Bottled Bacteria, AquaBiomics. Just what's in your bottles

[Solo McReefer]

dumps it in.

I add 5 drops every night and after a water change

My observations of the results are remarkable. I want to know what, and what is at work.

The first step is what's causing it(for me at least)

Other experienced reefers may continuously and continuing have algae free systems, just from their husbandry

I have never seen this before. Not even when I did Zeovit

 

[taricha]

When we find out what bacteria are in each product, I am not sure what
I would do with the list.

Yep. I think this thread idea makes me a little ambivalent.

And you are highlighting why.
I don't think we necessarily know how to ask good questions about this data and this topic. I don't like some of my questions from a few years ago.

Can we find pelagibacteraceae in any of those bottles? From my tests I am always super deficient in that strain and would like to know how much of a difference in tank health would it really make if I can get some.

Pelagibacteraceae population is less a cause of "good/stability" and more of a symptom of a stable system with low amounts of rapid growers that take advantage of nutrient fluxes and quickly changing surface conditions.
It would be mostly pointless to add it to your tank. Like putting a christmas tree in your house and stringing it with lights isn't going to make it any cooler outside.

What if there is vibrio in some random A bottle brand on a shelf?

I definitely would like to know that

It would be more prejudicial than relevant, since I'm confident I could find some vibrios in the sand/surfaces of 90% of reef tanks.

 

[Solo McReefer]

Pelagibacteraceae

I doubt rather highly that that bacteria is in any of the bottles

My guess is that most of them use bacteria produced in large quantity for other industries, for other purposes

Doc Ryan is not getting on a boat, and skimming the ocean to collect his Magic Bug Juice.

He's getting it from the pharmaceutical, waste treatment, or aquaculture industries. Cost and availability being main reasons

 

[Dan_P]

I am not a micro biologist so I can only speak from observations. From my understanding there is still so many unknowns.

Thanks for your thoughts. You got me thinking.

I am not sure. Has anyone seen a verified biologist say they can't establish themselves in our tanks. I cycled a number of tanks in only a few days with biospira so hard to believe they were not establishing themselves somewhat for some period of time.

Establishing a population of nitrifying bacteria in a new aquarium is the only example of a bottled bacteria where product claims are clear and user results are verifiable. All other bottled bacteria products seem bogus. The claims seem to lack scientific support. Many claims fail the “can you find anything verifiable” test.

I also wouldnt say they are requirement, just another tool in the bag. I typically now only dose if I think it is helping solve a specific problem. I guess it would depend on what is in the bottle and that is why I would like to find out more. I have dosed a lot of different brands for things like nutrient control, pathogens, dinos. Some work and some do not at all.

Here is a big assumption we might all be making about bottled bacteria: they do something when added to the aquarium. The variability of performance of bottled bacteria product should make us pause and ask “should these products even work as the label claims”. How would we even find out whether the bottled bacteria even have bacteria? It is relatively easy to answer this question for nitrifying bacteria, not so much for the rest of the products.

As far as coral go there are some from my observations that they like (better PE hours after dosing) and some they really really don't. Also there is absolutely live bacteria in pretty much every brand bottle I bought as I check them under a microscope. I am pretty certain they do something because I have had a certain type when constantly dosed finally drop my nutrient levels and then there is a brand I won't mention that near crashed my cycle. Some helped significantly with dinos and others were kind of useless although constantly recommended.

Excellent! You made sure the stuff wasn’t just water.

From my understanding coral consume bacteria and there are scientific papers on certain strains that have antipathogenic properties. How do we bottle those bad boys up and get off the dangerous antibiotic train? Actually I believe hydrospace makes this claim in their PNS pro bio bacteria and I did happen to dose it along with other things (not antibiotics) and my aquabiomics test had 2 less pathogens detected afterwards but still not a great scientific test on my part. I'm just an obsessive reefer.

You are going the extra mile to make sure the product isn’t just water!

Personally I am interested in only the premium brands and not the new tank cycling bottled bacteria. Can we find pelagibacteraceae in any of those bottles? From my tests I am always super deficient in that strain and would like to know how much of a difference in tank health would it really make if I can get some. Also would be on the hunt for pseudoalteromnadaceae since I remember reading that paper doing experiments showing it was the one that also had great antipathogenic properties.

I could write a list of questions that I would like to find the answers to. My point is maybe we should find out what is in those bottles and not just brush it off because it doesn't make sense.

Makes you wonder why the vendors just don’t tell us what’s in the bottle and share their research supporting their claims. My skeptical brain keeps suggesting shenanigans.

 

[areefer01]

Makes you wonder why the vendors just don’t tell us what’s in the bottle and share their research supporting their claims. My skeptical brain keeps suggesting shenanigans.

At some point the hobbyist has to take responsibility. Or so I believe.

Then again this reminds me a bit of the vitamin and supplement industry.

