# Experience with 'beneficial bacteria in a bottle'



## Jenniferinfl (May 3, 2013)

I had an interesting experience this weekend with a 'beneficial bacteria in a bottle' type product. I am working on a project involving sponge filters in a separate tub to work as a solution to immediately cycle a tank. To give my project a boost without risking my main aquarium, I ordered 'beneficial bacteria in a bottle' with the plan of dosing the tub daily with ammonia to simulate fish waste and thus always have a ready precycled filter. I added half of one bottle of the product to my tub of water on Friday afternoon and the remainder of the bottle to a couple other tanks that still had some nitrite readings. I am really glad that I test the water everyday! I had ammonia in tanks that had already zeroed out on ammonia and nitrites off the chart. Fortunately I tested my water about an hour after adding the product, so I did immediately water changes and hopefully my fish will be fine. Now on Sunday, my tub of water still has off the charts ammonia, no nitrates, no nitrites. That should about catch you up to where I am with the experiment. I keep a blog to keep track of incidences that occur with my tanks, so the rest of this is an excerpt from that for those interested. 




> Water test at noon on Sunday yielded less than impressive results in the test tub full of sponge filters. Ammonia: off the chart, still sort of green but nearly black; nitrates: zero; nitrites: zero.
> 
> Interestingly, I didn't even add ammonia to the test tank. I added the 'beneficial bacteria in a bottle' and when I tested to get a baseline, ammonia was already off the chart. I panicked and checked my tap water, but, of course that was zero. I'm beginning to think that bottle of 'beneficial bacteria in a bottle' was nothing but ammonia.
> 
> ...


----------



## coralbandit (Jul 29, 2012)

What was the brand name of product?Very interesting what you did and I appreciate learning all of this from you.
GOOD WORK AND EXCELLENT INVESTIGATION OF THE RESULTS!


----------



## Jenniferinfl (May 3, 2013)

I went back and forth on sharing the name of the company and decided not to because of the inconsistency of this type of product and a strong desire not to risk getting sued.. lol

There are a few companies, including internet based retailers, that make products similar to Stability and Tetra Safe Start. The product I used was from one of those sources. I would say that it is very similar to Tetra Safe Start which I believe is also bottled with an ammonia source. My guess is that this particular bottle was accidentally overdosed on ammonia, killing the bacteria and giving me a megadose of ammonia. They are all from the same batch number. 

I'm not sure what other brands are bottled with ammonia to feed bacteria, but, it would probably be wise to test for ammonia on any of those immediately before using. I wish I had a test that tested for ammonium instead of just ammonia. I'm tempted to say they must be using ammonium to be able to add enough ammonia to feed the bacteria longterm without killing them.

Edited to add: it might be wishful thinking, but though the ammonia is still off the chart, it looks like I have very faint nitrites and nitrates in that tub now. I suppose it will be obvious by tomorrow evening if the other bottles were good. Mostly I'm just happy they aren't poisonous like the first bottle.. lol This is exactly why I'm working on this sponge filter project, to avoid the inconsistency of bottled products or even seeding from one of my existing aquariums and risking taking too much bacteria.


----------



## coralbandit (Jul 29, 2012)

Many here have had good results with TSS and Drtims one and only.I've heard in many places that those are the only two to trust.I think Drtim has a patent on his product.
LOL they can't sue you for saying how it worked(I don't think).I bet if you went to the site you purchased from they WANTcustomer reviews,although maybe not yours!HA,HA!


