bio-spira question about understanding

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abomb

Aquarium Advice Regular
Joined
Feb 25, 2004
Messages
57
Location
Milwaukee WI
My question is.......

can u use this product in a tank that already has fish in???? is it safe i dont realy understand the procedure to using this product however i do understand that it is cultured bacteria. any help about whether or not u can put it in a tank with fish already would be great

Adam
 
Safe sure. It seems to be doing little in my tank. I added 25% bioload and 1oz bio spira to an established and cycled tank. My biofilter was disturbed by meds (only nitrite readings after using maroxy anti-fungus treatment the ammonia stayed okay). The bio-spira took care of my nitrite readings initially but I have had 5 days of very low ammonia readings and since 2 days ago I've been having nitrates rising to 0.2ppm today. This is a total of 6 days after adding the bio-spira and additional bio-load. I am going to give it 2 more days and then the much overdue water changing starts (unless any of my levels rise then I will begin to do immediate water changing).
 
My understanding is that bio-spira is for new tanks to introduce beneficial bacterial. I don't think it really does much for an already established tank. It's not going to have enough bacteria to compensate for high readings in a tank that's already having some problems, know what I mean?
 
You can add it to a established tank, but I dont think it will really do much other than help stablize it if you get spikes or you kill off all your beneficial bacteria. patryuji, I dont think having a nitrate reading of .2ppm is at all bad, I dont change out my water in my tank until my nitrates are at 30 to 40ppm.
 
I was getting impatient waiting for my tank to cycle - It had been about 5 weeks. I added bio spira and 1 week later I was fully cycled. I had a full bioload of fish in there. I would swear by it!
 
BioSpira is made to deal with rising levels of ammonia and nitrites, not necessarily established levels. That being said, since it has the correct nitrifying bacteria, it will have a positive effect; theres just no guarantee you'll have the success Linsay had with it cycling the tank fully. And its 100% safe; no way you can overdose it. Why would you need it tho; what are your levels?
 
LAGlocker said:
You can add it to a established tank, but I dont think it will really do much other than help stablize it if you get spikes or you kill off all your beneficial bacteria. patryuji, I dont think having a nitrate reading of .2ppm is at all bad, I dont change out my water in my tank until my nitrates are at 30 to 40ppm.

Grrr...typing error on my part. NO2 (nitrites) is what should have been in my response not NO3 (nitrates). it just feels more natural to type the a in that series of keystrokes than another i...my nitrates are actually at 5ppm but my plants keep nitrates in check for me.
 
Dont feel bad, I have to actually look at what I type sometimes or i get some very weird words pop up on the screen, and half the time I dont know what I was trying to write.
 
There are a couple of factors that will make the B-S not work. One is if you have a tank that crashed & you added any kind of ammonia remover. The B-S needs ammonia to feed on. As far as cheaper methods of cycling a new tank, yes--adding some gravel & fishless cycling is the way to go. Unfortunately, a lot of folks don't have the patience or capability of understanding how this works. I have been around for a while now, answering a lot of questions by folks that have no comprehension about cycling. I don't think they are very interested in learning either. I think for those folks, my telling them to please put a bottle of B-S in their tank before adding fish (without any cycling, like they've always done) is best for the fish in the scheme of things. I also have found it extremely benificial for tanks I have that have crashed. Adding gravel from another tank would have done nothing to help my puffers gasping at the top of their tank, white as ghosts & puffed up. I did an 80% water change, added B-S & the tank was fine. It went from ammonia over 8 & nitrItes over 5 (the highest my tests will measure) to 0 for both in 24-48 hours. One of my tanks has crashed in this way 3 times. B-S saved my puffers every time. I really do swear by the stuff & would much rather recommend it to folks that insist on adding their fish to uncycled tanks. It happens way more than not!
 
It initially fixed my nitrite problem but I thought since I already had an established tank (which had lost part of its nitrite bacteria from meds) I might as well move everybody out of QT into the main tank at the same time so the bio-spira would be put to the best use. Well it fixed the crashed nitrite problem (I was hitting .5ppm then it went to zero after bio-spira in 12 hours) but it did nothing for the additional bio-load. 7 days now and I'm going to have to do a 50% water change cause I fear my fish aren't very happy about the conditions anymore.

...so it seems to work on brand new uncycled tanks (as per others experiences not mine) and it worked to fix a sudden bacterial die off in my tank with the same bio-load. It did not enable me to suddenly increase the bio-load of an established tank though. (I added the new fish and bio-spira at approximately the same time).
 
bio spira reply

just read ur response about biospira........i have been running now....(30gal fw tank).......about 6 weeks now........ammonia is till about .5......and i just saw a nitrite spike............i was thinking of adding it, but wasnt sure if u can add to an existing tank............did it drop ur ammo and nitrite to zero?????..........any help wud be appreciated.........michael
 
It seems that if you do NOT increase the bio-load it will work with the existing fish load. It did clear my nitrite readings no problem but I added more fish at the same time and did not do anything to further cycle the tank for the brand new fish added to my existing setup.

I now believe I will try Seachem's "Purigen" and if it works well I will use that in all my tanks from now on.
 
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