Bacterial Additives...

[anon02]

If I have understood, the tank you are cycling now will be your q tank and has 2 filters one of which will be taken out to go into your community tank when you get it ?
If so you could keep this tank ticking over with a 1ppm dosing per day, a colony that has died back seems to re colonise a lot more quickly that a colony which is trying to establish, and if you keep your initial stocking to about 75% of the recommended level when you remove the large filter that would give you 4 weeks to establish your community tank back up to a 5ppm dosing capacity and your q tank should be fine, but if not a couple of water changes should see your filter catch up

 

[waterdrop]

"...a colony that has died back seems to re colonise a lot more quickly that a colony which is trying to establish..."

Completely agree, the difference is like night and day. Even in situations with very large die-back, colonies can be much more easily re-established than what beginners have to do when starting from scratch. I think it has something to do with the complex biofilms that the colonies build. The biofilms of course help the new cells have all the right nutrients and structural support and it has been shown that they help to channel water, which of course carries in the ammonia and oxygen that is needed.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[eaglesaquarium]

That's exactly right. The 10 gallon is the future quarantine/fry/hospital tank. The Penguin 350 will go into the 56 gallon tank and I will keep the sponge filter in there as well, when I am not using it in the q-tank, so that it will always be ready to go with bacteria, but I won't need to keep the q-tank up and running all the time.


Morning results:

NH3: 0ppm, NO2: 0ppm... dosed back to 4ppm - I plan to test NO3 tonight, as well as high pH, just to be certain things aren't going the wrong way.

 

[eaglesaquarium]

Evening results:

pH: 8.2, NH3: 0.25ppm, NO2: 0.50ppm, NO3: 80ppm (REALLY high, but not dark red, just deep red.) temp 85F


SO, what is up with the lack of zeros on the NH3 and NO2 at 12 hours? I got it twice for lower doses, but not since I upped the dose to 4ppm. Oh well. It's not like I'll be getting fish soon anyway!


I'm thinking of doing a water change... better than doing nothing. This would lower the nitrates back to a level that is more readable. Other than that though, it really wouldn't serve a purpose, I suppose. Maybe I should just sit tight and look to redose in the morning.



It would seem that the BB's really didn't add anything to the cycle. I was expecting to be in the qualifying week by now, but nope. (It did make me more confident that things would happen more quickly and probably made this cycle more fun than just doing a regular cycle.)

 

[eaglesaquarium]

double post...

 

[eaglesaquarium]

Morning update:

Ammonia and nitrite are zero after 24 hours... but still not getting there in 12 hours yet. Maybe today...

 

[eaglesaquarium]

evening update:

NH3: 0.25ppm , NO2: 0ppm...



Morning update:

NH3: 0ppm, NO2: 0ppm, redosed to 4ppm.

 

[anon02]

Your cycle seems to be following the course of a lot of regular cycles with trace anomalous toxin readings, but it does seem to be a shortish cycle, how many days in are you ?
Just worked it out 17 days,so just one of the shorter cycles, I dont think the BB has made much of a diference, even if you get regular double zeroes at 12 hours in another 5 days that will still be a 30 day cycle with the qualifying week

 

[eaglesaquarium]

Your cycle seems to be following the course of a lot of regular cycles with trace anomalous toxin readings, but it does seem to be a shortish cycle, how many days in are you ?
Just worked it out 17 days,so just one of the shorter cycles, I dont think the BB has made much of a diference, even if you get regular double zeroes at 12 hours in another 5 days that will still be a 30 day cycle with the qualifying week

Agreed. I had high hopes early, but to be honest, it just doesn't seem to have made a big difference. The good news is that it seems to be winding down. I figure it can't last more than another week before the double zeros come at 12 hours, and then the qualifying week.



BTW, I am updating the first post with the results, and the Day count, because I generally can't remember what day it is when I put the new post in... I guess I should put that information in the most recent post as well. I'll do that in the future.


So, SafeStart offered no benefit. I kind of wonder why some people will swear by it? I wonder if they actually have tested it for themselves... Or just used it and assumed it worked, especially if they don't lose any fish during the process.

 

[anon02]

To be completely impartial, these products are meant to be used with fish from early days which would only produce a fraction of the ammonia dosed when fishless cycling using ammonia. It would be interesting to see if safe start made a difference to a cycle with a low ammonia dosing. It is a while since I read the Hovanec papers, but I`m sure Tim mentions 5ppm as being the optimum ammonia dosing and his (successful) experiments were started from scratch, so logically the higher dosage you`ve used shouldn`t adversely affect your results
Maybe the BB contains minerals or compounds that any existing bacteria can use to help them get a foothold, but as far as viable bacteria is concerned I would say that there is more life in a tramps vest

 

[eaglesaquarium]

Yeah, I understand that the theory is that it is for use in a fish-in cycle. BUT, if it contains the bacteria it claims, you would think that it would work more like adding mature media to your filter - or at least rinsing an old filter in a new tank. I'm not sure that my results follow that.


I've tried to follow the guidelines for what the bacteria need to best grow according to current research (as far as I am aware). I raised the temp, kept the pH high, and even made sure that nitrite levels were more in line with the nitrospira's preference than the nitrobacter. Oh well. Maybe tonight I'll have double zeros at 12 hours.


