Microbacter Clean: Before Vs After

[ChrisfromBrick]

Well said.

I've inherited tanks that had higher end SPS with minimal knowledge of how to keep them (this was many years ago). They all made it except for one. While it isnt the best idea to add something like an acropora to a new tank, im getting tired of all the judgement from this Lavey dude. Whom, by the way, told me that I am not yet successful at keeping mandarins because i've only had it for 5 months. Clown show.

 

[livinlifeinBKK]

so essentially, you use the same stuff.

Theres no way to prove it works or doesnt work because other variables could have affected the results. This is exactly why research studies are conducted the way they are.
Btw, just to mention, PNS Probio actually discloses the primary active strain of bacteria which is far different than typical bacterial additives. It's actually very different.

 

[ChrisfromBrick]

Theres no way to prove it works or doesnt work because other variables could have affected the results. This is exactly why research studies are conducted the way they are.
Btw, just to mention, PNS Probio actually discloses the primary active strain of bacteria which is far different than typical bacterial additives. It's actually very different.

Thats great. Maybe I will give that product a try.

But, unless you are putting those bacteria under a microscope and checking their morphology, you don't really know if they are doing their job or if they are in fact the bacteria mentioned on the bottle. I do think its great that they mention the strain.

I'm aware of Research. I happen to do it for a living.

 

[strich]

I mean, indeed of all this back n forth, how about a couple of the folks in here touting the success stories take a couple of steps towards something a bit more measurable - Throw a couple of small rocks in, wait until they get dirty, pull them each out into a small jar each and dose some of the product in one. See what happens.

 

[Treefer32]

I’m using microbacter clean to help speed the cure of old dirty dry LR in a Brute. Seems like $20 worth it for me to get to play with my pet rocks every day (aggressive dosing) and feel like I’m progressing the curing process. Will see how it goes. I plan to add a small amount of high end Aussie rock to my display after I cure this old rock and get it in there. Hoping to prevent phosphate leaching and ugly phase in my new tank once we get the water in starting with “cured” live rock.

I've done something similar, to what you're doing in the past. I took all the rock I had received from a 10 year old operational tank (covered in hair algae). The entire tank became an algae refugium when I set it up. Was nasty. I took the rock, washed it in muriatic acid (ate away the first 1/8 - 1/4" of the rock and removed the phosphates). Then, washed it in bleach for a couple days. Then moved it to totes of fresh water. I would keep it in a stagnant tote of fresh water for about 5 days, then move it to a new tote of fresh clean water. Dump the old water, clean the old tote thoroughly then reuse 5 days later with new fresh RODI water. I did this weekly for about 4-6 weeks. Then I replaced the fresh water with salt water, a powerhead and small heater. I wated 5 days then did 100% changeout of the salt water. And let it sit again. That's when I started testing amonia and phosphates. I still had both after all this. I continued the 100% water changes for 6 weeks. When phosphates finally routinely tested zero, I placed a mesh bag of raw shrimp in the tote and waited another 5-6 days.

After that 5-6 days there was zero shrimp left in the bag and started to have ammonia. Phosphates remained minimal during this time. After another 3 weeks went by I placed the rock back in the display (display was running with minimal fish, rock, but same sand bed.) I placed all the rocks and waited another month prior to adding more livestock. In total it probably took me around 4-5 months. But, I had brand new phosphate free cycled rock.

Yes, there'd be faster ways to cycle now, but, I was in no rush and the rock had so much phosphates bound up in it that no matter how often I cleaned them, scrubbed them, within 10 days, I'd have basketballs sized balls of hair algae just from hand pulling. It was either wash it or buy new rock. A $30 in totes and $5 bottle of bleach and I was home free 5 months later. It took a year from when I set it up, but that 125g display was finally looking amazing.

In between this I had tried everything, lights out, water changes, more and more snails, a home made turf scrubber (that I never got to work), vodka / carbon dosing, nothing worked. I hope microbacter clean works for you!


Then my house burned down and lost the entire tank in the fire.

 

[Kenneth Wingerter]

Thats great. Maybe I will give that product a try.

