Agree with Andy and rabbut, can't see anything being done wrong here given the info. I would tend to agree with the action taken on rabbuts advice, to try a startover more or less and its ashame that hasn't seemed to kick things off.
I tend to try and remind myself in these kinds of situations that the little bacteria are living creatures and perhaps there could be situations among the dozens or hundreds of substances we *don't* measure in the water that might kill them off or discourage them from growing. That and the fact that nothing guarantees there could be a situation where the two species we want are simply in very short supply for some reason in that particular water at that time. I've always though it rather amazing that they seem to be so universally available to begin with!
I'm sure its extra frustrating as you've tried the good amounts of mature media (if I'm remembering right?) and that hasn't seemed to work either! I guess if we're getting short on ideas its always a good time to say that sometimes just being very hard and determined to try over and over, on and on, may sometimes be the eventual key to success even if one doesn't know what finally changed (many things being quite invisible to us in situations like this!)
One other thing I can think of is that you are in the UK I believe and there was a member (chrissi?) or someone who recently posted about having a local maidenhead aquatics (trying to remember off the top of my head) that seemed to be successfully doing the challanging thing of getting in new supplies of refridgerated bottled bacteria from the company that bought the company that financed Hovanec (sorry this is not clear, can't remember the product name)... well anyway, our discussion went on about how this seemed to be the successor to the old biospira and/or bactinette products that sometimes worked if the entire supply chain stayed refridgerated. So anyway, my thought was maybe somebody could scrounge up that thread for you and you could determine whether that particular maidenhead place happened to be a driveable distance from you in the UK perchance.
~~waterdrop~~
