24 hour tank cycling! impossible? i think not!

trulytropical

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hi i have just started my first tropical set up and by using these pearls you can cycle your tank in 24 hours. search it up if you want it is very interesting.
Bactinetts!
produced by soll
 
I added eight fish to a 112liter after just two days using Tetra bactozym, aqua safe, easy balance and a few live plants. Welcome to the forums! :hi:
 
:hi: to the forums.

I would be careful of any product that says it helps with cycling unless it is pure ammonia for fishless cycling. Get yourself a master test kit and test your water. You should see an ammonia spike followed by a nitrIte spike and then a steady NitrAte if regular water changes are followed. Read the pinned topics on cycling, very interesting growing bacteria, as good as keeping the fish alive after.

Jon
 
Welcome, 24 hours may be possible, but I'd feel more comfortable waiting.
 
I'm dubious of these products and don't think there is any sustitute for taking your time or if you want to speed things up then seed from an established tank....

btw welcome

*moved from newbies to tcc*



www :)
 
So exactly how do these 'pearls' contain and foster the growth of the beneficial bacteria you have to have for a cycled tank?

Please get yourself some test kits and monitor very closely the ammonia and nitrite levels for a long time.

In the best case, I see these pearls are very good absorbers of the pollution -- good for the moment, but when the pearls are saturated, guess what? you are still going to have ammonia and nitrite. In the worst case, these things do nothing -- there have been 'instant cycle' products on the market for basically as long as fishkeeping has been a hobby. Not a single one is 100%, only a few have some affect, and most of them are worthless. My guess is this is a company selling you exactly what you want to hear instead of selling you some real science. If you would like to talk about the real science, we on the message baords are more than happy to do that, but this kind of thing always raises many red flags for us -- hence the many replies telling you this is most likely a scam.
 
I take gravel (and sometimes a precycled filter) from a previous tank, put them on/into a new tank and poof! A cycled tank :p I would never trust those products to do the job of good old bacteria :)
 
Yes, I've seen those. My mum went, ooh, it cycles in 24 hours. THat'll sort out your water. (LOL, first fish and the cycling didn't go brilliantly). Yes I said but they probablty don't work and fill up your water with chemicals. True or not, I don't want to waste money on things that might not work.
 
The bactinet pearls do actually work!! What they are is live bacteria cultures which are kept in a chilled storage container and need to be fed with a ammonia source food to remain active, a very similar product to bio spira.
 
Marineland Labs may have something to say about that. At the moment, they hold the patents on the predominant cycling bacteria -- the major ingredients in Bio-Spira. Dr. Hocanec's research indicated that the major oxidizing bacteria are not the ones listed in almost all the aquarium literature, but different strains -- which is why success with Bio-Spira has been greater (not perfect).

While I feel it is pretty silly to be able to own a patent on a living thing found in nature -- at the moment Marineland does own that patent, so this new company may in danger of a lawsuit.

I personally haven't used Bio-Spira or any other jumpstarter, but I have fishless cycled via patience. And, I would sure still feed the bacteria with pure ammonia for a few days. If these products work as advertised, then your test kits will read zeros after a short time, and you will know everything is processing along nicely. And, if these starters don't work as advetised, still no fish harmed.
 
What a surprise!

6 replies to this post saying pretty much "You're a newbie, you therefore don't know what you're talking about, this product cannot possibly work", before anyone replied who actually knew what the product was.

Had you even bothered to do a quick Google search (like I did just now) you'd have seen exactly how and why the product works. To be honest - I'm convinced. It's EXACTLY the same process as transferring media from a mature filter/tank.

Bignose, your first reply must surely be the perfect example of this. To me it desmonstrates perfectly what's wrong with this (and every) forum. Your complete misunderstanding of what the product is shows that you have clearly not bothered to do the slightest research, and have just decided to throw in your (both wrong and irrelevant) two cents. You then go on to offer help with the "real science" - how can you possibly do that if you don't know what the product is!?!?!?!? To your credit, you do seem to have done some research after you've discovered that you were wrong, and you offer some useful and sensible information (but you don't apologise for your initial mistake, I notice...).

trulytropical, on behalf of those with the ability to think BEFORE they post, thank you for your information and your recommendation of what seems to be a very good product.
 
i just set up a new 75 gallon tank.. used a filter media sponge that needed to be changed and squeezed it in the tank added a bottle of Cycle by Hagen that treated 235 gallons, tested the morning after and not a trace of anything except nitrates

I've never heard of these pearls you speak of but i believe they work
 
I must agree with the people who doubt this will work.

