Let's talk about Bacteria in a Bottle

[kpiotrowski]

And now we can talk about the voodoo magic cycle. first off I am reluctant to post this in this thread because I feel people completly new to the hobby should learn the basics first AND learn the way it has always been done AND leave the experimentation to those experinced enough to deal with the concequences when experiments fail...BUT occassionaly there is a beakthrough in the hobby and I have found one! "Fritz-zyme turbo start 900" just cycled my tank to 10ppm nitrate in 6 days! It was a dry rock set-up from start with NOTHING biologically active added except the turbo start. It took my tank from 0.5 ammonia and 0 nitrite to 0.25 ammonia and 0.25 nitrite overnight. and then ZERO ammonia or nitrite the next 5 days with a constant increase in nitrate to a solid 10ppm in 6 days.

Ihave had a mini diatom bloom( I believe) at which time I plugged in my skimmer and have skimmed enough to clear the water of the brown tinge leaving a slight brown tinge on the rock. at any rate, I have used a similar product in freashwater is why I even gave it a shot...and with starting from nothing i figured it was worth it for the experiment. I was very skeptic but at this time can only rave about the product.

I will be glad to answer any more specific questions. I will report my findings as they present any significance.

 

[akunochi]

.....prepare to be served LOL

 

[kpiotrowski]

YES sir, ....am very prepared. Will wecome some more ammonia so i actually feel like its cycling. and when (if) it does I will apply what I have been calling the rule of 1000. by coincidence only, I spent $1000 on rock, $1000 on neptune apex and have enough salt mix for 1000 gallons. elos test kits, seachem prime...but first I will go with another bottle of the turbo start. After all its the only way to know if it really works. I'll take the hit if it all blows up in the interest of others that follow.

fish are happy...kole tang is all over the place actively feeding...heck the water even tastes '' just right".


Honestly I wish I would have gave it a good hard cycle using pure ammonia ( like I told you about) becuase then I could have just done a huge water change at the end and then did a bulk order on a bunch of critters. But as it stands I will have to add livestock slowly over time.

 

[akunochi]

YES sir, ....am very prepared. Will wecome some more ammonia so i actually feel like its cycling. and when (if) it does I will apply what I have been calling the rule of 1000. by coincidence only, I spent $1000 on rock, $1000 on neptune apex and have enough salt mix for 1000 gallons. elos test kits, seachem prime...but first I will go with another bottle of the turbo start. After all its the only way to know if it really works. I'll take the hit if it all blows up in the interest of others that follow.

fish are happy...kole tang is all over the place actively feeding...heck the water even tastes '' just right".


Honestly I wish I would have gave it a good hard cycle using pure ammonia ( like I told you about) becuase then I could have just done a huge water change at the end and then did a bulk order on a bunch of critters. But as it stands I will have to add livestock slowly over time.

I am not a chemist, but I would suspect a substantial "sub-cycle" in your future. Also how in the hell did you spend 1K on your apex????? Your system is not near robust enough to demand that much hardware yet as far as I remember.

 

[kpiotrowski]

As I have said previously I am only stating my observations. do you not find it curious? I spent 1k on apex by filling the shopping cart with apex stuff and clicking the "yes drain my bank account" button. and yes my sytem does not require it as of yet...should I have waited untill it did.? and at what point would I know I needed it if I wasn't monitoring it in the first place? I'm not the type of guy who needs to loose the drag race and THEN build a better engine. I am building my enigne first! even picked up a 6500k generator tonight, ya know.....before I actually need it.

 

[akunochi]

I'm just curious about which "apex stuff" you got....

 

[kpiotrowski]

controller, pm2, lab grade ph- orp- conductivity,software,calibration solutions,probe holders, socket expansion, breakout box.

 

[mojoreef]

Hey Kpiotrowski why dont you start another thread and I will move over these posts. That way we can keep this thread on topic and then have a conversation on what your talking about? Give you a chance to explain the process

MOjo

 

[kpiotrowski]

Hey Kpiotrowski why dont you start another thread and I will move over these posts. That way we can keep this thread on topic and then have a conversation on what your talking about? Give you a chance to explain the process

MOjo

Thanks mojo, can you suggest the appropriate section where any info, good or bad, may be the most helpfull to others? as I said at the begining I really don't want my observations to mislead anyone new to think that they can throw in a bottle of this turbo start stuff and its all good from there. I am an experinced aquariast. the fact that this is my first salt venture should not be mislead anyone to assume that I have no knowledge or abilty. my focus is on the development of a good healthy system, not the cool critters that will inhabit it.

