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I don't know for sure, haven't done any testing on it. Educated guess based on the following bits of info.How were you able to find out the bacterial species within microbacter xlm? Did you find it yourself (i.e. you analyzed it) or did brightwell mention it?
- bottle bacteria, myth or fact thread found only Biospira, One and Only, and Fritz to do nitrification without carbon source. All the other products required fish food to process ammonia (heterotrophs). MB XLM wasn't tested.
- Brightwell suggests using qwickcycle as a food source for XLM, and claims that it is not simply ammonium chloride, and that it claims to have other needed nutrients besides ammonia. (autotroph nitrifiers do great on just ammonia drops).
- the reported behavior by the OP, no ammonia decrease with a lot of waiting, but some sign of nitrification when fish flake was added (this is seen repeatedly in the myth or fact thread).
-Brightwell instructions that it's very important no other bacteria (live sand) be present.
If this is accurate, it is probably because live sand and other heterotroph bacteria could compete for the carbon and make it unavailable to the heterotrophic nitrifiers in XLM."5) Do not use live sand and particularly DO NOT USE dry seeded artificial live rock until cycling is complete. There are no dry bacteria species that will be compatible with this nitrifying bacteria product or that are useful to cycle an aquarium at all! To use a dry bacteria will only lengthen the time it takes to cycle by many weeks and increase your work many times! ... Note: What to do if you must use live sand or dry seeded live rock - go ahead and use them with the MicrōBacter Start XLM, just realize the cycle will be impeded. It will take more XLM to seed the system (double the dose if you can) and the cycle will likely take 2 to 4 weeks longer to complete because you are working against the XLM, but when completed, will work just fine."
Autotrophic nitrifiers do not care if you have heterotroph bacteria around. Biospira works just fine when added to live sand or media that already has heterotrophs.
(of course the above explanation from Brightwell may not be accurate, but just gives a wide excuse for a product to not function as it's expected.)