 

[taricha]

When we find out what bacteria are in each product, I am not sure what
I would do with the list.

There is little or no evidence that the dosed bottled bacteria actually grow in the aquarium,

Let's go down this hypothetical...

Back in 2021, I cultured up 7 popular bacterial products (yes one was vibrant) in saltwater + ground fish flake. I sterilized the samples, then added material from each bottled product. Something from each bottle grew lots of cells, so this is essentially a survey of the constituents that could grow if they got so lucky that they found fish food in an aquarium that no one else had already eaten.

"here's the culture-up data showing that there were nice cloudy samples of similar density from each product, so something that grew from each product bottle ought to have been well-sampled by the aquabiomics data.

And below is the aquabiomics data. I pooled the cloudy solutions that were grown from each bottle, mixed them and used that as the aquabiomics sample. They ran it as an unknown culture, just looking for all the strains detectable. (I sampled what grew from my aquarium sand/water in a separate test - there were zero organisms that overlapped between the cultured bottle products and the stuff from my aquarium.)

continued...

Some things here are what ought to be expected - lots of Bacillus. But there are other things that probably nobody is intending to be there. More diversity (27 strains) was cultured from the 7 bottles than I expected."

So if you knew which strains and species came from which product, what would that tell you?

I don't know that I feel like I can ask really good questions on this.

 

[Dan_P]

Let's go down this hypothetical...

Back in 2021, I cultured up 7 popular bacterial products (yes one was vibrant) in saltwater + ground fish flake. I sterilized the samples, then added material from each bottled product. Something from each bottle grew lots of cells, so this is essentially a survey of the constituents that could grow if they got so lucky that they found fish food in an aquarium that no one else had already eaten.

"here's the culture-up data showing that there were nice cloudy samples of similar density from each product, so something that grew from each product bottle ought to have been well-sampled by the aquabiomics data.

And below is the aquabiomics data. I pooled the cloudy solutions that were grown from each bottle, mixed them and used that as the aquabiomics sample. They ran it as an unknown culture, just looking for all the strains detectable. (I sampled what grew from my aquarium sand/water in a separate test - there were zero organisms that overlapped between the cultured bottle products and the stuff from my aquarium.)

continued...

Some things here are what ought to be expected - lots of Bacillus. But there are other things that probably nobody is intending to be there. More diversity (27 strains) was cultured from the 7 bottles than I expected."

So if you knew which strains and species came from which product, what would that tell you?

I don't know that I feel like I can ask really good questions on this.

Yes, I remember this study.

I am still left with the question about whether any of these bacteria could establish a sustainable presence in my aquarium. My assumption is that most of the interesting and useful things are happening in biofilms, much less so in the water. So, if you can’t integrate the ecosystem with the bottled bacteria, it is all a waste of money.

 

[Solo McReefer]

Let's go down this hypothetical...

Back in 2021, I cultured up 7 popular bacterial products (yes one was vibrant) in saltwater + ground fish flake. I sterilized the samples, then added material from each bottled product. Something from each bottle grew lots of cells, so this is essentially a survey of the constituents that could grow if they got so lucky that they found fish food in an aquarium that no one else had already eaten.

"here's the culture-up data showing that there were nice cloudy samples of similar density from each product, so something that grew from each product bottle ought to have been well-sampled by the aquabiomics data.

And below is the aquabiomics data. I pooled the cloudy solutions that were grown from each bottle, mixed them and used that as the aquabiomics sample. They ran it as an unknown culture, just looking for all the strains detectable. (I sampled what grew from my aquarium sand/water in a separate test - there were zero organisms that overlapped between the cultured bottle products and the stuff from my aquarium.)

continued...

Some things here are what ought to be expected - lots of Bacillus. But there are other things that probably nobody is intending to be there. More diversity (27 strains) was cultured from the 7 bottles than I expected."

So if you knew which strains and species came from which product, what would that tell you?

I don't know that I feel like I can ask really good questions on this.

Well, you are more invested in this than your previous posts would let on

Cool

 

[Solo McReefer]

I can see Bill Hicks reading this thread

 

[Moe K]

Thanks for your thoughts. You got me thinking.



Establishing a population of nitrifying bacteria in a new aquarium is the only example of a bottled bacteria where product claims are clear and user results are verifiable. All other bottled bacteria products seem bogus. The claims seem to lack scientific support. Many claims fail the “can you find anything verifiable” test.



Here is a big assumption we might all be making about bottled bacteria: they do something when added to the aquarium. The variability of performance of bottled bacteria product should make us pause and ask “should these products even work as the label claims”. How would we even find out whether the bottled bacteria even have bacteria? It is relatively easy to answer this question for nitrifying bacteria, not so much for the rest of the products.



Excellent! You made sure the stuff wasn’t just water.



You are going the extra mile to make sure the product isn’t just water!



