Recently decided to upgrade aquariums for my Oscars and was told that you could add Bio Spira and tank will cycle overnite by a lfs. Well I have found this to be untrue as my nitrates and ammonia shot through the roof a couple weeks later. Luckly I still had my old tank set up so I imediately transfered my pair of oscars back to the smaller 55 gallon. I went and bought more Bio Spira and added it to the tank and tested it again and found nitrate and ammonia still high. Just wondering what others have found from using this product.
Bio Spira
- Thread starter bearhuntr12
- Start date
From what I hear you need to make sure that the product is kept right, which is hard to know for sure. The BioSpira needs to be kept refrigerated or else the bacteria will die off. I know a lot of people swear by that product but I have never used it and have always done a fish cycle myself. Now that I have established tanks I just start to move filters areound when I set up a new tank.
I attempted a fishless cycle using 5ppm of ammonia, gravel from an established tank and bio-spira. When I saw that ammonia had dropped from 5ppm to 3, I added most of the bio-spira. The next day, I had 3ppm nitrites in the tank and 3ppm ammonia and like 10ppm nitrates. Okay, good, right? I added the rest of the bio-spira since the nitrite eaters now had something to eat. I tested every day for two weeks and nothing changed. Now, I don't know if the bio-spira was bad. My gut says yes but I don't know enough about water chemistry to know for sure.
I do recall reading that the nitrogen cycle consumes KH. I only had like 4 degrees KH but I was told that was fine. I also noticed that the pH went up from ~7 to ~8. I'm guessing that that was due to the levels of pure ammonia in the tank. I don't know if those levels affected the process but, for whatever reason, the cycle stalled and bio-spira was of no help.
I e-mailed the company that makes it and they said that bio-spira needs fish in the tank to work................not sure why because fish produce ammonia and I merely added it to the tank...................?
Anyway, that's my experience with it. IMO, it's not worth the money. Since it seems that you have an established filter, I would take a pad from the filter (I think you said you have a canister?) and add it to your new one on the new tank and then add your fish. Boom, instant cycle. If you're worried about losing the bacteria from your old filter, I'm sure you could cut the old pad in half, add half a new pad to fill the space in the old filter and put the other halves of the new and old pads into the new filter to start your cycle?
I do recall reading that the nitrogen cycle consumes KH. I only had like 4 degrees KH but I was told that was fine. I also noticed that the pH went up from ~7 to ~8. I'm guessing that that was due to the levels of pure ammonia in the tank. I don't know if those levels affected the process but, for whatever reason, the cycle stalled and bio-spira was of no help.
I e-mailed the company that makes it and they said that bio-spira needs fish in the tank to work................not sure why because fish produce ammonia and I merely added it to the tank...................?
Anyway, that's my experience with it. IMO, it's not worth the money. Since it seems that you have an established filter, I would take a pad from the filter (I think you said you have a canister?) and add it to your new one on the new tank and then add your fish. Boom, instant cycle. If you're worried about losing the bacteria from your old filter, I'm sure you could cut the old pad in half, add half a new pad to fill the space in the old filter and put the other halves of the new and old pads into the new filter to start your cycle?
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