It is possible it will work, as Bio-Spira as made it possible. But many "instant" cycling produuct claims it will instantly cycle your tank. Take the Hagen Cycle for instance. It doesn't work but they say it will kick start your bacteria. Very little people, if any, had success with Cycle.

Bio-Spira shows better results but it is still not perfect. Anything live that lives in a bottle needs to be kept alive under strict conditions and it is nearly impossible to know if the bacteria are still alive until you test it.

People here aren't saying it won't work. They're just saying you should be careful with and closely monitor your water specs after you introduce it in your tank and not take for granted it will work.

my 2 cents
 
ddm18, if you want a webpage that will say something will work, just hop around eBay for a few minutes. There is all sorts of worthless crap on there what will tell you "cut your water changes in 75%!" or "catch any fish in seconds!" or "guaranteed to help your fish breed" or "insert attention grabbing phrase here!" And, they all have webpages. If you want a webpage, I think I can make one in about 10 minutes. I have no doubt you have heard the phrase "You can't believe everything you read." And that is more true on the web than in any other media we have ever had.

The simple turth is that there are many, many people who are willing to tell you anything you want to hear to make a sale. And most of it is incredibly dubious. Some of it is downright dangerous (to your fish and maybe even to you).

I think that all of us replied that we would be cautious and to frequently check the water parameters. Good advice all around, in ANY situation. And, what precisely did you think of when you read the world 'pearl'? I thought of a hard, impermeable solid sitting on the bottom of the tank.

And I also thought of the classic 'ceramic clothes waching disks' of the 1970's. Back then, you could hardly open a newspaper or magazine without seeing an ad for these ceramic disks that you would toss into the clothes washer instead of using powder or liquid detergent. The ad claimed to use electromagnetic fields or charged ions or some other pseudo-scientific buzzword to clean your clothes. And guess what, the first 3 to 5 times you used the disks -- they worked perfectly, just as advertised! You never had to buy soap again, right? Wrong. The catch was that clothes washing in detergent always leaves some soap on the clothes. [i.e. you can tell who uses powder detegergent by turning on a black light, for example] So, the first few times the disks 'worked' by using the soap that was dissolved in the clothes already. But then, they stopped working, obviously. The company tried to alay disgruntled customers by saying the disks were cracked or not compatible with the customer's water or something. But, in a matter of months, the public wised up and you never saw an ad about these things again. The biggest problem is that any saleman can try to sell you anything, and when you question it, they say "oh well, they laughed at Colombus, and they laughed at Copernicus -- and someday, everyone will know I am right, too." This is why you have to look at claims through a skeptical eye.

The same is true for a lot of these instant cycle products. I stand by my comments in the first post.

And I also stand by my skepticism. There is nothing wrong with being a skeptic -- all that means is that we demand proof. And, as this is a new product, we are completely, 100%, undoubtedly justified in being skeptical. If several people have success with this product, we will welcome it. I am sure several people looked at the bio-wheels at first and just said "huh?!?" to themselves. But that product has become a PROVEN winner. And if these pearls are proven, we will accept them too. Bio-Spira has been good, but has not been proven in my mind -- hence my second post about feeding any starter with pure ammonia for a period before introducing fish. The real science is what has been proved, which is taking the time to grow these bacteria, and the real science is that none of the instant cycle products has ever been anywhere near 100%.

But, in the mean time, I, and it appears several others, stand by our skepticism.

And finally, what you consider wrong with these message boards are in many ways what I consider to be completely right. These posts and questions are here to seek and recieve the advice of other fishkeepers around the globe. And that experience has been is that a lot of these instant cycle products are useless wastes of money. And that experience has also been that we are skeptical of new products and unproven claims. But this is also where we come to share our experiences with new products and learn about new things. What we got from trulytropical is two lines claiming to cycle in 24 hours. No more info, no data, no explaination. Just because there are low or no readings after 24 hours does not mean the tank is cycled at all -- the readings could be low beacuse he stocked (very) lightly and the pollution just hasn't built up. Every once in a while a post will show up claiming 24 hour cycling when this is exactly what happened, only to get a post a week later complaining about the high pollution levels. My very first thought after reading the post, in fact, was: "There is a good chance this guy works for this company trying to make a few bucks off people for a short time, then run away to the sunset with our money." Skeptical, yes. But, I am openminded enough to listen to others' expericences as they come in.

So, I do not think you needed to insult us just for being skeptical and trying to be helpful. And you certainly did not need to insult the message boards -- can you suggest an improvement? I, and I am certain the administrators here, would love to hear any improvements you could suggest so that we can improve this (and every other) forum. There are a great deal of us who think long and hard before we post.
 

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