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As some of you know, I was recently hired for a fish store and had some training two weeks ago. During that training, manufactorer reps came in to talk about their products. One of these reps was for Hagen, who makes cycle. When describing the product, they said it basically works by overdosing the aquarium with good bacteria.

I followed with a question that stumped the reps, "if you are OVERDOSING an aquarium with nitrafying bacteria, why is there ANY cycle at all?"

On another note on why cycle may not be great is that nitrafying bacteria is arobic, meaning it needs oxygen. So how does the "bacteria" in cycle get oxygen?

Biospira is the actual bacteria and it does not get oxygen either. Instead, it is put into a fridge to cool it down, to slow down the ammount of oxygen required by the bacteria (via slowing the matabolism of the bacteria).

While i am not very pro-biospira, i now look at NIC in a new way.

i think that the bacteria is in a dormant state that doesn't need oxygen

Well, i dont know, It takes a while for the bacteria in Cycle to 'come online' and get to work. They have to set up camp on the rocks and medisa and things and that does take them a while.

Your point was a valid one... and depending on the stocking, there isn a cycle. The only timeyou get small fluctuations is when you try to fully stock or overstock the tank from the get-go.

If you start small, you often dont get any raised readings.

I am not a great believer in bottled bugs, but i do keep a bottle on hand as i have tested it myself and found it quite useful. I only use it in emergencies and find that it responds quite well.

For animals, the entire universe has been neatly divided into things to (a) mate with, (b) eat, (c) run away from, and (d) rocks. - Terry Pratchett

NIC isn't a bad product or a great product either. It will speed up a cycle by about 7 days verus using just ammonia.

I think some people/employees over celebrate Cycle. It helps, better to use it than not use it, but it isnt a miracle in a bottle.

[span class="edited"][Edited by 2004-08-04 20:32][/span]

I don't know how it works, but it does. My brother fully stocked a 10 gallon, the day he bought it. I made him use a capfull of NIC every other day, and all the fish survived the cycle. If he had not used NIC, I doubt any of his fish would have survived.