The turbo start? simply my curiosity. not an expectation of greatness to help me magically have a reef in a month. that will come as my sytem dictates to me, not as I dictate to it!

 

[mojoreef]

Actually lets just talk about it here. Ok their are a couple of things that you are saying that confirm you have not cycled.

It took my tank from 0.5 ammonia and 0 nitrite to 0.25 ammonia and 0.25 nitrite overnight. and then ZERO ammonia or nitrite the next 5 days with a constant increase in nitrate to a solid 10ppm in 6 days.

So with this, your saying that you are still cycling, as until you build up a population of denitrifing bacteria to deal with the nitrates, you kind of mid stream at best.

Ihave had a mini diatom bloom( I believe) at which time I plugged in my skimmer and have skimmed enough to clear the water of the brown tinge leaving a slight brown tinge on the rock. at any rate,

Yep dumping in bacteria in a bottle means that you are going to be dosing an amount of Phosphate as they need to keep those bacteria alive in the bottle.

 

[mojoreef]

Ok so lets look at "Fritz-zyme turbo start 900". What it is, is nitrifing bacteria which is what they label it as. SO what does nitrifing bacteria do for ya. It reduces ammonia to nitrite and nitrite to nitrate (which is what they advertise) and is what you say it has done. SO all is good and is as advertised.

So the question becomes how do you term this as a cycled?? You cant it still has to build up a population of nitrate reducing bacteria, this happens in a very oxygen depressed zone (anaerobic) now we know you cant get that in a bottle. On top of that my friend Bacteria populations of any kind are based on the ammount of food available, so unless you are deadly accurate with the ammount of bacteria in a bottle you are dosing, your going to end up with a bunch of starving bacteria, which of course will die, and when they do, I am sure algae will be their to snap it up. ANd thus you have now entered what we labeled in the article as an algae cycle.

Mojo

 

[kpiotrowski]

Ok so lets look at "Fritz-zyme turbo start 900". What it is, is nitrifing bacteria which is what they label it as. SO what does nitrifing bacteria do for ya. It reduces ammonia to nitrite and nitrite to nitrate (which is what they advertise) and is what you say it has done. SO all is good and is as advertised.

So the question becomes how do you term this as a cycled?? You cant it still has to build up a population of nitrate reducing bacteria, this happens in a very oxygen depressed zone (anaerobic) now we know you cant get that in a bottle. On top of that my friend Bacteria populations of any kind are based on the ammount of food available, so unless you are deadly accurate with the ammount of bacteria in a bottle you are dosing, your going to end up with a bunch of starving bacteria, which of course will die, and when they do, I am sure algae will be their to snap it up. ANd thus you have now entered what we labeled in the article as an algae cycle.

Mojo

yes! exactly! I agree with everything you are saying! nice to see someone understands where I am comming from. I don't belive I made claim to it being fully cycled and I do understand that it will take some time for the anearobic bacteria to build, thats not hte point. my only point is in the obsevations I have made and that untill now there is nothing to mhy knowledge that can do what the turbo start has done. and isn't this kind of amazing? hence I refer to it as voodoo magic. when my nitrates reduce under the same biopload then I will have evidence of a "full" cycle.

The well respected lfs claims they had a customer get rid of an off the charts nitrite spike overnight with this stuff.....hmmmm, so perhaps there is some actualy use for this this stuff in an emergency like, your 400 gal display cracks and you tranfer everything to a 100 gal where the ensuing ammonia spike is gonna kill it all off anyway. this stuff may proove useful! key work MAY!

 

[mojoreef]

Okay??? .........Perhaps instead of this

"Fritz-zyme turbo start 900" just cycled my tank to 10ppm nitrate in 6 days! It was a dry rock set-up from start with NOTHING biologically active added except the turbo start.

I dosed bacteria and saved myself a week or so? Gives a better impression then the first one.

take care

Mojo

 

[jloLC]

Great info about cyling! I think I'll just stick with the shrimp though, haha!

 

[kpiotrowski]

been away from home for 2 days so we will see what i am in for tonght. im just in disbelief that they actualy have a product that can take you straight to nitrate and avoid the large ammonia and nitrite spikes.