Makes you wonder why the vendors just don’t tell us what’s in the bottle and share their research supporting their claims. My skeptical brain keeps suggesting shenanigans.

All anecdotal on my part as I admit. Just trying to point out observations I made while dosing different bottled bacteria. I can't prove any of it but also have not seen anyone prove any of the push back to be absolutely false yet either.

I am not advocating for people to just go out and dose bottled bacteria. Just that I had some good results and some bad. The most important thing I learned which I think I mentioned in this thread is it's best to not dose bottled bacteria if there is no issues in the tank as there are strains money can't buy that you would just be competing with and potentially set back their progress in your tank.

Pelagibacteraceae population is less a cause of "good/stability" and more of a symptom of a stable system with low amounts of rapid growers that take advantage of nutrient fluxes and quickly changing surface conditions.
It would be mostly pointless to add it to your tank. Like putting a christmas tree in your house and stringing it with lights isn't going to make it any cooler outside.

That is what I thought but wasn't sure. It kind of re-affirms my thoughts on that we are just making more difficult for these certain strains by dosing unknowns. I do like the idea Salem is going in, in that we may be able to shift the more favorable strains by what we carbon dose.

Is it me or are people getting triggered here? I just want to know what is in some of these bottles and not yell snake oil all over the place until we get the results. I'm down for calling it pooh juice after we can get some more data.

 

[Solo McReefer]

Is it me or are people getting triggered here?

I'm with telegraham, and find the dichotomy interesting

We just went through Covid for 4 years, and there are still a huge number of people should still think or say, "Oh, you can't say that. That's off limits"

Otherwise smart people too. Not just Oklahoma waitresses

 

[taricha]

I am still left with the question about whether any of these bacteria could establish a sustainable presence in my aquarium.

Right. And to your point, I had to help the bottled stuff out by sterilizing all the competition. As we've noted before, if you compare how long it took the bottled stuff to grow vs the instant response of the aquarium native bacteria (Grey line below) - you can see how the bottled stuff might have a hard time gaining a foothold, with the very fast heterotrophs in the aquarium already.

 

[BeanAnimal]

Quick question, how do you know the that the food did not bring anything in?

 

[taricha]

On the question, "what would this data tell us?"
Here's one question that might be very straightforward to interpret.
in my data, there were some with bacterial genera that had no business being there in a bottled product. Specifically, the most prolific one in my culture-up - renibacterium is a genus of fish pathogen. Nobody is including that in their product on purpose.
@telegraham has seen the same, and found repeatedly that some products include strains that have no business being there.

So maybe one low hanging fruit of a question is determining which products have poor culture control and are delivering significant fractions of stuff they can't possibly intend to.
It seems that the answer might be more than one product.

 

[taricha]

Quick question, how do you know the that the food did not bring anything in?

good Q. Because I cultured up aquarium water/sand on the same sterilized food, and there were zero measured microbes in common between the cultures from the bottles and the cultures from aquarium stuff.
If I was getting sequences from the food, it would've been in both.

 

[Dan_P]

I just want to know what is in some of these bottles and not yell snake oil all over the place until we get the results. I'm down for calling it pooh juice after we can get some more data.

Understand.

A functional description of the product, what it does and how it grows, could be sufficient to suspect the product is snake oil. This we have for a smattering of products. Calling all the versions of this product snake oil might be rushing things. A list of a product’s contents could give a more balanced assessment.

 

[Doctorgori]

I personally paid for all the tests and products, and the results are tied to my AquaBiomics account.

Can you post/screen print the data from you account or is the info privileged ?

in my data, there were some with bacterial genera that had no business being there in a bottled product. Specifically, the most prolific one in my culture-up - renibacterium is a genus of fish pathogen. Nobody is including that in their product on purpose.
@telegraham has seen the same, and found repeatedly that some products include strains that have no business being there.

Like I said; perhaps all these manufacturers are doing is selling bottled poo, but regardless the source and type of cultures seems very relevant thanks to your info

A functional description of the product, what it does and how it grows, could be sufficient to suspect the product is snake oil

exactly…, I’m adding the Microbacter 7 product descriptions and benefit promises for context,
slightly related: I’m also looking up Aquabiomics services

anyway
MB7:
Complex system of non-pathogenic aerobic and anaerobic microbes, as well as natural enzymes, specifically formulated to establish biological filtration in new aquarium set-ups, and to enhance the rate of nitrification, denitrification, and organic waste degradation in marine and freshwater aquaria through complete nutrient remineralization.
Supplied in a state of suspended animation for maximum longevity.
Formulated utilizing extensive data compiled by microbiologists.