Either way, a 4 week process isn't so bad really, I'm just glad to see so much movement as compared to some others. I think I would have gone nuts if this had gone 17 days without a drop in ammonia, or without seeing nitrites rise. I've seen both rise and fall. They just aren't falling fast enough. I could actually add a few fish at this point if I was so inclined (not that I am going to), and feel confident that the ammonia and nitrite levels would be zero at all testing periods. (Obviously I wouldn't stock it to full capacity, but would want to keep it at no more than 50% with these results, but I think I could easily go a full week with that scenario right now, without any readable levels of ammonia or nitrite.

 

[eaglesaquarium]

Evening update:

Day 17, NH3: 0.25ppm, NO2: 0ppm.... apparently ammonia just keeps getting stuck at 0.25 ppm.

Oh well.

 

[waterdrop]

To be completely impartial, these products are meant to be used with fish from early days which would only produce a fraction of the ammonia dosed when fishless cycling using ammonia. It would be interesting to see if safe start made a difference to a cycle with a low ammonia dosing. It is a while since I read the Hovanec papers, but I`m sure Tim mentions 5ppm as being the optimum ammonia dosing and his (successful) experiments were started from scratch, so logically the higher dosage you`ve used shouldn`t adversely affect your results
Maybe the BB contains minerals or compounds that any existing bacteria can use to help them get a foothold, but as far as viable bacteria is concerned I would say that there is more life in a tramps vest

I don't think we are being partial by testing to see if the BB can shorten a standard ammonia fishless cycle. I feel it's the only testing method that has a chance of giving us more of a real glimpse in to whether the stuff does anything. I feel that with any sort of fish-in cycle you have even less chance of knowing whether it did anything. A well-done fish-in cycle must include frequent water changes and this alone can take away the little bit of feedback you might get.

When the manufacturers direct us to use if for a fish-in cycle I don't think they are purposely choosing this method to obscure that the product doesn't work (although it could be convenient in that way). I actually think the majority of them are just not that tuned in to the newer things in the hobby and don't think much about fishless cycling. Hovanec is obviously an exception to this.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[eaglesaquarium]

To be completely impartial, these products are meant to be used with fish from early days which would only produce a fraction of the ammonia dosed when fishless cycling using ammonia. It would be interesting to see if safe start made a difference to a cycle with a low ammonia dosing. It is a while since I read the Hovanec papers, but I`m sure Tim mentions 5ppm as being the optimum ammonia dosing and his (successful) experiments were started from scratch, so logically the higher dosage you`ve used shouldn`t adversely affect your results
Maybe the BB contains minerals or compounds that any existing bacteria can use to help them get a foothold, but as far as viable bacteria is concerned I would say that there is more life in a tramps vest

I don't think we are being partial by testing to see if the BB can shorten a standard ammonia fishless cycle. I feel it's the only testing method that has a chance of giving us more of a real glimpse in to whether the stuff does anything. I feel that with any sort of fish-in cycle you have even less chance of knowing whether it did anything. A well-done fish-in cycle must include frequent water changes and this alone can take away the little bit of feedback you might get.

When the manufacturers direct us to use if for a fish-in cycle I don't think they are purposely choosing this method to obscure that the product doesn't work (although it could be convenient in that way). I actually think the majority of them are just not that tuned in to the newer things in the hobby and don't think much about fishless cycling. Hovanec is obviously an exception to this.

~~waterdrop~~

The cynic in me says it is purposeful. But more realistically, if they say you can introduce fish right away, then that is a great marketing ploy. People who buy a tank at a LFS probably want to walk out with fish for it at the same time, or at least in a few days, not weeks later.

 

[waterdrop]

To be completely impartial, these products are meant to be used with fish from early days which would only produce a fraction of the ammonia dosed when fishless cycling using ammonia. It would be interesting to see if safe start made a difference to a cycle with a low ammonia dosing. It is a while since I read the Hovanec papers, but I`m sure Tim mentions 5ppm as being the optimum ammonia dosing and his (successful) experiments were started from scratch, so logically the higher dosage you`ve used shouldn`t adversely affect your results
Maybe the BB contains minerals or compounds that any existing bacteria can use to help them get a foothold, but as far as viable bacteria is concerned I would say that there is more life in a tramps vest

I don't think we are being partial by testing to see if the BB can shorten a standard ammonia fishless cycle. I feel it's the only testing method that has a chance of giving us more of a real glimpse in to whether the stuff does anything. I feel that with any sort of fish-in cycle you have even less chance of knowing whether it did anything. A well-done fish-in cycle must include frequent water changes and this alone can take away the little bit of feedback you might get.

When the manufacturers direct us to use if for a fish-in cycle I don't think they are purposely choosing this method to obscure that the product doesn't work (although it could be convenient in that way). I actually think the majority of them are just not that tuned in to the newer things in the hobby and don't think much about fishless cycling. Hovanec is obviously an exception to this.

~~waterdrop~~

The cynic in me says it is purposeful. But more realistically, if they say you can introduce fish right away, then that is a great marketing ploy. People who buy a tank at a LFS probably want to walk out with fish for it at the same time, or at least in a few days, not weeks later.

Oh yes, that is a proven truism. People desparately want to walk out with fish and if they don't, the desparately want fish very, very soon. The entire business model is pretty much forced to work around this and it is the driving force of lots of the stuff behavior we see from the LFS. They are mostly in the business of selling massive numbers of little setups where lots of fish die and/or where people and their kids give it a try for a few months or a year or two. Most of the people you find on a forum like this, both beginners and more experienced hobbyists, are probably in a pretty tiny minority. Our world is really quite a bit different from the fish business world, although we too are important to them but in different ways.

~~waterdrop~~