Why Doesn’t MicroBacter Start Work With Live Sand?

[a;lksdjf]

Hello all, I am getting close to being able to get my 150 gallon filled and cycling and I want to use MicroBacter Start to help with that, but on the website it says you shouldn’t use live sand with it. Is there any specific reason for this and will it be detrimental to my tank if I were to use both? The main reason I’m asking is because I want all the microfauna that comes with live sand to make up for the dry rock having none.

 

[brandon429]

you can use it, it doesnt neutralize or set back or stall anything in the context of a fed/cycling reef tank. ignore those directions and proceed, and your cycle will complete by the dates the label on the bottle bac says theyll complete.

to cycle with literally zero fanfare, simply add your bottled back to a sandbed + rocks + water reef tank, add two pinches of ground up fish food, Dr. Reef's trick for speed, and in ten days of swirling you'll be cycled and no testing is required.


when you use api to discern cycle status anyway, and it shows not ready on day ten, welcome to the impacts of 100% predictable mis testing. Choose the non fanfare option.

you might ask: why would a maker of wet pack/ bacteria-included items make an untrue statement?

I can't answer that, we're too busy catching them on about five simultaneous false claims in our analysis threads.

I have cycled a thousand reefs here with any combo of sand you want to include or not, the directions are certainly wrong. they create a false doubt in water bacteria right off the bat. that leads to doubt-based purchases later on.

 

[a;lksdjf]

you can use it, it doesnt neutralize or set back or stall anything in the context of a fed/cycling reef tank. ignore those directions and proceed, and your cycle will complete by the dates the label on the bottle bac says theyll complete.

to cycle with literally zero fanfare, simply add your bottled back to a sandb + rocks + water reef tank, add two pinches of ground up fish food, Dr. Reef's trick for speed, and in ten days of swirling you'll be cycled and no testing is required.


when you use api to discern cycle status anyway, and it shows not ready on day ten, welcome to the impacts of 100% predictable mis testing. Choose the non fanfare option.

Got it. Thankfully I have a Red Sea testing kit instead of those API ones LOL.

 

[brandon429]

they're second cause of false stuck cycle posts he he

really only seneye can be trusted. Not that its bottom end numbers are exacting but to show that at no time in history was a reef dosed with bottle bac and feed stuck at tenths ppm on day ten. .2 is what red sea is most likely to read, so we've supplanted constant doubt in bacteria with a known deposition date, from the labels of most bac brands its a ten day average.

even if you added only dry rocks, water, and that sand and NO bottle bac or feed, waiting 30 days would still cycle you/proven more than once off seneye now. Either way, not a thing that bottle bac sellers or sand bac sellers claim will stall a cycle has ever stalled a single cycle.

where your red sea will help is to alert you of a dead fish degrading in the rocks...it'll legit spike from its known base reading at that point and you know to hunt for a dead fish.

another reason I don't buy the live sand conflict notion from bottle bac makers is because someone had wet bag sand dna tested for cycling bac, and found none. in order to have a conflict, we need sand that actually has bac and even then, no conflict will take place. bottle bac + wet pack sand already claiming to have bac is the top arrangement in all completed cycling posts. based on those sheer search numbers alone, their painted risk of a stall appears totally made up.

 

[Acros]

@brandon429 please correct if I am wrong.

Depending on the live sand, you might not need any additional bacteria supplements. Ocean direct - comes with saltwater bacteria and hence no need for additional supplements. Agraalive - comes with fresh water bacteria and hence will need bacteria supplements.

 

[Cell]

I dont believe any live sand has enough nitrifying bac to skip a cycle.

I'm interested in knowing what Brightwell's reasoning is for the no live sand direction.

 

[brandon429]

in my opinion James kind of like Cell said those levels are assumed to be low enough such that detection was hard to find even for dna scanning/sampling and whether that's even valid is still tbd, its just new for the hobby/anything aquabiomics is selling for example has strong potential / yet to be verified in context is how it seems to me. at least his systems can detect and score out certain clades/presence its certainly a step up from "is my vial half green or half yellow" (the constant api conundrum)

I am 100% sure that after adding the sand or any other arrangement no natural cycle will take beyond 30 days anyway, so on that note I agree the bottle bac isn't required if someone can just setup, swirl water for a month and go


and if someone added the wet pack sand to a tank of dry rocks and water, no bottle bac, and merely fed two pinches of fish food and swirled, I bet within ten days they could do a water change and re proof ammonia and it'll move .5 ppm or so on seneye

that timing guess comes from NeonRabbits recent seneye postings.

 

[Bayareareefer18]

From what I understand is it has to do with "competing bacteria." Just as brightwell recommends not to use different types of their bacterial supplements at once. They recommend different types for different purposes.