cyano battle lol

[asylumdown]

Originally Posted by Reef Pilot

You know, controlling nitrates (with bio pellets) and preventing cyano is actually very, very simple. That is, if you use Brightwell's MB7. Very cheap, and helps make your water and tank look very clean. As I reported earlier in this thread, and on others, I have not had a cyano problem since I started using this a couple years ago.

It is almost frustrating for me to keep seeing these threads about cyano (and bio pellet issues) and how academically complicated this issue is, when in reality it is so simple and easy to control, from a practical user perspective. There may be other remedies, but I do know that MB7 is a sure fire one.

I think it's definitely worth trying out, but I'll be honest I've looked at several bacterial supplements under a microscope before (Dr. Tim's, zeobak, and one other brand that was spawned from one of the fish tank reality shows), and with the 40x 400 power lens, I couldn't see a single thing that could be construed as alive. I saw lots of what looked like organic debris, but there was no movement of any kind, and nothing that looked like a cell. It's entirely possible that my scope doesn't magnify enough as some prokaryotes are really very small, but when I look at something like cyanobacteria, or a dollop of dinos under the microscope, it's a veritable cacophony of cells, movement and life.

I've never looked at MB7 under the scope, but I know that in academic institutions, live biological samples like bacteria would never ever be stored at room temperature in a completely sealed container for any length of time. Even if they're added to a nutrient rich substrate, at room temperature they'd be dividing at an exponential rate. After a week the chances that they wouldn't have consumed all of their food and all available oxygen and suffered a total population collapse would be very, very low.

By the time you buy it at the store, you have no way of knowing how long it's been since it was packaged, what sort of temperature fluctuations it's gone through on its way to you, or really even what sort of fluid the bacteria have been added to. I'm not saying you won't get some bacteria, but the scientist in me cringes a little every time I see those bottles of zeobak collecting dust on the shelf at the LFS that is usually between 25-28 degrees with 99% humidity.

If the relatively small, low resource aquarium companies have figured out a way to put bacteria in to suspended animation indefinitely at room temperature and the best funded labs and universities on earth haven't, I'd be very, very, very shocked.