 

[kpiotrowski]

Okay??? .........Perhaps instead of this



I dosed bacteria and saved myself a week or so? Gives a better impression then the first one.

take care

Mojo

I'm not trying to give any misleading impression. but was has happend so for after dosing bacteria 8 days ago is my fish have not had to cylce in any ammonia or nitrite. my nitrates came very quickly and are on their way down from a high of only 15 and now just under 10... so far. as I said before the indications for this product are many and may be a tank saver if you ever kill off a large part of your biofilter etc. Is there any other products anyone is aware of that will actually show this kind of results thus far. if so then I guess I won't be so surprized any more cuz I never knew there was.

 

[Krish]

I have a friend here that got his water and liverock directly out of the ocean. We both live less than 5 minutes from the ocean and infact, he can look out of his north facing window and see the ocean. He actually lives across the street. So... He sets up the tank as mentioned with liverock and natural sea water straight out of the ocean and told me he was adding in corals and fish right away. I told him not to. The tank is young and it WILL have a cycle. He said no way because of where he got everything. A week later he laughs at me and says all tests came back fine for ammonia, nitrite and nitrate. I told him give it time. 2 weeks same thing. Then I started getting the calls. Why is this happening? Why did that happen? And all I could say was you should have listened.

The bottle bacteria doesn't do what it really says it does. It may provide you with some aerobic nitrifying bacteria, but won't take you to a full cycle in a week. It may help boost things a tad bit, bit there is more to it than just pouring in some bottled bacteria. Also, the condition of the rock will play a major role as well. Some will have more die-off than others so the process and time frame can never be calculated on any tank.

As for nitrates, you will notice that the last few ppm of nitrates will take a while to work off. You can try and flush them out through water changes but it won't "fix" the nitrate issue. Through tank maturity, the necessary anaerobic bacteria will colonize your rock or even sand bed in some cases, and slowly nitrate levels will fall. Either that or you set up a fuge and use an "algae" to aid in nutrient export to help lower nitrate levels but nitrates take the longest to work off. It took my tank almost one year to reach maturity and become what I'd consider fully cycled where my tank grew no algae and all ammonia, nitrite and nitrate levels read zero and remained there. One year with a tank that that was about 100 gals in total volume( including tank and sump) with only 4 small fish fed once a day, weekly water changes and never over fed. Hard to believe that bacteria in a bottle could work so great as to skip past a whole year of maturing my tank needed to fully cycle. Everytime some new is added or removed, the balance is shifted and things need to re-organize. There will only be enough bacteria to support the available "food" there for it and so any changes will have some effect.

Just a few personal thoughts.


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[kpiotrowski]

Yes! Krish, we are on the same page! as I have been saying I am only reporting observations!!! What has me intrigued is the product took me from ammonia straight to nitrates in a few days starting with dry rock avoiding a high ammonia and nitrite. I am wrong to be perplexed by this? can you set up a dry rock tank and actually see nitrates in a few days?

I'm really discouraged by all of this sceptisizm...when I am only stating what I am seeing!!! can I get a " holy cow". does anyone have any intelligent questions to ask rather than giving opinions? Looks like I am wasting my time trying to share what could be very highly valuble infortmation. especially with no experienced reefers trying to ask intelligent questions or advice on how to truly put this product to the test. all I know how to do is overfeed this tank to try to develop a biofilter and all I got so far is nitrate. does anyone have a calcualtion for how much pure ammonia i could dump in and what sort of change I should see to test the biofiloter etc,

 

[Krish]

It's not skepticism it just my opinions. These products have been out forever and is nothing really new. Just think, if it was that easy, wouldn't everyone be doing this?


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[kpiotrowski]

It's not skepticism nor is it just opinions. These products have been out forever and is nothing really new. Just think, if it was that easy, wouldn't everyone be doing this?


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Yes products that don't work have been around for ever. been keeping fish for 10 years and have always had many tanks BUT last years I found a product for freshwater that actually does work ( tetra safe start) and I am questioning if this turbo start will work with salt.

since there is nobody following this thread that seems to actually be interested in the end results I will end this thread now. perhaps if in the end I find that it is a good product then I will post again...if not here on reefrontiers ( ironic that we are reeFRONTIERS and yet resistiant to new products don't you think) then on onother forum.

everyone has been very pleasant and helpfull thus far! and thank you for that! But this thread is a serious waste of my time!