me back to #8 @taricha

 

[Miller535]

MB7 in particular has a lot of reports of positive effects with it. Would love to see it tested side-by-side with raw vs boiled version of itself to see if people report the same positive effects.


Interesting question. So I felt like I needed to address that in the post quoted below. WA actually does a LOT, just not for the reason people think it does.
Quoted post below shows how well it reduced nutrients - especially N, and how similar the effect is to a carbon source, vodka.

Maybe MB7 can be your next test subject, hint hint. Of all the bottled "stuff" used, MB7 does seem to have the longest and most positive reputation.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

So if this product doesn’t work, why hasn’t it been debunked and why is it still being sold by so many people and not shut down

Without expressing an opinion on this product, it is not an uncommon practice in the hobby to sell things that cannot or do not match the claims, even after it has been "outed".

 

[Michael Gray]

so would MB7 or waste away help give me the edge in coolia dinos.. because im getting tired.. but havent tried dosing any bacteria.. just dosing No3 and Po4 to keep them to .1 and like 10ppm

 

[biom]

Wow, brilliant work taricha. I had issues while using Waste Away (nasty bacterial bloom) and conduct some tests but not even close to the experiment you've done. I've tried to stain the potential bacteria in the product and to check under microscope if there is Gram positive or Gram negative bacteria. First attempt was unsuccessful because there were plenty of other particles (presumably organic). Then I've tried to grow bacteria in agar with different media (urea, gelatin etc) and then to stain but no growth detected for 14 days. And my conclusion was it is just crushed organic matter, probably with micro elements and some preservatives and leave the experiment. But now while reading your results it makes a lot more sense it is complete bacterial growth media with carbon source, phosphates etc.

By the way the same results with ZeoBac of Korallen Zucht - no growth, no bacteria stained under Gram staining.

 

[Miller535]

Ironically I had just tried waste away a day before this article. And am not likely to use it again. If it is mostly carbon, then it's a rather expensive carbon, compared to like a 1/5 of Nikolai. Lol

 

[Cory]

so would MB7 or waste away help give me the edge in coolia dinos.. because im getting tired.. but havent tried dosing any bacteria.. just dosing No3 and Po4 to keep them to .1 and like 10ppm

What worked for me was a one time dose of po4 to .64ppm. My no3 was already sky high 150+

 

[taricha]

I've tried to stain the potential bacteria in the product and to check under microscope if there is Gram positive or Gram negative bacteria. First attempt was unsuccessful because there were plenty of other particles (presumably organic). Then I've tried to grow bacteria in agar with different media (urea, gelatin etc) and then to stain but no growth detected for 14 days. And my conclusion was it is just crushed organic matter, probably with micro elements and some preservatives and leave the experiment. But now while reading your results it makes a lot more sense it is complete bacterial growth media with carbon source, phosphates etc.

By the way the same results with ZeoBac of Korallen Zucht - no growth, no bacteria stained under Gram staining.

Whoa, nice.
Did you ever run across bottled bacterial products that did pass your tests (for live bacteria) ?

 

[biom]

Whoa, nice.
Did you ever run across bottled bacterial products that did pass your tests (for live bacteria) ?

Well actually no, but because I only run tests of products that were very unlikely to be a bacterial product with live bacterial strains - small volume, without distinctive smell or just crystal clear and transparent like water (like Zeo Bac and Nyos Bac) or which caused some problems in my tank (like Waste Away). But never tested for example Special Blend which smells like... ok, wastewater treatment station or One and Only.

 

[Dan_P]

So if this product doesn’t work, why hasn’t it been debunked and why is it still being sold by so many people and not shut down

I think the law is very flexible about making claims about a product, letting the market deal with it. This is especially true for a market like the aquarium hobby trade.

Debunking a product takes time. There are many loop holes to close. Finding two bottles that do not seem to contain live bacteria is just meeting the entry requirements to the “bust the product myth” game.

 

[Michael Gray]

I can't keep my po4 over .1. It drops by the time I get home to .048s. Rocks are getting covered in hair. But Dino's still showing up on sand

 

[DrTim]

Hello All:

Here are my comments to this post.

You want to test my products fine. How about contacting me so you can design a series of tests that actually mean something. I know you might learn something and have to change you bias and pre-conceived notions - that's being open minded and willing to learn.

I willingly share my experience and knowledge - all you have to do is ask and be patience as I have a few others things to do. No, I am not going to give you the technical secrets I have learned in over 30 years of growing bacteria but I can save you a lot of wasted time and effort and you could have done something meaningful.

