How close are we to BB in a bottle?

[tcarswell]

After reading a post from BrianP yesterday about seachem cycle (I think that is what it was) he claimed it worked great for him and quite frankly I believe the guy he knows his aquarium chemistry. So my question is how long until we have a 100% bacteria in a bottle concentrate? Or is it already here?

 

[heavyhitter]

Good question. I am too much of a skeptic myself. I continue to do stuff the old fashion way.

 

[tcarswell]

Good question. I am too much of a skeptic myself. I continue to do stuff the old fashion way.

Werd I just did a fish cycle it took almost 50 days

 

[brianp]

I will provide some background info. on the Seachem product to increase the general comfort level. First, let me say that trying to provide live bacteria in a bottle, stored under ambient conditions, is a non-starter. The bacteria are far too fragile and few would survive. However, under conditions of environmental stress or deprivation, many species of bacteria will undergo SPORE formation. Essentially they condense and toughen to form durable survival structures, designed to protect their DNA and basic metabolic machinery. This is what Seachem has done in the laboratory. After the spores are collected, a chemical inhibitor is added that prevents the bacterial spores from reverting to the original vegetative state. When the spore solution is added to the aquarium, the inhibitor is diluted and the spores return to their original, metabolically active state. Bacterial spores should be able to survive easily for at least three years under ambient conditions. To me, this represents a simple, logical and robust approach to rapid cycling. The species of bacterial spores provided in the Stability formulation is proprietary. For fans of Biospira (I am one), I don't know if it's included or not...but it really doesn't matter. All you really want to achieve is a stable population of bacteria which are oxidizing ammonia and nitrite. Biospira (and other bacterial species) are ubiquitous and if they have a growth advantage in the filter, they will eventually outpopulate the other bacterial species.

Regarding my personal experience with Stability, I cycled a pristine 350 gallon tank, with four large Dats in 8 days. Changes in ammonia, nitrite and nitrate were monitored with two different test kits/methods. I was quite impressed with this product.

 

[Aquadi]

Has Cycle been remanufactured? if so then maybe it works differently than before, but if the method of the old CYCLE product was bollox. It had to be used every water change, and because of the bacteria composition, prohibited the normal beneficial bacteria that we know today as the good bacteria from establishing. I used it for 2 years awhile back and one day quit using it as I was told I shouldn't have to any more, as normal bactiera should have been established by then - I mean it was 2 years later. Nope.. didn't happen. There were no changes done with the tank except for the fact I quit using CYCLE. What started off as a mini-cycle turned in to a full blown cycle and I lost nearly half the tank.


I won't touch the product CYCLE with a 20 foot pole now. The local LFS's here use it, and when I asked how they use it they confirmed what I thought - they use it every week when they do fresh water changes.


Safestart (the new remanufactured biospira) is packaged under nitrogen, from what I have heard, which is what allows the beneficial bacteria to live longer when stored on an open shelf.

 

[tcarswell]

I will provide some background info. on the Seachem product to increase the general comfort level. First, let me say that trying to provide live bacteria in a bottle, stored under ambient conditions, is a non-starter. The bacteria are far too fragile and few would survive. However, under conditions of environmental stress or deprivation, many species of bacteria will undergo SPORE formation. Essentially they condense and toughen to form durable survival structures, designed to protect their DNA and basic metabolic machinery. This is what Seachem has done in the laboratory. After the spores are collected, a chemical inhibitor is added that prevents the bacterial spores from reverting to the original vegetative state. When the spore solution is added to the aquarium, the inhibitor is diluted and the spores return to their original, metabolically active state. Bacterial spores should be able to survive easily for at least three years under ambient conditions. To me, this represents a simple, logical and robust approach to rapid cycling. The species of bacterial spores provided in the Stability formulation is proprietary. For fans of Biospira (I am one), I don't know if it's included or not...but it really doesn't matter. All you really want to achieve is a stable population of bacteria which are oxidizing ammonia and nitrite. Biospira (and other bacterial species) are ubiquitous and if they have a growth advantage in the filter, they will eventually outpopulate the other bacterial species.