Benefits

• Rapid reduction of organic carbon, ammonia, nitrite, nitrate, and phosphate.
• Digestion of uneaten/undigested food, excreta, detritus, and other latent organic material, resulting in cleaner and healthier aquarium substrate
• Reduction of organic compounds into nutrients that encourage the growth of photosynthetic organisms
• Greatly-reduced hydrogen sulfide production.
• Increase in dissolved oxygen concentration.
• Limits availability of pre-existing phosphate to undesirable forms of algae and cyanobacteria.
• Increased water clarity.

Instructions and Guidelines

Shake product well before using. Mix appropriate volume of MicrōBacter7 (see below) with 250-ml (~8 fl. oz.) of aquarium water in a clean container prior to addition to aquarium. If using a pipette to dispense MicrōBacter7 below water level of container or aquarium, be sure to thoroughly clean pipette with fresh water prior to placing tube back into MicrōBacter7 bottle; failure to do so will contaminate the product. Best results may be obtained by adding mixture to external biological filtration system (if applicable). Do not add to pump intake port(s). For best results, use within 1-year of purchase date. Grossly overdosing MicrōBacter7 will not significantly increase the effectiveness of the product, nor the rate at which it enacts changes in aquaria. The following recommendations are based upon extensive testing and will produce the best results in most aquaria.

Medium- to High-nutrient Systems, or to seed Biological Filtration in new aquaria:
To effectively decrease the concentration of available nutrients and waste material in all marine and freshwater aquaria, add 5 ml (1 capful) per 25 US-gallons (94.6 L) [≈4 drops per gallon (3.8 L)] of aquarium water daily for the first two weeks of use; the impact that MicrōBacter7 has on an aquarium is most evident within this period. Turn protein skimming and UV-sterilization off for a period of 4 hours following addition to aquaria. A noticeable difference in water clarity is typically apparent within 30-minutes of dosing. Follow same instructions for new aquarium start-up. Thereafter, switch to “low-nutrient” dosage (below).

Stable, Low-nutrient Systems:
To maintain a low concentration of available nutrients in all marine and freshwater aquaria, 5 ml (1 capful) of MicrōBacter7 per 50 US-gallons (189.3 L) [≈2 drops per gallon (3.8 L)] of aquarium water no more than once each week; alternately, add 1 drop per 50 US-gallons daily (or 1 drop per 25 US-gallons every other day). Turn protein skimming and UV-sterilization off for a period of 4 hours following addition to aquaria. Dosage may be adjusted according to perceived benefit to aquarium, however it is recommended that the dosage not exceed 1 drop per 10 US-gallons per day. With time, hobbyists may determine that decreasing the dosage and/or dosing frequency by up to 50% sufficiently maintains a low-nutrient environment. During changes in biological filtration or when increasing the aquarium bioload, dose 1 drop per 25 US-gallons daily for one week, then resume “low-nutrient” dosage.

Caution
Keep out of reach of children. Not for human consumption.

Ingredients
Purified water, proprietary blend of natural enzymes and non-pathogenic, beneficial microorganisms.

Technical Background

The concentration of dissolved and particulate organic materials in any aquatic environment can have a significant impact on the overall appearance of, as well as the health of organisms residing within, that system. Relatively low-nutrient environments are characterized by high water clarity, lack of unpleasant odors, and absence of microalgae and cyanobacteria; this is collectively a result of the lack of nitrogen-, phosphorus-, and carbon-based waste available. Aquaria that are relatively rich in available nutrients have characteristics opposite to the afore mentioned, and are typically not desirable because of the resultant appearance of the system and the difficulty of maintaining healthy aquarium inhabitants.

Brightwell Aquatics MicrōBacter7 is a selective complex of extremely effective microbes and enzymes that rapidly reduces the concentrations of organic nitrogen, ammonia, nitrite, nitrate, phosphate, and organic carbon in all marine and freshwater ecosystems, leading to greatly improved water quality; better water quality typically leads to healthier aquarium inhabitants. MicrōBacter7 does not require refrigeration, however storage in a cool, shaded area will prolong the activity, and maximize the shelf-life, of the product.

MicrōBacter7 does not require refrigeration, however storage in a cool, shaded area will prolong the activity of the vitamins. Refrigeration will maximize the shelf-life of the product.

 

[Doctorgori]

deleted post… (will revisit thread after more research)

 

[MikeTheNewbie]

I do like the idea Salem is going in, in that we may be able to shift the more favorable strains by what we carbon dose.

I would love to learn more about the bacteria strains that are favored by different forms of carbon dosing. Where did you hear about this?
I wish I had thought about testing while I was only dosing vodka before deciding to add vinegar to "promote diversity".
Any links or references will be appreciated.

 

[telegraham]

I would love to learn more about the bacteria strains that are favored by different forms of carbon dosing. Where did you hear about this?
I wish I had thought about testing while I was only dosing vodka before deciding to add vinegar to "promote diversity".
Any links or references will be appreciated.

Salem at Reef Builders is assembling a community science project.