But, unless you are putting those bacteria under a microscope and checking their morphology, you don't really know if they are doing their job or if they are in fact the bacteria mentioned on the bottle. I do think its great that they mention the strain.

I'm aware of Research. I happen to do it for a living.

Specifically, the predominant constituent of PNS ProBio is Rhodopseudomonas palustris TIE-1. https://www.genome.jp/kegg-bin/show_organism?menu_type=pathway_modules&org=rpt

 

[livinlifeinBKK]

Thats great. Maybe I will give that product a try.

But, unless you are putting those bacteria under a microscope and checking their morphology, you don't really know if they are doing their job or if they are in fact the bacteria mentioned on the bottle. I do think its great that they mention the strain.

I'm aware of Research. I happen to do it for a living.

If you do research for a living why would you ask the other member to prove it's a band aid? As a researcher I'm really not sure why you would consider it to work or not work with only pictures and anecdotal evidence on a forum. The only reason I actually commented was because you seem so hostile in your 3 consecutive comments but im curious now.

 

[skey44]

I've done something similar, to what you're doing in the past. I took all the rock I had received from a 10 year old operational tank (covered in hair algae). The entire tank became an algae refugium when I set it up. Was nasty. I took the rock, washed it in muriatic acid (ate away the first 1/8 - 1/4" of the rock and removed the phosphates). Then, washed it in bleach for a couple days. Then moved it to totes of fresh water. I would keep it in a stagnant tote of fresh water for about 5 days, then move it to a new tote of fresh clean water. Dump the old water, clean the old tote thoroughly then reuse 5 days later with new fresh RODI water. I did this weekly for about 4-6 weeks. Then I replaced the fresh water with salt water, a powerhead and small heater. I wated 5 days then did 100% changeout of the salt water. And let it sit again. That's when I started testing amonia and phosphates. I still had both after all this. I continued the 100% water changes for 6 weeks. When phosphates finally routinely tested zero, I placed a mesh bag of raw shrimp in the tote and waited another 5-6 days.

After that 5-6 days there was zero shrimp left in the bag and started to have ammonia. Phosphates remained minimal during this time. After another 3 weeks went by I placed the rock back in the display (display was running with minimal fish, rock, but same sand bed.) I placed all the rocks and waited another month prior to adding more livestock. In total it probably took me around 4-5 months. But, I had brand new phosphate free cycled rock.

Yes, there'd be faster ways to cycle now, but, I was in no rush and the rock had so much phosphates bound up in it that no matter how often I cleaned them, scrubbed them, within 10 days, I'd have basketballs sized balls of hair algae just from hand pulling. It was either wash it or buy new rock. A $30 in totes and $5 bottle of bleach and I was home free 5 months later. It took a year from when I set it up, but that 125g display was finally looking amazing.

In between this I had tried everything, lights out, water changes, more and more snails, a home made turf scrubber (that I never got to work), vodka / carbon dosing, nothing worked. I hope microbacter clean works for you!


Then my house burned down and lost the entire tank in the fire.

Sorry to hear about your house and tank!
The microbacter clean ultimately worked for me. I also dark cured the rock for 12 weeks… so it’s hard to say why I got fresh clean cycled rock. Anecdotal for sure.

 

[Treefer32]

Sorry to hear about your house and tank!
The microbacter clean ultimately worked for me. I also dark cured the rock for 12 weeks… so it’s hard to say why I got fresh clean cycled rock. Anecdotal for sure.

Yeah that was 11 years ago and thankfully the fire had nothing to do with the aquarium and no one was injured other than the fish. Sad enough, but other than losing sentimental things, I am fully recovered today. I'm glad Clean or time is working for you. I've tried MS clean with my now phoenixed 340 gallon and rocks maybe seemed a little cleaner, but really didn't notice a change in phosphates. What's working for me so far is 5-10 ml of Lanthinum chloride and an ATS. My ATS is not large enough for what I feed. I feed around 10 cubes of food per day plus a sheet of nori every 2 -3 days. 5 cubes are freeze dried foods and 5 -6 cubes are a combination of frozen krill, brine, mysis.

