The Puffer Forum

I was wondering what kind of bacteria booster you guys use in your tanks. Ihave been using Pro Aquatics Stabilizer and I've heard that Seachem's Stability is the best. If your booster differs where do you find it and how much does it cost? Also what is the recommended dosage for tank maintenance (This is where my cheapness shows, i.e. cost per dosage).

Throw it all out. All you're adding is dead bacteria. Might as well just pour fish poo into your tank.

The only 'bacteria booster' you should even look at is Bio-Spira. It is refrigerated and contains live bacteria.

How much does Bio-Spira cost? Is it a once a week treatment or once a month?

Neither. It is used to 'instant cycle' a tank.

http://www.marineland.com/products/mlla ... ospira.asp

The owner of the LFS here swears by bacteria boosters. He says it is like feeding the bacteria. I had a real cloudy water issue and began treating my water every week and since have had zero water troubles, my water is pristiene. Is adding this harmful?

Well it does feed the bacteria but if your tank is already fully cycled you shouldnt need to add anything else to feed it.

The only things I put in my tanks are Seachem Prime and Instant Ocean for my brackish tank, and tetra aquasafe and a small amount of aquarium salt for my freshwater live bearer tank. (I'm trying to use up the aquasafe and then the fw tank will use prime as well).

Dechlorinator and salt. Nothing else necessary.

The cloudy water issue was most likely a bacterial bloom and would have cleared up on it's own eventually given proper maintenance and water changes.

Things like stability probably do have bacteria in them, but they don't contain the kind you want to establish in your tank. The kind we want cannot survive unless they are refridgerated (Marineland Bio-spira for instance).

When you add the stability, it does add some bacteria. If you're lucky, it may still be alive. This bacteria will help clear up your cloudy water, but they won't establish themselves like the proper bacteria would, and they don't solve your underlying problem, which is an uncycled tank.

It's a bandaid solution that you have to keep paying for to use. If you stopped using it, your cloudy water problem may return, but if you stuck it out, and did proper maintenance for a month, the cloudy water problem would go away on it's own forever.

Well-maintained established tanks do not need any bacterial booster, period. The LFS person either has a very poor understanding of tank biology or has fallen for a sales pitch designed to enrich his wallet and that of the company producing the product. Snake oil.

One, repeat one, product has been shown to include the nitrification bacteris which establish in tanks. That product is Bio-Spira and it is excellent for new and un-cycled tanks. It is not needed in mature tanks.

Its possible that some boosters may keep tanks "fed" when there are no fish to produce nitrogenous waste, but in a cycled tank with fish, I see no reason to use these products. And if I had no fish in a tank for some unknown reason, and wished to keep it cycled, I'd be more inclined to use ammonia.

I think you're right that the boosters may keep a tank "fed", but only due to the decay of the dead bacteria. You get the same effect by adding any other organic matter like flake food (or pure ammonia) to the tank.

The whole field of products as a whole have such a limited applicable spectrum that they aren't worth their price.

The Seachem product uses bacteria that are stored in their spore form that come to life as it were given the proper conditions. I can see this being useful in a crashed tank or a tank that is cycling poorly, because the bacteria will metabolize the ammonia and nitrite, protecting the fish from poisoning (if the bacteria are not already dead in the bottle that is). They do nothing, however, to solve the underlying problem of the crashed or cycling tank.

Water changes, fishless cycling, good maintenance and planning, and bio-spira are all better ways of dealing with the whole issue.

The Seachem product does not contain the proper bacteria to establish in a captive tank environment for nitrification, ONLY the refrigerated Marineland product has the correct bacterial species, which have no spore form.

Yeah, I should have maybe made that a bit more clear.