----------



## Raymond S. (Jan 11, 2013)

I truly wish I could remember where it was but I recently read that Bio Spira was the person/company which patented the bacteria
which it says it "created" in a laboratory for the purpose of the cycle. The article said after having problems getting it to have any
usable shelf life in the freshwater version, they sold the patent rights to Tetra who call their freshwater cycle bacteria Safe Start.
It would seem logical(and the simplest, cheapest way) to keep them alive during storage(on the store shelf) would be to add
SOME as in a regulated amount of ammonia to the bottle.
Which brings me to MY point in this. People get a tank, fill it(hopefully with treated water) and dump in a bottle of this and since
lots of people are saying that it is safe to put fish in immediately they do just that.
Who out there got what I'm talking about ? Where is the ammonia ? Exactly...fish waste has to break down first before there can
be any ammonia. And how long does that take ? Exactly the same answer as how long does my cycle supposed to last.
It is different in almost EVERY case depending on tank size plus amount and size of fish AND how much they get to eat AND
what the Ph/Kh/etc,etc,etc of the water is.
And how long will the beneficial bacteria last without ammonia ? Instead of saying if this and if that...I'll just say...if you are going
to use fish to do this...put them in first and test till you get ammonia readings before using the Safe Start.
If you are doing a fishless cycle and want to use the Safe Start to cut the cycle time...follow these directions...
http://www.aquariumforum.com/f66/fishless-cycle-15036.html
But once you get the desired ammonia reading, then use the SafeStart and continue following the link directions till nitrates are
found. You might reduce the ammonia from 4ppm to 2ppm also but not at all necessary.
I do believe that most of the people who say "that stuff don't work" put it in the 
tank when there was no ammonia and the beneficial bacteria died before any ammonia existed in there.
I am of course allowing for some of it to be related to what Jenniferinfl has found by her great work on this issue.
My congrats to her on this work and thanks for the heads up about checking the ammonia level before using.
Feedback is more than welcome as I wouldn't want to hurt a single fish by giving bad info.
Likely should have mentioned: The two which I have successfully used are Tetra Safe Start and BioZime a powder which has virtually no
limit to it's shelf life.


----------



## Jenniferinfl (May 3, 2013)

Coralbandit, if I could have found safestart locally I would have used that instead. But, since I wasn't intending this for use directly with fish I figured it wouldn't matter if I used a cheaper store brand alternative. I went to every Petco, Petsmart, Walmart and Pet Supermarket around here and every one was out of the stuff. Since I was ordering anyways, I figured might as well try something else and be able to say whether or not that works. Also why I went with three small bottles instead of one large bottle. Sure glad I did since the first one was definitely bad! 

Raymond, yup, there are so many variables it is difficult to say if the product will definitely work for someone especially since you could easily get a bottle which simply isn't any good. 

It's getting late for me tonight, so I can't do it now, but tomorrow I'm going to set up a control in a one gallon jug with ammonia at 2 ppm and add half a teaspoon from the remaining third bottle. That will be, I believe, about 2.5 times the recommended dose and so certainly should be able to convert 2 ppm ammonia over a 24 hour period. 

I retested my sponge filter tub and it appears earlier was wishful thinking, no nitrites or nitrates yet. It would seem that if it was working after 8 hours I would have traces of one of those. But, I may be wrong about that. If I'm ready for work early enough, I'll retest around 3 am, otherwise it will have to wait till I get home around 3pm which will be more than 24 hours. Should be interesting! 

My thought would be that if your going to use the bottled product, you should verify that it can remove at least 1 ppm ammonia over a 24 hour period before lightly adding fish. I sure wish I wouldn't have added a little to my mostly cycled tanks! Now I'm going through a pesty mini-cycle from that ammonia spike they got from the bad bottle. I'm just glad I only added it to a couple tanks.


----------



## jrman83 (Jul 9, 2010)

No matter what is added to those bottles you should have read 0ppm for ammonia. How can it claim to "cycle" your tank if the bacteria to process ammonia hasn't even occurred? Once it starts to happen, how then is ammonia still left? It's sort of a catch 22 kind of thing....you can't have both. How does the bacteria stay alive in a closed off bottle with no oxygen? Don't we need oxygenated water?

I tried the Dr Tim's product. It is the only one that is kept cool or refrigerated. It made zero difference in my tank. I personally think they are all a big waste of money. I feel if I can cycle a tank with just some simple ammonia in about 10days, why buy the stuff.

Some people claim success. But,....in just about every case I have read the person's tank is already some distance through the cycle, they add the stuff, the cycle ends in two days and they think the bottle must have done it when it just as easily could have been where it was going to end anyway. If you search on the net I think the results that people claim to have gotten are just as much negative as they are positive.

IMO, just a waste.


----------



## Jenniferinfl (May 3, 2013)

I'm tempted to say that the bottles I bought aren't anything more than aquarium water. 

I did start a one gallon test with a teaspoon of the "beneficial bacteria". The water measured 2 ppm ammonia. But, I'm fairly certain I won't see nitrates even 48 hours from now. 