As it is this is just a waste.

*************************************************************

The tester asks at the end of the original post “Did I miss anything”

The answer is: Yes, you missed everything.

The results of this series of tests is what a microbiologist or person experienced in the culturing and bottling of bacteria would expect.

The conclusions are completely wrong because they rely on the incorrect interpretation of the results.

Furthermore, since these tests/results masquerade as ‘science’ they ought to be critically reviewed as one does with real science. Which I will do and show that the experimental designed is flawed in mostly every case.

Basically, as I will point out, when all is considered every conclusion in this post is bogus which is not surprising as the person doing the testing has no knowledge, experience or capability to correctly design and conduct the experiments.

Why the results are the way they are – the short answer is that the wrong concentration of bacteria was used in nearly every case.

Why is this important? Because in order to successfully have bacteria survive long periods of time in a bottle you need to add preservatives to the liquid. The preservatives keep the bacteria in the dormant spore form. If you didn’t add preservatives the bottle would eventually blow-up on the shelf because of the gases produced. Bacteria cannot be kept in pure water (deionized or distilled water) due to the osmotic difference between the water and the bacteria cell, the bacteria die. So the water has to have some hardness, alkalinity, salt, etc. in it. If you put bacteria in this water in a bottle the bacteria will first consume the oxygen, then nitrate, then sulfide and so forth as the redox value of the water drops. At each stage gas is produced. So you don’t want the bacteria to sporulate while in the bottle. To prevent this you use preservatives.

The dosage for Waste-Away is 10 ml per 10 gallons or 1 ml per gallon or 1 ml per 3,785 ml or 0.00026 ml of Waste-Away per ml of water.

While the amount of Waste-Away used in the various tests was not always disclosed chances are pretty high it was a lot more than 0.00026 ml/ml.

There is a reason we state what amount to use – to dilute out the preservative so the cells will activate. So another error in this testing the using too much liquid – more is not better.

So:
Experiment 1 - added too much Waste-Away solution
Experiment 2 - added too much Waste-Away solution
Experiment 3 - not applicable, I think
Experiment 4 – probably too much Waste-Away solution added – (but a dosage is not given but ‘repeated dosed of WA’ ) in fact so little information on the methods of this test are given – see below
Experiment 5 - no dosage data given
Experiment 6 - no dosage data given, assume this is undiluted liquid from the bottle
Experiment 7 - chemical analysis of correctly diluted liquid, no culturing done
Experiment 8 - added too much Waste-Away solution


So in Experiments where dosing is given too much Waste-Away solution was added but this series of test also suffer from multiple errors in basic experimental design:

Experiment 1 – There is no positive control. The tester (and reader) assume the aquarium grunge can be degraded. But science does not assume. We do not know if the material can be degraded. There is always some material left that cannot be further degraded. No product was able to degrade this – maybe it’s not the products but the design.

Experiment 2 – Again no positive control and how do you know you have the right micro-nutrients available to the bacteria. Unless you can show that something can degrade the material you have shown nothing.

Experiment 3 – What is the significance of this test. The liquid does not contain significant amounts of orthophosphate or nitrate. That is by design. But in eyes of the tester is this good or bad – we don’t know.

Experiment 4 – We don’t know the dosage but “repeated doses are given” and in any case the chart makes no sense. How could anything consume 20, 40 or 60 ppm oxygen? Water does not hold that much oxygen. There is not enough information on the methods to know anything about this test. Yes, the lines look nice but what do they really mean?

Experiment 5 – there is no positive control. Plus shouldn’t the oxygen concentration start high on day 0 (the water is oxygen saturated) and as bacteria activity increases, consuming oxygen, the line should drop not increase over time. The tester says the “consumption of organics” but did not measure organics and has not shown that any method they use is a substitute of organic consumption determination.

Experiment 6 – they don’t wiggle – no, because the bacteria are still in spore form. This is another meaningless result.

Experiment 7 – seems to be the same as Experiment 3 but no methods are given

Experiment 8 – Again no positive control that shows that the made-up ‘bacteria-freindly (sic) media can actually culture bacteria. This is an assumption and we all know what assuming does. Where are the measurements from day 0, 1, 2, 3 and 4? Why aren’t they given? It is assumed the aquarium water has bacteria but this is not actually proven. Maybe the media was insufficient and the aquarium water added needed micro-nutrients and that caused the cloudiness by growing bacteria already in the vials. There is no way to tell.

In summary, the lack of basic microbiology knowledge and how bacteria are preserved in bottles combined with poor experiment design renders the conclusions of these test worthless.