Can you mix different nitrifying bacteria?

[CLYRIC]

Hi, I first started dosing my saltwater tank with fritz turbostart 900, but I ran out and my LFS also ran out and only had Dr Tim's. Is it ok to combine different brands of nitrifying bacteria or will it cause problems or crash the cycle?

 

[Pistondog]

Hi, I first started dosing my saltwater tank with fritz turbostart 900, but I ran out and my LFS also ran out and only had Dr Tim's. Is it ok to combine different brands of nitrifying bacteria or will it cause problems or crash the cycle?

Yes it is fine

 

[Andreas' Reef]

It shouldn't cause a problem since there are more than 1 species of nitrifying bacteria in a bottle.

 

[brandon429]

You didn’t gain benefit by mixing, first round was enough, more is not better and not harmful either. It’s more boosting to add a pinch of fish food than it is to double up on bacteria

 

[Rmckoy]

I believe one strain will compete with the other as well as if there is no food for the extra bacteria to survive it will just die with no way of testing bacteria density or population

 

[Rmckoy]

You didn’t gain benefit by mixing, first round was enough, more is not better and not harmful either. It’s more boosting to add a pinch of fish food than it is to double up on bacteria

Is dosing one bottle per month good to guarantee there is enough bacteria ?

what nitrifying bacteria do you prefer ?

 

[ElementReefer]

Is dosing one bottle per month good to guarantee there is enough bacteria ?

what nitrifying bacteria do you prefer ?

You might be interested in the services at AquaBiomics. Check them out.

 

[brandon429]

I would never use the bac after a cycle, waste of money. Any strain for cycling is fine, they’re measured here:

Bacteria in a bottle, Myth or Fact

Call me old school, back in the day we placed a deli shrimp in a tank to kick start the cycle. When tank reached 1.5-2 ppm ammonia we pulled it out and waited sometimes weeks to months for bacteria to colonize and drop ammonia and nitrites down to 0 to make tank safe for livestock. With recent...

www.reef2reef.com

 

[bushdoc]

Follow brandon429 advice and some other guys too.
I personally prefer live rock or sand from established tank or ocean to seed my new aquarium with bacterial culture. It gives you more biodiversity.

 

[ElementReefer]

Follow brandon429 advice and some other guys too.
I personally prefer live rock or sand from established tank or ocean to seed my new aquarium with bacterial culture. It gives you more biodiversity.

BRS TV on YouTube have that great cycling experiment going on, some surprising results so far:

 

[CLYRIC]

You didn’t gain benefit by mixing, first round was enough, more is not better and not harmful either. It’s more boosting to add a pinch of fish food than it is to double up on bacteria

Yea I already added fish food, but the ammonia spiked more than I expected (4 ppm), so I'm just stocking more incase the cycle crashes or something else happens.

 

[brandon429]

Saving you a thirty page thread read in a big study thread like that one above so you don’t get tricked by bottle bac sellers thinking it’s stalled or ruined or needed extra bac:

all you need to do now is wait ten total days from setup, change all the water or most of it out, and you’re cycled no matter what the cheap non digital ammonia kit says. Trust me it’s done in ten days, no more testing required for any parameter

the wait of ten days is the parameter secret they don’t tell you. They withhold that fact and make it seem that a cheap ammonia test kit must read zero to be cycled, not true, its a trick to sell you more than one bottle of bac. You’ll be ready soon


its actually ready now lol/ Fritz is that fast/ but day ten wait gives you time to read disease preps from the disease forum before adding fish, which your tank can carry after the big water change.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

Is dosing one bottle per month good to guarantee there is enough bacteria ?

what nitrifying bacteria do you prefer ?

There is always enough nitrifying bacteria in a reef aquarium post cycling, regardless of adding more bacteria or not.

 

[brandon429]

In support of Randy’s statement, Rmckoy consider the number of rip cleans I’m selling/getting monthly here on the site (free of charge of course )

the sole goal is to remove bacteria (and aggregates of waste) from any reef tank on this site or the others very roughly, so we attain the benefits of the rip clean (beat an invasion, swap a sandbed, move or upgrade a reef)

Bacteria that we don’t need increase daily in each tank because we add new substrate feed for them each time we feed fish or corals, we are doing what a dentist does when they flush out a dirty old mouth lol. No matter how much the dentist rasps, pokes, prods, flushes out bacterial plaques they just come back because we keep importing them along with new substrates with every burger bite. I love my dentist analogies

even after our rip cleans copious bacteria remain such that corals still feed just fine, filters continue running, the resilience of bacteria without any direct help from us always gets me new jobs and repeat jobs.

if someone wants to use cycling bac to try and beat an invasion like Sunnyx’s thread that’s no harm, I don’t believe it works but there’s no harm trying, there is no time we are short on bac after a cycle that’s for sure.

 

[CLYRIC]

Saving you a thirty page thread read in a big study thread like that one above so you don’t get tricked by bottle bac sellers thinking it’s stalled or ruined or needed extra bac:

all you need to do now is wait ten total days from setup, change all the water or most of it out, and you’re cycled no matter what the cheap non digital ammonia kit says. Trust me it’s done in ten days, no more testing required for any parameter

the wait of ten days is the parameter secret they don’t tell you. They withhold that fact and make it seem that a cheap ammonia test kit must read zero to be cycled, not true, its a trick to sell you more than one bottle of bac. You’ll be ready soon


its actually ready now lol/ Fritz is that fast/ but day ten wait gives you time to read disease preps from the disease forum before adding fish, which your tank can carry after the big water change.

Got it, thanks for the detailed answer! My ammonia is still at 1 ppm, nitrite at 5 ppm, and nitrate at 20 ppm. I'll take your advice and wait the 10 days (5 days now)

 

[Timfish]

As mentioned above not necessary but won't hurt. Here's a link to Aquabiomics article on establishing microbiomes and a link to a BRS video that offers a different perspective. Rgarding microbial processes I'd encourage you to get Rohwer's book as weel as watch his video.

Establishing a Healthy Microbiome in a New Aquarium Using Live Rock

Studying the effects of live rock in a newly established aquarium shows that high-quality live rock promotes the rapid establishment of an effective biological filter and a microbial community similar to those found in mature reef tanks.

www.reef2reef.com

15 Answers - BRS


"Coral Reefs in the Microbial Seas" This video compliments Rohwer's book of the same title (Paper back is ~$20, Kindle is ~$10), both deal with the conflicting roles of the different types of DOC in reef ecosystems. While there is overlap bewteen his book and the video both have information not covered by the other and together give a broader view of the complex relationships found in reef ecosystems

 

[ElementReefer]

Got it, thanks for the detailed answer! My ammonia is still at 1 ppm, nitrite at 5 ppm, and nitrate at 20 ppm. I'll take your advice and wait the 10 days (5 days now)

FYI don’t read too much into your nitrates if you still have detectable nitrite, it will throw off the nitrate reading on cheaper test kits like API.