I will update. As soon as safestart is available again locally I will pick that up and see what that does.

Edited to add: I stopped at the local Pet Supermarket on my way home and while they did not have Safestart, they DID have Seachem's Stability. So, for my own personal amusement I went ahead and picked up a bottle. I am running exactly the same test, 2 ppm ammonia in a 1 gallon container dosed at 2.5 times recommended and we'll see where it sits in 24 hours. It also had nitrates, but in a 50/50 mix with RO water, it had trace ammonia. Interesting. As a side note, this one is a lot cloudier with more suspended particles.


----------



## yekoms (Jul 7, 2013)

I'm new to aquarium stuff and I wanted to do the fishless cycle in our 45gal. tank to be humane, to learn and see the process as it happened. The info from this site has been priceless. I can't thank you all enough...
I used Dr. Tim's One and Only at the beginning of the cycle as per his instructions. I also used his ammonia. His instructions are similar to jrman83's 
On the 5th day the nitrites spiked to 5. I panicked and did a partial change. (jrman83 thankfully told me to "cut out the water changes")
On the 11th day of the cycle with the ammonia and nitrites at 0 and I dosed to 3. 
On the 12th day test ammonia was .25 nitrite .5 
Today 13th day I dosed ammonia and hopefully tomorrow ammonia and nitrites will be 0.
I think that the cycle is going normal including my mistakes.
I don't think that Dr Tim's was any help or I killed them with to much ammonia in the beginning. As I mentioned in one of my earlier posts I screwed up at the beginning with ammonia up around 5. and did a partial water change to drop it to 4


----------



## Jenniferinfl (May 3, 2013)

You may not have killed it. With seeded media, it was probably a bit over a week for a couple of my tanks to cycle. But, I have some other tanks that have been stuck on nitrites for a few weeks now. 

I have another fishless tank just cycling with the fish food method and no seeding that has been at 3-4 ppm ammonia for a week now with no nitrites yet. 

What can I say? I love experiments.. lol 

Seeded fishless cycle is probably the fastest cycle of all and is what I'm aiming to achieve with what I'm trying. Only without having to take media from an established tank and risk a mini-cycle in that tank. 

I'm thinking the Stability has more promise. I would think that trace ammonia is what you want to see, indicating the bacteria still has food and may not have starved to death yet. Eh, either way a fun project and the bottle only set me back around $4. 

Yeah, that is the advantage to the fishless cycle, no need to do water changes during the cycle so long as you don't overdose the ammonia. I bought a bottle of janitor's strength ammonia, at 10%, and found that I actually had to dilute it with water and then measure that dilution out by the teaspoon to get the right amount of ammonia because of how strong it is. 

I'm nervous to even open that bottle indoors as the stench is unreal.. lol


----------



## yekoms (Jul 7, 2013)

I like learning and this is a leaning experience. 
The ammonia at ACE Hardware is 10% and I figured that I could do to much damage with it...lol
Dr Tim's sent his ammonia with the One and Only bacteria for free so that's what I used.
In our case the ammonia drops pretty quick on a daily basis. The nitrites are not dropping as fast. The tank does have a few plants in it. I don't know how that may affect things. 
The Dr Tim's ammonia is weaker than his directions on the label say with no smell. (Label says Contents: reagent grade ammonium chloride, purified water)
It takes at least twice as many drops as the label says to get the dose called for.


----------



## jrman83 (Jul 9, 2010)

It is impossible to overdose a fishless cycle. It may be higher than 4-5ppm that you start with but the tank will still cycle with that, and during a fishless the second day of dosing, of which you dose everyday, you'll be in the 6-8ppm range anyway. Any guess where you will be by day 3? 4? etc?


----------



## Jenniferinfl (May 3, 2013)

jrman83 said:


> It is impossible to overdose a fishless cycle. It may be higher than 4-5ppm that you start with but the tank will still cycle with that, and during a fishless the second day of dosing, of which you dose everyday, you'll be in the 6-8ppm range anyway. Any guess where you will be by day 3? 4? etc?


I was under the impression that you could kill off the good bacteria by overdosing ammonia during a fishless cycle. That seems to be stated quite a bit.


----------



## Jenniferinfl (May 3, 2013)

Update: Nearly 48 hours after setting up both tests, neither one has any evidence of nitrites or nitrates. 