But, that said, no nuisance algae in my display thanks to the ATS. I think Clean can work temporarily as a stop gap until additional filters are put in place. I used Bacter 7 and clean to start my Nitrate factory (a separate Nu-clear cannister filter filled with matrix rock). It took 3-4 months to get that seeded with denitrating bacteria, but my nitrates stay the same week to week now!

 

[ChrisfromBrick]

my red slime has diminished with the use of the flocculent coral snow along with higher flow in my tank. Seeing my nutrients stabilizing I think is the root cause though.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

my red slime has diminished with the use of the flocculent coral snow along with higher flow in my tank. Seeing my nutrients stabilizing I think is the root cause though.

Why do you think that, rather than the higher flow and organic reduction from the coral snow?

 

[ChrisfromBrick]

Why do you think that, rather than the higher flow and organic reduction from the coral snow?

Just an opinion. What if my phosphate fluctuating from .2 - .3 to a more steady 0.15 played a part? Nitrate was always reasonable at 6-8. What do you think?

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

Just an opinion. What if my phosphate fluctuating from .2 - .3 to a more steady 0.15 played a part? Nitrate was always reasonable at 6-8. What do you think?

I'm not convinced that cyanobacteria problems are associated with nitrate and phosphate levels at all, and changes in them don't seem likely to me to play a role.

 

[Newb_reefer1]

I wish I would have included my nutrient levels before and after starting to dose the MB Clean in my original post, perhaps that would have removed alot of the guessing or potential for the many other variables to affect the algae growth in this system.

I have been using this product religiously ever since my original post up until January of this year. Unfortunately a snowboarding trip went south and I broke my T-3 vertebrae… within the first month of this incident my tank took a nosedive for the worse. Without the ability to change water or change filter socks/run the necessary tests corals started to wither away and a few strains of algae began to come back very aggressively. While I don’t have definitive proof that the MB Clean was solely responsible for what I observed in the early days of this system, I like to think that it has had an overall positive impact. Since the start of September I began doing weekly 25% WC’s and started dosing the MB Clean again and it seems to be as effective now as it was in the beginning of this tanks life. As someone stated earlier the technology and knowledge in this industry continues to grow year by year so it’s not that far fetched to think a product could be developed that could “ jump start “ a new tank or “ Revive” an older tank in the same way that the old school method of leaving the lights off & system running fallow for months on end to build up that biome would.

This is not the first time I have had a reef tank either so I decided to step away from this thread when people started to argue & say it would be impossible to do what I was doing without allowing the tank to mature for whatever timeframe they thought was viable. While that is generally a good rule of thumb I have more than a decade of experience in this hobby now. With that said in my personal experience the MB Clean has noticeably increased the overall health and cleanliness of this system prior to my accident when compared to my previous reefs with no change in my husbandry practices tank to tank.

 

[jimk60]

I wish I would have included my nutrient levels before and after starting to dose the MB7 in my original post, perhaps that would have removed alot of the guessing or potential for the many other variables to affect the algae growth in this system.

I have been using this product religiously ever since my original post up until January of this year. Unfortunately a snowboarding trip went south and I broke my T-3 vertebrae… within the first month of this incident my tank took a nosedive for the worse. Without the ability to change water or change filter socks/run the necessary tests corals started to wither away and a few strains of algae began to come back very aggressively. While I don’t have definitive proof that the MB7 was solely responsible for what I observed in the early days of this system, I like to think that it has had an overall positive impact. Since the start of September I began doing weekly 25% WC’s and started dosing the MB7 again and it seems to be as effective now as it was in the beginning of this tanks life. As someone stated earlier the technology and knowledge in this industry continues to grow year by year so it’s not that far fetched to think a product could be developed that could “ jump start “ a new tank or “ Revive” an older tank in the same way that the old school method of leaving the lights off & system running fallow for months on end to build up that biome would.

