Bacteria in a bottle? Why not cultured media?

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jschall

Feeder Fish
MFK Member
Apr 9, 2009
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Chico, California
Why don't aquarium stores keep a large amount of canister biomedia in a couple buckets or tanks, running big airstones, and just dose them with ammonia every day? They'd need enough media for a few months in each tank, and then rotate them out.

Seems like a fairly easy system to maintain. They could sell the media and give it away with new aquariums to allow customers to stock new tanks immediately.

Has anyone seen something like this?
 
It's a space issue. Why not stock fish for sale instead and let customers ask for bacteria from the display tank if they need it? It's a great idea, my LFS turned it down based on the limited knowledge of the public. It would just sit there eating money.
 
Put yourself in the shoes of a :newbie: fishkeeper who don't even know about the basics of nitrogen cycle
(shouldn't be keeping fish IMO but alas, people have the right to do what they want).

Would you rather buy a nice bottle which claims would keep your fish, or a dirty media?

Of course the bottle would have a higher sales rate
 
Yeah,I've never seen anything that stores produce on their own but they have carried and sold bacteria products for several years now.I've used Fritzyme and more recently, BIO-SPIRA by Marineland and have gotten pretty good results.
 
Just Prince;5042456; said:
Dr Tims', TLC Labs and Tetra Safe Start are a few that work great.
Click to expand...

I think you misunderstood the thread. The OP was asking why not sell matured medias which have been proven to jumpstart the cycle of a new tank instead of those bacteria-in-bottles which only some like Stability have worked?

And not which Bacteria-in-bottle works
 
Spiritofthesoul;5042484; said:
I think you misunderstood the thread. The OP was asking why not sell matured medias which have been proven to jumpstart the cycle of a new tank instead of those bacteria-in-bottles which only some like Stability have worked?

And not which Bacteria-in-bottle works
Click to expand...

Exactly, I know bacteria-in-a-bottle works, I just think that stores could send some cultured media out the door that would work better, faster, cost them less, get their customers more success.

The inexperienced aquarist could come in, buy an aqueon 20 gallon kit for $60 or whatever, buy an appropriate amount of media for $5-10, and make a second trip to buy all of their fish stock - on the same day. Instant gratification that not even the bottle can provide (the bottles don't completely eliminate the initial ammonia spike.)
 
jschall;5047051; said:
Exactly, I know bacteria-in-a-bottle works, I just think that stores could send some cultured media out the door that would work better, faster, cost them less, get their customers more success.

The inexperienced aquarist could come in, buy an aqueon 20 gallon kit for $60 or whatever, buy an appropriate amount of media for $5-10, and make a second trip to buy all of their fish stock - on the same day. Instant gratification that not even the bottle can provide (the bottles don't completely eliminate the initial ammonia spike.)
Click to expand...

Sounds like a pretty good idea to me especially with those Aqueon kits and other similar kits because they all use replaceable filter cartridges. Tons of those cartridges could easily be maintained in an aquarium that would otherwise sit empty until the store needed to order new fish. The store could just remove the filter cartridges from their original packaging and send the customer on their way with a cycled one and instructions that included immediately setting up the aquarium.
 
its a good idea in theory. i think one of the reasons is that once you get into the hobby, you dont have to be in it long to figure out that you can cultivate your own bacteria or use filters from other tanks on new ones to cycle. this would eliminate the need to spend money on something like cultured media and would give you extra money to buy fish or other equipment. also, like someone said, if they are gonna sell it, they might as well use the media running on their tanks already and not set up a new system just for that purpose
 
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