What would you do and why?

[Salty_Northerner]

This is kind of a two-part question. I've got a dozen 2 x 2" Marine pure ceramic media cubes on the way along with 4 jars of ecopods.

I'm thinking about using six of the cubes and placing them in one of my rear Chambers and pouring one bottle of Eco pods within the chamber to give them a home and a safe place to populate.

The second part of my question is using the other six cubes and seeding them with either of the two.

1- microbacter7
2- PNS ProBio

If I were to use microbacter7 I would put them in a small container and add a cap full of the bacteria and cover it and let it sit for 24 hours.

Or if I were to use the PNS pro-bio I would just add a little bit of tank water and then the pns product and cover it and illuminate it for 48 hours. Then place it in the bottom of my other second chamber on the opposite side of the tank and then toss all my other bags of media on top of it.

Any suggestions on the pros or cons?

@AlgaeBarn
@Kenneth Wingerter

If this thread is in the wrong location please go ahead and move it to the appropriate area of the forms please.

 

[blaxsun]

Sure, you could do that (I always just add pods to my tank at night and let them populate there).

I've found that my bio media seeds fairly quickly, but yes - you can always kick start it.

 

[Salty_Northerner]

Okay I appreciate it, the reboot is going pretty well and I'm starting to learn that the tank is consuming phosphate so now we are slowly dosing Neophos. Nitrates on the other hand we are seeing a trend where adding the probio the nitrates will come down and when we skip a day the nitrates rises.

Plus the tank is just starting to clear up from the diatoms that were on the sand bed. I'm just trying to figure out what would work good for a denitrator in the system using those bio cubes.

 

[AlgaeBarn]

This is kind of a two-part question. I've got a dozen 2 x 2" Marine pure ceramic media cubes on the way along with 4 jars of ecopods.

I'm thinking about using six of the cubes and placing them in one of my rear Chambers and pouring one bottle of Eco pods within the chamber to give them a home and a safe place to populate.

The second part of my question is using the other six cubes and seeding them with either of the two.

1- microbacter7
2- PNS ProBio

If I were to use microbacter7 I would put them in a small container and add a cap full of the bacteria and cover it and let it sit for 24 hours.

Or if I were to use the PNS pro-bio I would just add a little bit of tank water and then the pns product and cover it and illuminate it for 48 hours. Then place it in the bottom of my other second chamber on the opposite side of the tank and then toss all my other bags of media on top of it.

Any suggestions on the pros or cons?

@AlgaeBarn
@Kenneth Wingerter

If this thread is in the wrong location please go ahead and move it to the appropriate area of the forms please.

Hello,

Are you attempting to increase the healthy bacteria in your system while lowering the nitrates?
Or can you tell us a little bit about why you are planning on leaving the cubes in a container with either the microbacter or PNS product?

~AlgaeBarn

 

[Salty_Northerner]

Hello,

Are you attempting to increase the healthy bacteria in your system while lowering the nitrates?
Or can you tell us a little bit about why you are planning on leaving the cubes in a container with either the microbacter or PNS product?

~AlgaeBarn

Hello there, I've been speaking with Max for about 3 weeks and he's been guiding me along this path right now.

You guys actually just sent out an order for me today and I've been thinking about denitrification as I don't need my system to go into 0/0 state as before.

Like my post above mentioned that I'm starting to see a trend using the PNS ProBio. When I dose on Monday as example, I will see a decrease in nitrate Tuesday morning. Then when we test Wednesday the nitrate has risen.

My phosphates have been dropping, today it's down to .02 or 9ppb and I certainly don't need it bottoming out so I have added enough phosphate to bring it up .02 for a total of .04 to see which way it's going to go in the next few days of testing.

I do recall watching a video from the fellow who makes this product and he did mention you could seed your bio bricks if you wanted to. So basically I'm curious on how well the probio will work in denitrification.

 

[Salty_Northerner]

I do have a bottle of Plus NP from Tropic Marin and also picked up a bottle of Elimi-NP but that's the last thing I want to do right now at this early stage while the tank is maturing. I understand carbon dosing of any sort during the early stage is a very bad idea as I learned previously.

 

[AlgaeBarn]

Hello there, I've been speaking with Max for about 3 weeks and he's been guiding me along this path right now.

You guys actually just sent out an order for me today and I've been thinking about denitrification as I don't need my system to go into 0/0 state as before.

Like my post above mentioned that I'm starting to see a trend using the PNS ProBio. When I dose on Monday as example, I will see a decrease in nitrate Tuesday morning. Then when we test Wednesday the nitrate has risen.

My phosphates have been dropping, today it's down to .02 or 9ppb and I certainly don't need it bottoming out so I have added enough phosphate to bring it up .02 for a total of .04 to see which way it's going to go in the next few days of testing.

I do recall watching a video from the fellow who makes this product and he did mention you could seed your bio bricks if you wanted to. So basically I'm curious on how well the probio will work in denitrification.

The Probio is a great product for denitrification. They have heterotrophic bacteria which complements your 'traditional' nitrifiers which are usually autotrophic.

 

[Salty_Northerner]

The Probio is a great product for denitrification. They have heterotrophic bacteria which complements your 'traditional' nitrifiers which are usually autotrophic.

Do you think there could be a chance that the bacteria would be able to survive within those bio cubes as long as I don't have too much flow going on where I place them in the sump?

Your ProBio works fantastic and I can tell when I skip a day of dosing the nitrates will creep back up. I'm just looking for a way to lower nitrates without being too aggressive on water changes and also depleting the phosphate by doing so. Any thoughts?

 

[Kenneth Wingerter]

if I were to use the PNS pro-bio I would just add a little bit of tank water and then the pns product and cover it and illuminate it for 48 hours. Then place it in the bottom of my other second chamber on the opposite side of the tank and then toss all my other bags of media on top of it.

Any suggestions on the pros or cons?

Research shows that Rhodopseudomonas palustris, the bacterium in PNS ProBio, definitely attaches easily to ceramic/pumice types of media such as MarinePure. The supplemental light and anaerobic conditions (and maybe also an acetate-based carbon source) would definitely promote settlement. However, I don't think any of that would be necessary, as immobilization occurs fairly rapidly--in around 60 minutes in this study: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31758817/

My recommendation is simply to soak the product into the medium really good, give it an hour or so in a closed container, and then just chuck it into an area of moderate (not super low) flow, as in a refugium. Illumination (moderate) is supposed to increase productivity by about 100%. These bacteria and purple non-sulfur bacteria in general are extremely adaptable, and so don't need any special care--but if you want to get crazy with it and look at some cool bioreactors from the laboratory and commercial aquaculture worlds, definitely google rhodopseudomonas+immobilized.