It would be very difficult to 'prove' that Cycle and suchlike work without harming any fish. Therefore, you'd have to simulate fish waste with household ammonia, which IMO would render it an unfair test as you don't know whether the bacteria are coming from Cycle or are being stimulated by the ammonia in the normal fishless cycle way. Adding onto that, even if Cycle does work, it is still a cycle with fish, even if it is slightly speeded up, which is not good or beneficial or whatever. With no food source, there ain't gonna be no bacteria.
I have wondered though, if you took a sterile petri dish with agar mixed with ammonia (as I'd imagine normal nutrient agar wouldn't work as a food source) and took a swab of Cycle, what would happen?
A few quotes from the Hagen website say that
a) There is no food source in the bottle
Why is there ammonia / nitrite in Cycle?
It is entirely normal to measure a low level of ammonia and nitrite in the Cycle product itself, right out of the bottle. These compounds are left over from the fermentation process. Once Cycle is properly dosed, the concentration of these compounds is so minimal and diluted in the aquarium that they cannot be measured after a standard dosage.
IMO, that says that if that 'low level' is not being eaten by the bacteria, they aren't doing their job...
b )
How do Nitrifyers in Cycle stay alive into the bottle?
In normal conditions, nitrifyers live, divide and die within a polysaccharide polymer referred to as biofilm. In our Cycle bottle, the biofilm is so important that it can be seen in the form of "flocs". When the nutrients to carry on normal living processes become too scarce, the colonies in the floc decrease their metabolical activity and become dormant.
Some bacteria, and other unicellular organisms, develop a resistance form such as spores or cysts to withstand environmental variations. This is why species like Bacillus can live hundreds of years sporulated until favorable conditions comes back. This dormancy is expressed to some degree in all bacteria in the environment (excluding some pathogenic strains which are obligatory parasite and other very specialized organisms).
What is found in Cycle is not vegetative and active bacteria, growing and thriving, but rather in a dormant form. They will begin to divide once more when nitrogen, ammonia or nitrite, become present in sufficient concentrations to encourage normal life. Dormancy cannot be compared to an egg, with a set incubation rate and time to hatch. They are more like weed seeds, they simply wait until favorable conditions are present to start growing. During the dormancy period, metabolic activity is either very low or absent. Once back into favorable conditions the bacteria, depending on their species, will initiate vegetative growth and metabolic activity in a matter of hours or up to a day (referred as Lag time).
This is quite interesting. Surely, if there is a 'low level' of ammonia/nitrite in the bottle, that would be enough to re awaken the bacteria? And if they could take effect in any time from a few hours to days (most likely being in the latter time period), by then the fish waste would have been enough to stimulate at least some bacteria to grow. But what I think seems a load of bumph is 'When the nutrients to carry on normal living processes become too scarce, the colonies in the floc decrease their metabolical activity and become dormant.'. So that's pretty much saying, keep a tank with messy fish like oscars, have a thriving bacterial community, then take out the fish for a few months, don't worry,t he bacteria are still there, but dormant, and will 'wake up' when you put the fish back in.
I could throw Hagen further than I can trust them, they have some absolutely appaling info on their site (eg, feeder goldfish are a complete diet for predators such as oscars), and I have some rather interesting emails showing them wriggling their way out of some tricky questions I put to them.
/www.freepatentsonline.com/7005068.html
