Here is what most folks fail to understand about the products which do contain live bacteria as opposed to spores. The actual bacteria and Archaea that end up keeping tanks same from ammonia etc. cannot contian Nitrospira due to the patent. So they use Nitrobacter unstead. This is more commonly found in waste water treatment. The ammonia bacteria are not patented and anybody can use them.
So, you buy a bottle of bacteria which contains Nitrobacter instead of nitrospira. What happens when you cycle using it? Firstly, the ammonia bacteria go to work almost immediately. So you see low of no ammonia reading right away. So you have started by eliminating this part of cycling. This also means that nitrite is being created very early on as well. The Nitrobacter will start to use it. But as they do this they reduce the amount of nitrite in the tank to levels which will not support them for very long. However, what is happening is tat the Nitrospira are colonizing as they can do well with much lower levels of Nitrite than the Nitrobacter.
What is happening is the number of nitrobacter cells is decreasing and the number of Nitrospira is increasing. This is not something we can see. All we can see are the test results for nitrite. And this is why it appears as if the Nitrobacter are doing all the work. But, science is not as limited in it's tools than we hobbyists are. They can test all of this in a lab.
And this can also explain why some folks thing Stability is cycling a tank. It is not. There are other heterotrophic bacteria that can use ammonia. But they need organic carbon to do so. These are the sort of bacteria that cause cloudy water in a a new tank. The conditions for these bacteria to use up ammonia is there but they require organic energy sources. On the other hand, the nitrifiers make their own energy from ammonia and nitrite. They do not need organics, in fact they need inorganic carbon while the non-nitrifyinh ammonia uses need organic carbon. Also, the non-autotrophic ammonia uses do not create nitrite.
So, Here is my take on Stability. What it does is to clear ammonia and not make nitrite. However, the conditions in our tanks are not constant and as the organic sources dry up, the autotrophs begin to colonize. And there is a transition from the things that will not persist in a tank to this which will. But we cannot see this. This is much like how the Nitrobacter are replaced with Nitrospira. It happens but we do not see it.
But there is an easy way you can test this all. Start with two tanks set up identically in terms of substrate and decor as well as filtration. The set out to do a fishless cycle on both using seeded bottled bacteria- into one tank add Stability according to the directions and into to the oither add Dr. Tim's One and Only according to the directions. And of course add ammonia in equal amounts and thereafter in response to test results. I would suggest using at least 2 ppm but not more than 3 ppm.
Then determine which tank is ready for a full load of fish first. A full load of fish is what defines a fully cycled tank. Now I realize some folks like to understock, but the same would still apply.
When Dr. Hovanec et. al. dis their research they had to the tools to access what specific bacteria etc, were present when a tank is cycled. In their ammonia research they actually Used the Fritz bacteria which contained Ntrobacter. But the tanks where the fritz was added shoed that there were virtually no nitrobacter presernt in the end, there were Nitrospira instead.
Bear in mind that doing research is costly. Somebody needs to underwrite research. Dr. Hovanec's first paper showing what was expected to be in tanks was not there was his PhD thesis. So the university covered the costs and had the facilities. And if we read the paper on Nitrospira we will find this:
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We thank Ellen Ko, Quynh Lu, and Michelle Waugh for helpful assistance and Alison Murray for assisting with the DGGE. We also thank Julia Sears-Hartley, Melissa Lokken, and Les Wilson for water chemistry analysis.
This work was supported in part by National Science Foundation grants OCE95-29804 and OPP94-18442 to E.F.D. and by assistance from Aquaria, Inc. to T.A.H.
So, we can see who funded the research in part and who also contributed.
Who is going to do this sort of research into Stability? What other company whose products do not contain nitrospira wants to do it? And why would SeaChem pay for independent research into Stability when they know the resuls would not be good for them?
Like I have stated in this thread over and over and and which almost nobody has acknowledged not taken me up on is the challenge to find any recent science (the last 20 or so years) which says the cycle is not handled by autrophic bacteria but rather the spore formers in Stability. And why doesn't SeaChem, who has deep pockets, fund such research? I cannot think of a reason except that it would make it clear that Stability does not cycle tanks which is not the result they would like to have publicized.
The companies competing in the industry do not engaging in this sort of research. As for who else might sue stability, maybe a very rich individual might do so, but why would they waste money on this? Dr. Hovanec's first paper and his thesis were done to confirm that what was thought to be in tanks actually was there. Fortunately, he discovered the opposite. But jis purpose in doing the research was not to prove what was thought to be there was not.
Science is the act of discovery of what is happening rather than what is not. And one of the great parts of the scientific method is that it acknowledges that things which once had been accepted as the explanation are not. Everybody knew what bacteria were doing cycling until Dr. H. came along and looked. The other hallmark of the scientific method is that if another scientist does the same research they should get the same results.
Since Dr, H. did his research science discovered that there were Archaea which also converted ammonia to nitrite. And then they discovered that certain strains of Nitrospira were able to convert ammonia directly to nitrate. This was an accidental discovery made in a tank in the basement of a lab. It was there because they kept fish not because they set it up for research purposes. This also explains why now Dr. Tim's One and Only also contains ammonia oxidizing Archaea as well as ammonia oxidizing bacteria. The Archaea are able to thrive on even lower levels of ammonia than the bacteria involved.
Because my cycling needs changed from one tank at a time to needing to get 8 to 10 tanks cycled all at once, I conckuded it was much easier to create a bio-farm in which I could cycled the filters for all the tanks. I takes me 10-12 days to do this and much less work. However, the potential complications are different and require different monitoring. I am cycling 8 tanks worht of foliterss fgoing into 220 or mare gallons of water and doing it all in a 40 gal. tank. Keeping things moving along takes a much different effort than cycling a single tank. It only gets more complicated when I have to be adding 20 ppm of ammonia to tank every day or two and I need to do it in multiple smaller doses.
However, I need to change water every day or two and I have to have a few bags of crushed coral in the farm so the bacteria have pelnty of inorganic carbon (i.e. carbonates and bicarbonates). Since the filters are air powered that covers the needed oxygen. The water changes provide everything else. But in a 40 gal filled with filters being cycled, a 75% water change is usually done with 20 gals. of water. The filters and heaters and bags of coral take up volume. If I were cycling 8 tanks with 220 gals I would have to do changes less often. But where I have to do it all is far from my water source. I have a 100 foot hose I use to get the water at temp. where I need it.
edited to fix typos and spelling
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