Regarding my personal experience with Stability, I cycled a pristine 350 gallon tank, with four large Dats in 8 days. Changes in ammonia, nitrite and nitrate were monitored with two different test kits/methods. I was quite impressed with this product.

Thank you very much for your input Brian. Very intriguing information. Gave me a whole new aspect. I got a bottle of cycle yesterday and I started using it on my fry tank I just set up. I want it to be sterile there for I cannot introduce other pre seeded material. Ill see how it works.

 

[tcarswell]

Has Cycle been remanufactured? if so then maybe it works differently than before, but if the method of the old CYCLE product was bollox. It had to be used every water change, and because of the bacteria composition, prohibited the normal beneficial bacteria that we know today as the good bacteria from establishing. I used it for 2 years awhile back and one day quit using it as I was told I shouldn't have to any more, as normal bactiera should have been established by then - I mean it was 2 years later. Nope.. didn't happen. There were no changes done with the tank except for the fact I quit using CYCLE. What started off as a mini-cycle turned in to a full blown cycle and I lost nearly half the tank.


I won't touch the product CYCLE with a 20 foot pole now. The local LFS's here use it, and when I asked how they use it they confirmed what I thought - they use it every week when they do fresh water changes.


Safestart (the new remanufactured biospira) is packaged under nitrogen, from what I have heard, which is what allows the beneficial bacteria to live longer when stored on an open shelf.

Safe start was my next question. When I heard it was basically a shelf able bio spira I was tempted to buy it. The problem being I had the tetra easy balance and it was found to basically be bunk with ridiculous claims. I figured this applied to all of their stuff across the board as most consumers may.

 

[Aquadi]

Safe start was my next question. When I heard it was basically a shelf able bio spira I was tempted to buy it. The problem being I had the tetra easy balance and it was found to basically be bunk with ridiculous claims. I figured this applied to all of their stuff across the board as most consumers may.

Most of tetras stuff is bunk I agree =D Just think of this new biospira line a Windows OS... someone else created it and microsoft ripped it off or bought them out. Same thing here basically, except not as sneaky ;p Tetra bought the rights to it from marineland but cannot call it biospira as the man who actually created biospira is wrapped up in legal paperwork with marineland regarding it.

Safestart is just as good as biospira was. How or why it's different than CYCLE, I do not know, but they are both different products claiming to do the same thing now.

 

[hybridtheoryd16]

Man i am glad you started this thread. I have been messing with these bottled cures for more than a decade now atleast a few times a year. And you can search back thru the threads about all these bottled BB things and see where I have bashed every single one of them except bio spira. I have tried them all and none worked and I could never get any bio spira locally so i never tried that. -----------fast forward to a few weeks ago---------------Here in kentucky we had a ice strom and lost power for a week and a half. And my tanks bio crashed. So after losing 2 of my prized and allmost nonreplaceable payara I went to the lfs and bought a bottle of Tetra safe start. And after a water change my tank still had an ammonia reading of 1ppm so I added the full bottle of safe start that woudl treat a 75g tank to my 75g. And after 24hrs the ammonia was gone, tested at 0ppm and there was now a .5ppm reading of nitrite. The nitrite hoovered around .25-.5ppm for 2 more days and that was it. Cycle done. This was after doing 50-75% water changes every day for more than a week to keep just the ammonia down.

 

[tcarswell]

Most of tetras stuff is bunk I agree =D Just think of this new biospira line a Windows OS... someone else created it and microsoft ripped it off or bought them out. Same thing here basically, except not as sneaky ;p Tetra bought the rights to it from marineland but cannot call it biospira as the man who actually created biospira is wrapped up in legal paperwork with marineland regarding it.

Safestart is just as good as biospira was. How or why it's different than CYCLE, I do not know, but they are both different products claiming to do the same thing now.

That DR that made Bio spira has now made a similar bacteria (maybe improved) called Dr. Tims I know of a few people using it.