Does it really work?

Dr Tim,
I have used your product for FW before but am setting up my first SW aquarium. Back when I first learned of the "cycle" I used a bottle of One and Only and it was shipped to stores cold and stored cold. It worked and cycled my tank instantly. I think it was under a different name back then but do not recall for sure, I remember the store telling me it was the same product but something to do with patents and what not.
My second experience with your product was many years later and the bottle was what it appears to be today, this was for another smaller tank that had been stuck in a cycle with high ammonia and 0 nitrite. I dosed several times and never did it work, when asking about it I was told the stores no longer got in shipped cold because it no longer needed to be kept cold and many aquarists expressed concern that it no longer worked nearly as good as it did originally. I struggled for a month with this tank using all kidns of promised products and doign WC to keep ammonia levels down and the only thing that finally broke the cycle was adding biowheels for a filter and using old nasty filter media and filter water from a LFS.
Question is, how does t his stuff work for SW as opposed to FW? I am hoping the second time I used this stuff it was jsut a bad batch since the lfs does store it in a fridge but does not get it shipped in a cold pack. When it did work the first time it was great, I do not want an empty SW tank for a month and my wife wants to go out an get "Nemo" ASAP but I do not want to torture the guy with a crazy cycle. I set up a 46gallon SW tank with all dry rock, was a little dirty so it should have some organics but not much, and Caribsea Ocean Direct Live sand in a bag. I plan on getting a few pieces of LR rubble from a lfs and was thinking abotu giving your product a second chance. Is it safe to add the LR, one and only, and nemo all at once?

 

Hello

First - yes it is safe to add good (meaning well cured live rock) One and Only and Nemo and have everything be all right. Many have done it successfully.

But let's look at what and why things may not work.

First, the live rock. If the live rock has a bunch of decaying material and is not well cured this stuff will rot (decay) by bacterial processes that will produce a lot of ammonia. And is some cases a lot more ammonia than the One & Only can handle because we do not factor into the equation putting un-cured live rock into the tank.

Second, more people are using live sand which again has a lot of organics and these organics will also decay and produce ammonia - more than the normal load of ammonia we assume from fish.

Third, some people use bare-bottomed tank. This presents its own set of problems as the bacteria now do not have a place to settle and attach so they get swept into the filter and buried by organics and do not work well.

Fourth - handling of the product of which there are many variables. The most important is that the product has not been frozen. Freezing kills the cells. There are many points along the way from our production plant to your tank that the product may freeze and we try to minimize the possibility. Preventing freezing is a lot more important than keeping the product cold.

Fifth - cold or not. When I was at marineland we were the first to provide the refrigerators and teach stores to keep the product cold. But why? For the longest shelf life. This resulted in a myth that a successful nitrifying product has to be kept cold which is not true. We grow the different bacteria at water temperatures between 80 and 88 deg F which is their preferred growth temperature. With bacteria the higher the temperature (to a point) the faster they grow. Basically, nitrifiers once bottled are like a rechargeable battery - they will not get better in the bottle and slowly loose energy (their ability to quickly respond and take care of ammonia/nitrite). If you lower the temperature you lower the decay rate so they last longer. So to have the longest shelf life at the store level refrigeration is the best.

But there is a cost - the bacteria are slower to respond once added to the tank because they need a few days to 'wake-up'.

However, these days I have figured out a way around this by how we grow the bacteria on a very small particle so the bacteria are not free-swimming. This provides the nearly the same benefit as refrigeration - the bacteria can last a long time in the bottle but now without having to be kept cold.

Sorry for long winded answer but I truly believe the product will work but, of course, I cannot control everything which is one reason I am here on 3 Reef to help you when things don't work out. I am confident that if you buy the product from one of our approved dealers (check the date label) or us you will have success and if you have questions you know where to find me!

Hope this helps but, of course, always here to answer additional questions.

Best,

DrTim

 

Thanks for the response, due to my schedule I have not been able to get to the lfs until today. I did purchase a 4ounce bottle of One and Only for the 46gallon tank.

Water already has ammonia nitrite and nitrates so some bacterial growth must have already been going on in the tank since it has been running for about a week prior to adding anything. Ammona .5 nitrite 3 nitrate 10 (This is with ATI master test kit). The nitrites are actually up from 1ppm when tested a couple days ago everything else remained the same. I poured part of the bottle into the filter, and part in front of each powerhead to spread over the entire rock surfaces. I did not add any liverock or livestock since there was already everything present from the organic matter on the dried rock from BRS.

 

Ok so far but you are going to want to get a source of ammonia at some point - either add some liverock, a few fish or liquid ammonia.

Cheers

 

As long as there is some ammonia present, even if only .25 or .5, I should not have to add anything correct? The dry rock from BRS was the Pukani which is from the ocean and has a lot of dead organic material on it which I am assuming should be enough to keep a cycle going.
If my nitrites remain elevated and my ammonia drops to zero, how long can I wait before the ammona eating bacteria start to die if not fed? I was hoping I can just drop a few flakes in the tank here and there to keep everything alive. Went to buy a clownfish yesterday and the guy told me with my ammonia and nitrites where they are the chances of the fish making it were slim.

 

More than 24 hours after adding the ammona and nitrites have both gone up- ammonia between .5-1 and nitrites between 2-5, ATI test kit doesnt have a 3 or 4 and the colors for the 2 and 5 are very close so its hard to tell

 

So you decided to go with fishless cycling - the ammonia and nitrite wil go down over the next few days

 

So I think I am through the first stage of the cycle, tested tonight and my ammonia is reading a 0 after 11days of being between .5-1ppm. Nitrite is still reading very high at around a 5ppm and nitrates are also very high at 160ppm. I am unsure of how accurate the API nitrate kit is though because a week ago they tested at 40ppm for me and the lfs (using a dipstick test) said they were between 0-5ppm. Even if my kit is inaccurate, it at least shows a big increase in nitrates so I am thinking I at least am part way through phase 2.

Should I do a large WC to bring down the nitrite and nitrate? I have not added any ammonia to the tank and use the Pukani dry from BRS, do I need to add anything to keep ammonia up or should there be enough organic material still breaking down from the rock to keep a cycle going? I am very tempted to do a large water change and add a small fish since the ammonia is gone and dose with prime to keep the fish safe from nitrites that way I know I have an ammonia source.

 

The only thing you might consider adding is bacteria to breakdown what's left on the pukani rock. You want to make sure it is cure well and right now you don't know if you nitrate is going up and your nitrite is steadily going down. Unfortunately, high nitrite values interfere with the nitrate test and give false high readings. I doubt very much if your nitrate is 160.

I would do a big water change and hold adding a fish and ammonia until you get a better idea of exactly what your water chemistry is going.

 

I added a pound of liverock in a high flow area that came with a small reef crab. After 12 hours the little guy is still alive and scavenging for food so my water parameters must not be too bad afterall. Plan on testing again tonight hopefully the nitrites start to drop