The ten gallon tank I set up yesterday and seeded from my main aquarium has already gone up to .50 nitrites and trace nitrates. 

I doubt either one is actually going to do anything, but I'll leave them up a full 72 hours to verify. 

At this point though, I'll go ahead and call the sponge filter tub a wash of an experiment as it is still maxed out for ammonia with no nitrites or nitrates despite being treated with both kinds of beneficial bacteria. I am going to go ahead and seed this one from the main aquarium as well. 

Next time I run across Tetra Safestart, I will test that one the same. But, so far I would say that it is a fabulous waste of money buying any of that stuff. There is simply no way to know if the bacteria are still alive by the time you get them. My conclusion so far is that out of 4 bottles of beneficial bacteria, none of them had living bacteria and one bottle actually contained toxic levels of ammonia instead. Talk about a discouraging way to get started in the hobby if you buy one of those and your tank of fish just to have everything quickly die.


----------



## jrman83 (Jul 9, 2010)

Jenniferinfl said:


> I was under the impression that you could kill off the good bacteria by overdosing ammonia during a fishless cycle. That seems to be stated quite a bit.


I believe this is an assumption. How does having an overabundance of what I feed on supposed to negatively impact me - speaking as the bacteria. In nature when things die they will still decompose despite the amount of dead tissue.

I am in no way saying that anyone that believes this is wrong, but I would like to hear the logic behind it or read the test results that prove it. I would just like to know where that kind of info really comes from?

I know in some of my fishless cycles my ammonia got up over 10-12ppm. Nothing happened to the cycle. Tank cycled in 10 days.


----------



## yekoms (Jul 7, 2013)

jenniferininfl,
Our 45 gal fishless cycle took 14 days to complete. I don't know if Dr Tims helped or not, but I do know that people this site helped more than anything. I just hope that other folks read these treads and learn from them like I did.


----------



## Goby (Mar 21, 2012)

Jenniferinfl said:


> I had an interesting experience this weekend with a 'beneficial bacteria in a bottle' type product. I am working on a project involving sponge filters in a separate tub to work as a solution to immediately cycle a tank. To give my project a boost without risking my main aquarium, I ordered 'beneficial bacteria in a bottle' with the plan of dosing the tub daily with ammonia to simulate fish waste and thus always have a ready precycled filter. I added half of one bottle of the product to my tub of water on Friday afternoon and the remainder of the bottle to a couple other tanks that still had some nitrite readings. I am really glad that I test the water everyday! I had ammonia in tanks that had already zeroed out on ammonia and nitrites off the chart. Fortunately I tested my water about an hour after adding the product, so I did immediately water changes and hopefully my fish will be fine. Now on Sunday, my tub of water still has off the charts ammonia, no nitrates, no nitrites. That should about catch you up to where I am with the experiment. I keep a blog to keep track of incidences that occur with my tanks, so the rest of this is an excerpt from that for those interested.


OMG...if you were a guy I'd be in love. I didn't think there was another girl on the face of the Earth who did that kinda thing. *banana dance


----------



## Avraptorhal (Jan 24, 2013)

jrman83 said:


> It is impossible to overdose a fishless cycle. It may be higher than 4-5ppm that you start with but the tank will still cycle with that, and during a fishless the second day of dosing, of which you dose everyday, you'll be in the 6-8ppm range anyway. Any guess where you will be by day 3? 4? etc?


I have to disagree! I wanted to speed up the cycle (fishless) so I decided to overdose (dumb, I know now). However, I doubled up the mistake by miss calculating the amount of ammonia. I almost killed every plant in the tank. They all turned yellow and some died back. I also killed some fish that I put in because the ammonia read zero due to high nitrates. I had started to do a fishless cycle with fish food when I decided to switch to dosing ammonia to speed things up. 

Needless to say I proved the axiom that nothing good happen fast in an aquarium.


----------



## Jenniferinfl (May 3, 2013)

I just thought I would take a minute to update this.. 

The tub of water with my sponge filters in it still hasn't cycled. It has now been over 21 days since I added cycling product. The ammonia still tests at 8.0+ ppm. Nitrites are 0, nitrates are 0.

The tub has heavy airflow and is being maintained at 82 degrees. 

