Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Dr. Tim Hovanec and a team at Marineland Labs developed Bio-Spira and put on the market in 2002, It contains a huge population of Nitrospira-type bacteria to start the "cycle."
The bacteria are nitrococcus, nitrosomas, nitrosospira, and nitrospira.

Anybody ever use it to crank up a grow bed instantly?

Not that I know of Johnny....

I suspect it was developed primarily to cycle marine "saltwater" environments... where nitrospira has been known to be the bacteria primarily responsible for nitrification...

Most commercial freshwater starter mixes... are primarily mixtures of nitrosomonas and nitrobacter.... as these were always thought to be the primary nitrifying bacteria ....

There is growing evidence that the traditional and accepted point of view regarding these bacteria as the foundations of the nitrification cycle... is wrong....

And that in fact it is Nitrospira that is the bacteria responsible... so in fact ... this particular "starter preparation"... may in fact work...

Whereas almost all previous commercial starter concoctions have proven to be totally ineffective....

See my article in the forthcoming addition of the BYAP magazine...

I personally doubt that you can (even with a bottle of the perfect bacteria mix) cycle up a growbed instantly. (well aside from getting a growbed full of already cycled media and moving it fast enough to keep the bacteria from drying out or dieing.)

Fishless cycling is pretty effective for getting a system cycled up quickly but it is not instant, need to start on it a few weeks before fish.

This was recommeded to me for fresh water aquariums. This mix works and it is of course patented, what a load of crap!
Putting a patent on nature!

Give it a go then Johnny... test every day for two weeks and post your results up for us to see.... if you can cycle in less than 2 weeks then maybe it works...

I'm dubious how a bacteria that needs oxygen and nutrients to survive/brow... can sit in a sealed bottle on a shelf for an unknown amount of time... and work once opened...

Even dipel works better if you mix it up with seasol for a few weeks and let the BT bacteria reproduce before spraying it onto plants.

Hum, interesting note about how to keep biota alive for sale. I know you can get freeze dried cultures for making stuff like yogurt that some how survive the freeze drying process and being packaged for a period of time. However I also know that if you bottle a nice aerated worm tea for any length of time, the good microbes tend to die off. It makes me really leery of people who sell "worm tea" and tell you to keep the cap loose on the bottle so as not to kill the microbes. (Well how do I know if the guys in the store selling it kept the caps loose?)

I am interested to see daily testing of a system that has been dosed with the stuff and see if it can beat simple humonia cycling which I have seen happen in 3 weeks.

Me too TCL..

I still don't have my grow bed, but my fish tank is cycling perfect. I guess that silt on the bottom is the BT. I am goine to try to filter it out and transfer it to my grow bed, or just pump it into the grow bed, duh!

Cycling, for BYAP is time for the bacteria to attach and grow on substrate. This would instantly work if every single 'drop' of sun is kept out of the water so it does not die, giving it time to attach in the grow beds. ..Well, my opinion anyway.. I tried a product like this from a local fish specialty store.

On a brand new system Dand... how long did it take to cycle... and what temps at the time??