What "add fish on day 1" tank starter / cycling bacteria do people actually use?

[Kenneth Wingerter]

Awesome thanks.

I tink i used 4 drops per 5 gallon bucket of quick cycle daily to keep things going.

Thanks again. No measured changes in NH4/NO2/NO3 and PO4 over that time period? Any way to guess the difference of temperature between buckets? How many buckets?

 

[taricha]

What light intensity (was there light)? What water temperature? What were the beginning and ending levels of ammonia, nitrate and phosphate (and any other parameters you could provide)? Did you add any kind of organic carbon (if so, what kind(s) and how much)?

Hey Kenneth my reading of the description for the PNS substrate sauce is that it's not meant to be / replace nitrifiers, but to supplement them. It also sounds from the description like you'd expect they wouldn't do much to ammonia if given no light or organic carbon. Is that about right?

 

[Gretchacha]

Awesome thanks.

Thanks again. No measured changes in NH4/NO2/NO3 and PO4 over that time period? Any way to guess the difference of temperature between buckets? How many buckets?

I reviewed my aquarium logbook for these details. In total, I had three five-gallon buckets cycling media, a 3 gallon QT tank and 10 Gallon QT tank cycling fir coral and fish respectively. Since I use a whole-house RO system for my water, I cannot make large batches. Instead my buckets and QT tanks were started over the course if a few days, letting the salt dissolve a full 24 hours before adding any media and bacteria. Each 5 gallon bucket held about 4 gallons of water and was started with 0.8-1.0 ml QuikCycl. The first two buckets got 7.5 ml TurboStart while bucket 3 got Dr Tim’s. Salinity was 1.025 and pH 8.2. Heaters ran around 78-80 degrees. Bucket 1 and bucket 3 just had an airstone for circulation while bucket 2 had a spare pump for circulation. Bucket 3 was in front of an east facing window, buckets 1 and 2 were next to a wall. I had a small light on low intensity blue for a while after adding coralline spores, but gave up on that after learning about their lifecycle in more depth. The QT tanks had fiji pink dry sand, dry rock, some coarse ARM reactor media as gravel, 78 degree heaters, led lights on a blue/white and HOB filter circulation. They were started with TurboStart and QuikCycle. After cycling, they were further dosed with MB7 and substrate sauce. QuikCycl was added to the buckets at a rate of 1 dr per gallon to maintain. This provided about 0.25 ppm ammonia per day. The QT tanks were fed by the inhabitants food. There has never really been measurable phosphate, even now in the DT. I started dosing nitrate and phosphate I had from SeaChem from my freshwater aquascape, but even a drop would tick off the corals, so I stopped.

The Dr Tims bucket 3 just never worked. After 8 days, when it should have been cycled, the pH was down to 7.6 and the ammonia was over 6 ppm. I guess the substrate sauce has some nutrients in it for it to have gone this high. I had added some subsauce to see if I could get the cycle going. After 16 days I traded out some water and media between my buckets and added fresh turbostart to bucket 3.

What I am sharing with you was not set up as an experiment, rather it was a record of was my philosophy of starting a tank. I aimed to keep parameters in the buckets and qt tanks in the optimal range for establishing a biome. 78-82 degrees, oxygenated circulation of water 1.024-1.026 sg, pH >8.0. The goal was to establish bacterial colonies in my media before adding lights and livestock to enhance long-term stability. To that end, TurboStart clearly was helpful. Dr Tim’s from Amazon was not. I have used Dr Tim’s for freshwater, and it worked fine, even with regular straight ammonia. It does take 8+ days, though. I’m not sure if MB7 or Substrate Sauce was helpful.

I continue to aim for a robust ecosystem by supplementing a variety of copepods, rotifers, live phyto and benereef. I also occasionally add bacterial cultures such as MB7, Dr Tim’s Eco-balance, and Substrate Sauce. I still have nearly unregisterable nutrients in my tanks. In fact I just ordered fauna marin Plus NP and ESV nitrate. I had a bit of dinos last week and my coral are losing color, do I need to increase my nutrients without losing my good balance.

Here are photos I snapped just now so you can see a 2-3 month old tank using this philosophy.

 

[Kenneth Wingerter]

Hey Kenneth my reading of the description for the PNS substrate sauce is that it's not meant to be / replace nitrifiers, but to supplement them. It also sounds from the description like you'd expect they wouldn't do much to ammonia if given no light or organic carbon. Is that about right?

Yes, exactly, thank you! That is correct, they grow best with both light and organic carbon (photoheterotrophy in anaerobic environments), but can still eek out an existence with just light (e.g., photoautotrophy in anaerobic environments) or just carbon (regular ol' organoheterotrophy in dark aerobic environments). So long as they're growing, they of course remove ammonia and nitrate through assimilation. But I believe the high point of the product is its ability (Rhodopseudomonas, specifically) to perform denitrification. Its ability to degrade organic wastes is a close second, in my most humble opinion (obviously a big contrast with conventional nitrifiers). I feel very comfortable describing these microbes as 'cycling bacteria' owing to their ability to carry out both nitrogen fixation and (again, at least in the case of Rhodopseudomonas) denitrification. That being said, I prefer the term 'conditioning bacteria,' as that best describes their use in prepping new systems for the first big wave of stocking (i.e., big influx of organic wastes and nutrients, including nitrate); at that point, they'll typically have ample availability of light, nutrients and organic matter.

On a side note--one thing aquarium hobbyists often miss when relying on fishless/dry rock methods of cycling/conditioning is vitamin requirements. I'm not aware of any products that address this specifically for cycling applications. But since bacteria generally obtain vitamins from other bacteria (most importantly B complex vitamins), I can see where some complimentary combinations of live bottled microbial products could overcome that potential stumbling block. For example, quite a few nitrifiers require exogenous B12 for growth. Nitrifiers often get this B12 from certain closely associated archaea, but that particular organism is very likely scarce or absent in a newly set up aquarium system. However, both Rhodopseudomonas palustris and Rhodospirillum rubrum (the purple non-sulfur bacteria (PNSB) species in PNS Substrate Sauce) can synthesize B12. Still, R. palustris has a PABA requirement and R. rubrum a biotin requirement. These two PNSB support each other by synthesizing the other's required B vitamin. So just another small example, I think, of how a diverse microbiome can facilitate nitrogen cycling (as well as phosphorus cycling, sulfur, iron, etc.) in new systems. Obviously, live rock (with all its pros and cons) better supports this diversity, but for those who elect to go with fishless/dry rock cycling, a smart combination of complimentary microbes might go a long way.

 

[livinlifeinBKK]

@Kenneth Wingerter still hoping PNS Probio shows up in Thailand one of these days. Would love to try it!

 

[Kenneth Wingerter]

@Kenneth Wingerter still hoping PNS Probio shows up in Thailand one of these days. Would love to try it!

I know, it's long overdue! I just tried to hook up an individual in Thailand via a possible new supplier in Taiwan, but they didn't want to ship that far. Apparently international to international distribution is pretty pricey nowadays (no surprise). DM me if you know of a good/big distributor in Thailand.