Can I just keep adding ‘bacteria’?

peterhos · May 9, 2023

Evening All

Tank is 7 months old now. Zoas looking good. SPS are struggling. Can one keep adding bacteria to improve a new tank? What type of bacteria? Any particular brand to work some magic?

Any suggestions would be welcome. Thanks all.

brandon429 · May 9, 2023

No that won't work

There aren't any pattern examples you and I can find for it working

There are thousands of examples available in searches for improving sps growth for sure though, they just don't involve you adding bottle bacteria to a tank already cycled

There's:
Lighting tricks
Parameter changing tricks
Using live rock and not dry rock tricks
Feeding tricks
Several more searchable ones

peterhos · May 9, 2023

Thank you Brandon. It makes me wonder then why one can pay a lot for bottled bacteria. Simply to start/accelerate the initial cycle? I will look at those items you suggested.

HomebroodExotics · May 9, 2023

Yes it works, lots of people do it successfully, myself included.

EeyoreIsMySpiritAnimal · May 9, 2023

peterhos said:
Simply to start/accelerate the initial cycle?

And as an insurance policy before adding fish...

peterhos · May 10, 2023

After 7 months fish are all fine. Inverts all out working hard last night. Dry rock and lack of much calcareous algae disappointing. Nitrates at 10 and phosphate at 0.09. Still waiting for tank to start looking ‘good’.

HomebroodExotics · May 10, 2023

peterhos said:
After 7 months fish are all fine. Inverts all out working hard last night. Dry rock and lack of much calcareous algae disappointing. Nitrates at 10 and phosphate at 0.09. Still waiting for tank to start looking ‘good’.

Post some pictures, let’s see what you’re working with. Sounds like the tank should be just about good to go.

homer1475 · May 10, 2023

Any bottled bacteria you can buy are just nitrosomas bacteria that your tank is already full of at 7 months old.

Adding more is just wasting your money.

Randy Holmes-Farley · May 10, 2023

peterhos said:
Evening All

Tank is 7 months old now. Zoas looking good. SPS are struggling. Can one keep adding bacteria to improve a new tank? What type of bacteria? Any particular brand to work some magic?

Any suggestions would be welcome. Thanks all.

You can add bacteria all you want.

Whether there is any benefit is the real question.

I never thought that any potential benefits were best attained this way, but it depends on what you are trying to accomplish.

Dburr1014 · May 10, 2023

peterhos said:
Evening All

Tank is 7 months old now. Zoas looking good. SPS are struggling. Can one keep adding bacteria to improve a new tank? What type of bacteria? Any particular brand to work some magic?

Any suggestions would be welcome. Thanks all.

I think if you post all your parameters we can steer you in the right direction.
Pics in white light will be a plus also.

Troylee · May 10, 2023

I don’t know all the science behind it but bacteria driven systems like zeovit and the tank Sunny x just started are amazing! If you look at Sunny’s tank it will blow your mind in just 11 months how his corals out grew the tank!

ReefGeezer · May 10, 2023

I have started more than a couple tanks with dry rock. At 7 months, they were still young. While many looked really good at that time, most had water chemistry instability and low populations of organisms that manage the carbon, nitrogen, phosphate cycles. SPS didn't do well in these tanks. Invariably these tanks would have at least one more bout of the uglies to deal with before they started to stabilize. While a couple of these tanks matured a little faster, most didn't mature for 18-24 months.

GatorGreg · May 10, 2023

I do add a few drops of MB7 every day in my tank along with my KZ nano power pack (Pohls xtra, sponge power, coral vitalizer and LPS mixture). Whether the MB7 is doing anything or not. I don’t know. But my water is always super clear.

Dom · May 10, 2023

peterhos said:
Evening All

Tank is 7 months old now. Zoas looking good. SPS are struggling. Can one keep adding bacteria to improve a new tank? What type of bacteria? Any particular brand to work some magic?

Any suggestions would be welcome. Thanks all.

Your Nitrifying Bacteria Colony will grow and shrink based on the bio load in your tank. It is about supply and demand.

As the bio load in the tank increases, your bacteria colony will grow to meet the demand of the bio load. Also, if there is a reduction in the bio load (such as fish death), your colony will shrink to the point where there is enough bio load to support the remaining colony.

KJB32 · May 10, 2023

I dose MB7 everyday and I do believe it helps.

HomebroodExotics · May 10, 2023

Troylee said:
I don’t know all the science behind it but bacteria driven systems like zeovit and the tank Sunny x just started are amazing! If you look at Sunny’s tank it will blow your mind in just 11 months how his corals out grew the tank!

Yes I would prefer to listen to reefers like sunny x since he does actually have a reef tank that uses these products over a hobbyist that doesn’t even have a reef tank. Just my opinion though.

Troylee · May 10, 2023

HomebroodExotics said:
Yes I would prefer to listen to reefers like sunny x since he does actually have a reef tank that uses these products over a hobbyist that doesn’t even have a reef tank. Just my opinion though.

@SunnyX has always been a mentor for me over the years watching his amazing tanks grow! I remember when he started the mb7, vodka deal which I still use to this day! He’s more advanced than that now but it works..

jpmazzone · May 10, 2023

What types of SPS do you have in your tank that are struggling?

Randy Holmes-Farley · May 10, 2023

HomebroodExotics said:
Yes I would prefer to listen to reefers like sunny x since he does actually have a reef tank that uses these products over a hobbyist that doesn’t even have a reef tank. Just my opinion though.

Of course, it's very hard to know when folks are successful because of every thing they do, or in spite of any particular thing being useless, or actually a negative factor, or just be doing something that lots of other methods might accomplish equally well in other tanks?

SunnyX, for example, uses many methods simultaneously, some of which include bacteria. And other great tanks do not dose any bacteria, ever.

How do you reconcile that and conclude bacteria must be beneficial?

brandon429 · May 10, 2023

have Sunny stop feeding the tank, and only dose bacteria. anyone with a coral only system can try this/corals will decline and begin to die within 6 months.

food +fish waste and other actions are doing the work, not the bacteria for cycling added to a cycled tank.