This is not the first time I have had a reef tank either so I decided to step away from this thread when people started to argue & say it would be impossible to do what I was doing without allowing the tank to mature for whatever timeframe they thought was viable. While that is generally a good rule of thumb I have more than a decade of experience in this hobby now. With that said in my personal experience the MB7 has noticeably increased the overall health and cleanliness of this system prior to my accident when compared to my previous reefs with no change in my husbandry practices tank to tank

So now I'm confused. Were you originally dosing MB7 or MB clean?

 

[Newb_reefer1]

So now I'm confused. Were you originally dosing MB7 or MB clean?

Excuse me it’s been awhile, it is in fact MB Clean I’ll edit the post to fix that

 

[IceNein]

@Dan_P Of course they would never identify the bacteria even remotely or come outright and say if it's just a carbon source most likely because then people would see that it's not really anything different than other competitors' products and not really proprietary in any way.

This mindset is frustrating to me. Companies are so worried that if people knew their secrets, they would go out of business. In the guitar world, pedal manufacturers will put "goop" over the electronic components in pedals because the circuits are not generally patentable.

Well, people re-engineer them, and then people produce schematics, and then companies sell kits to DIY them with the circuit boards and all the components, and guess what? The original pedals still sell at outrageous prices, because guess what? Nobody wants to go through all that hassle, and building them is so tedious that few people want to make them for other buyers. So the market is fine.

Well nobody is going to start culturing bacteria. These companies could release the information on the strains of bacteria they're using, and their business would be secure.

But then maybe they couldn't make miraculous claims.

 

[ChrisfromBrick]

I wish I would have included my nutrient levels before and after starting to dose the MB Clean in my original post, perhaps that would have removed alot of the guessing or potential for the many other variables to affect the algae growth in this system.

I have been using this product religiously ever since my original post up until January of this year. Unfortunately a snowboarding trip went south and I broke my T-3 vertebrae… within the first month of this incident my tank took a nosedive for the worse. Without the ability to change water or change filter socks/run the necessary tests corals started to wither away and a few strains of algae began to come back very aggressively. While I don’t have definitive proof that the MB Clean was solely responsible for what I observed in the early days of this system, I like to think that it has had an overall positive impact. Since the start of September I began doing weekly 25% WC’s and started dosing the MB Clean again and it seems to be as effective now as it was in the beginning of this tanks life. As someone stated earlier the technology and knowledge in this industry continues to grow year by year so it’s not that far fetched to think a product could be developed that could “ jump start “ a new tank or “ Revive” an older tank in the same way that the old school method of leaving the lights off & system running fallow for months on end to build up that biome would.

This is not the first time I have had a reef tank either so I decided to step away from this thread when people started to argue & say it would be impossible to do what I was doing without allowing the tank to mature for whatever timeframe they thought was viable. While that is generally a good rule of thumb I have more than a decade of experience in this hobby now. With that said in my personal experience the MB Clean has noticeably increased the overall health and cleanliness of this system prior to my accident when compared to my previous reefs with no change in my husbandry practices tank to tank.

i’m doing a combination of MB clean combined with snow and my corals and tank look fantastic. 75% improved. The cyano is gone and corals all open and looking great. Granted, I do weeekly water changes, test daily, and dose carefully.

As some said, i’d like to see a list of the bacterial strains that are in the product.

 

[Dan_P]

As some said, i’d like to see a list of the bacterial strains that are in the product.

Possibly more importantly, I’d like proof that the bottled bacteria are actually growing in the aquarium and being more than just food.

 

[IceNein]

Possibly more importantly, I’d like proof that the bottled bacteria are actually growing in the aquarium and being more than just food.

This is something that bothers me about Microbacter. By every account I've heard, it's some magical bacteria that can live for a time in salt water, but supposedly cannot reproduce or become self sustaining, meaning that you will need to dose it forever.

Ideally you dose some bacteria and at some point it reaches equilibrium. Maybe at first it blooms and exhausts its food source, and then maybe it dies back and the food source rebounds, but eventually there should be some state where as much food reproduces as is necessary to feed a stable population of the bacteria, and then you don't need the bacteria anymore.