I have no clue what is going on as after three weeks one would thing that I would at least have nitrites. I'm tempted to just dump it, rinse it down and start over.


----------



## rift lake (Nov 8, 2012)

I always had good luck with with Colony by ATM used it a couple times and it worked well both times.


----------



## Avraptorhal (Jan 24, 2013)

jrman83 said:


> It is impossible to overdose a fishless cycle. It may be higher than 4-5ppm that you start with but the tank will still cycle with that, and during a fishless the second day of dosing, of which you dose everyday, you'll be in the 6-8ppm range anyway. Any guess where you will be by day 3? 4? etc?


I have to disagree. I had a senior moment in doing a fishless cycle for the first time. I made a huge mistake calculating the amount of ammonia to speed up the cycle (dumb on two accounts, I know) and almost killed the plants. I don't remember whether I changed water. However, I overdosed the ammonia.


----------



## Jenniferinfl (May 3, 2013)

rift lake said:


> I always had good luck with with Colony by ATM used it a couple times and it worked well both times.


I have not tried that one yet, but, with the amount of time it has been set up it should have at least started cycling all by itself even if I hadn't added anything. I'm not really in any hurry with it, so I'll leave it setup for months to see if it ever cycles.


----------



## Goby (Mar 21, 2012)

Jenniferinfl said:


> I just thought I would take a minute to update this..
> 
> The tub of water with my sponge filters in it still hasn't cycled. It has now been over 21 days since I added cycling product. The ammonia still tests at 8.0+ ppm. Nitrites are 0, nitrates are 0.
> 
> ...


When it's concentration is high enough, ammonia will maintain a near lifeless environment. Ammonia is a disinfectant and that's what disinfectants do. I'm uncertain how high that concentration would need to be though.

Rather than starting over, have you considered cutting the water in half?


----------



## MriGuy85 (Aug 29, 2013)

So Jennifer, what ever happened here? Lots of threads are going on in the forum mentioning the use or misuse, or not using this stuff altogether. The problem I see is that some are not using it due to bad reviews on google, or misuse of the stuff at the wrong point in the cycle, or maybe there are some other variables going on that are skewing the results of members.

Recently, I revived a 20g tank that I had running before i got my 55g. it laid dormant and unused for several months. During it sitting without water, i left the old gravel in it. well, i scum started to form on the surface of the 2 inches of water i left in the bottom to keep the gravel wet. dont ask me why i did that, its not like any bactera that was living in the gravel wouldve survived for months without an ammonia source. So anyways, I dumped a bunch of bleech on it to keep anything harmful from growing while i decided what to do wth the tank.

Flash forward many months, i decided to revive the tank. I threw away the gravel, washed the tank out in my back yard real good, and proceed to do a fishless cycle. I filled it with water, cranked my heater to 82, added 4ppm ammonia and dumped a large bottle of Tetra Safe Start into the tank directly next to the filter intake tube. I mean, i watched the filter suck this stuff right up. Well, after a bunch of testing i discovered that after 7 days flat, my tank was cycled.

so im wondering what your bottom line conclusions were with your experiment?


----------



## Avraptorhal (Jan 24, 2013)

Goby said:


> When it's concentration is high enough, ammonia will maintain a near lifeless environment. Ammonia is a disinfectant and that's what disinfectants do. I'm uncertain how high that concentration would need to be though.
> 
> Off the chart of the API ammonia test. I found out the hard way. I miscalculated the ammonia necessary to speed up the cycle (dumb I now know), the plants all turned yellow and died. By a massive WC I was able to save some. However, the results left me with high, high nitrates which proceeded to kill some fish.
> 
> Live and learn. Hopefully!


----------



## Fireman6982 (Jan 8, 2014)

Jenniferinfl said:


> I just thought I would take a minute to update this..
> 
> The tub of water with my sponge filters in it still hasn't cycled. It has now been over 21 days since I added cycling product. The ammonia still tests at 8.0+ ppm. Nitrites are 0, nitrates are 0.
> 
> ...


Jennifer, I am far from an expert but I thought I would share my cycling experience with you because it sounds a lot like mine. I went well over 35 days of dosing ammonia with no nitrites or nitrates. I then became frustrated and bought a bottle of ATM Colony and drained the tank and started over and then I cycled in about 12 days... Take that for what it's worth but it worked for me.


----------

