There are many bottled bacterial products on the market. During our research, we cannot find any of these produsts that actually contain the correct bacteria to colonise your filter correctly. Nitrico products currently only have a 72 hour shelf life. This is due to the fact that they are a complete mature colony of live nitrifying bacteria, the same as you would find in a mature aquarium filter. They are not held in 'suspension' and they cannot be kept for an extended time in a bottle on the shelf. If you add additional bacteria that are not correct to a system containing Nitrico goop or a mature nitrico filter, we cannot guarantee that the bacteria that you are adding are compatible with ours. Why are Nitrico products different from other bacteria products available from other aquatic suppliers? The bacteria in a Nitrico product is not a pure culture, it is complete colony of all of the necessary bacteria and other microorganisms that go into creating a stable environment. We work carefully to ensure our BioReactor is bio secure and the bacteria we send remains pathogen free. Nitrico Goop is a concentrated mature colony of nitrifying bacteria. Our bacterial culture is grown in a bio-secure facility and fed a synthetic replica of fish waste to ensure that no fish pathogens can be transferred. The main one is the pH of the water. The pH of your water should not be below 6.5 when introducing live Nitrico products. A low pH suppresses nitrifying bacteria.

Fish waste is broken down from harmful Ammonia, which is extremely toxic to fish, into the much less toxic Nitrate, by beneficial nitrifying bacteria. These bacteria, varieties of Nitrosomonas and Nitrobacter mainly although there are others present as well, live on all of the surfaces in the tank and filter and allow fish to be kept safely in an artificial environment such as an aquarium. Without them, keeping fish in an aquarium would next to impossible. We understand that many aquarists like to cycle their tank with a single daily dose of ammonia. Nitrico have found major issues when testing this method of cycling an aquarium, whether using Nitrco products or not. Nitrico Bacterial Goop is a pouch of live nitrifying bacteria. It will allow you to add fish to a new aquarium without the usual ammonia and nitrite problems associated with immature filters. You can also add Nitrico Goop to your existing mature tank to prevent Ammonia or Nitrite spikes when introducing new fish. We always recommend testing your water quality regularly, whether using a Nitrico Bacterial product or not. Our bacteria are cultured in our state of the art, bacterial digester. They have not seen fish and there is absolutely no chance of any disease cross contamination as there would be if you moved media from one fish filter to another. Please ensure your pH is above 6.5 and your kH is not below 4 to ensure that your filter bacteria can thrive properly. Axolotl only produce waste from the food that they are fed. A small Axolotl that may only eat 3 grams of worm in 24 hours will not produce 4 ppm of ammonia in a 100 litre tank. If they did then it would be impossible to keep Axolotl in tubs (as is often done) as the amount of ammonia produced overnight would kill them (which it doesn't).We developed this technology to be able to run our own fish house and avoid cross contamination by using localised filtration rather than a centralised system. It became clear that many of our customer suffered with poor water quality and that a product that actually worked would be very beneficial to the entire fish keeping community. Goop will work with all conventional filters that rely on bacteria to break down the Ammonia and Nitrite. We are aware of a filter called Hydra that uses a different method to break down fish waste. Due to the way that this filter works, it will cause issues with the goop and so we do not recommend the two are used together. The optimum temperature for nitrification is between 28 and 32 deg C. As the temperature of the water decreases, so does the efficiency of nitrifying bacteria. At 16 deg. C. nitrifying bacteria will work at approximately 50% of their optimum speed. At temperatures below 10 deg. Centigrade, the bacteria will slow down significantly. Low temperature doesn’t kill the bacteria but it does slow them down. Never freeze a Nitrico bacterial product.

Cycling is the process of running a tank, either with fish in or, with no fish and the addition of an ammonia-based bacteria feed, and waiting whilst the natural opportunist bacteria colonise and reproduce. One important consideration to make when using Goop with Axolotl is that the cooler temperature of your tank will have a marked effect on efficiency of any nitrifying bacteria in your filter. Please take a look at the FAQ regarding temperature but in short, at 18 deg C, Nitrifying bacteria operate at approximately 50% of the speed that they would at 28 deg C. This product is designed to break down the ammonia as the fish excrete it. If you prefer to dose with an artificial ammonia source, please bear in mind that an influx of ammonia at one time does not mirror a normal aquarium ecosystem and so results will be different. Please take a look at the FAQ section for more details on the use of artificial ammonia sources.

Given time the bacteria grow in numbers to be capable of breaking the required amount of fish waste down. This process generally takes between 6 and 12 weeks depending on your system. grams of Pond Goop is capable of breaking down the complete waste of 1000 grams of fish. It can be used after initially filling a pond, adding new fish to an established pond or if your filter needs a boost after a long winter or following a pond treatment that as effected your filter. We would suggest a 1000 gram pouch be added to the filter on ponds up to 2000 gallons (9000 litres). We always advsie that water tests are regularly carried out to ensure that the water quality is maintained to the best levels. Ammonia and nitrite should always be zero. Yes, it is no problem to use goop with Axolotl. However, there is often a misconception that Axolotl produce more waste in an aquarium than they actually do.

When your filter bacteria arrive, the pouch will contain trillions of live nitrifying nitrosomonas and nitrobacter bacteria. It is important that your bacteria are administered into the tank very soon after delivery and fish should be introduced at the same time as the bacteria or within 48 hours if possible.Fully grown or larger axolotl can eat quite high volumes of high protein food and may produce high levels of waste from this feed rate but a small one does not produce anywhere near the amount as it doesn't eat anywhere near the amount. Our goop pouches are calculated to break down 2ppm ammonia in the given volume of water at 26 deg C. At 20 deg C, the bacteria in a pouch of goop is likely to only break down 1.2 ppm Ammonia and at 18 deg C. it will be closer to 1 ppm Ammonia. This needs to be taken into account when calculating the amount of goop that you need for your tank Yes. Temperature effects all nitrifying bacteria whether it is goop or just the existing bacteria in your filter. The optimum temperature range for the growth of nitrification is actually between 28 and 36 degrees C.. At a temperature of 16 deg C, Nitrification happens at approximately 50% the speed that it would at 28 deg C.

Following an increase in production, we are now in a position to offer the product to pond keepers. Our bacterial goop can be added straight to your filter and instantly boost your nitrifying bacteria to minimise ammonia and nitrite spikes. The bacteria strains that we have produced in our BioReactor are very tolerant to water chemistry changes and a variety of temperatures. This means that they will work in 99.9% of aquariums and ponds. However, there are some ground rules. If you are using a plastic media such as K1, this is a very smooth media that is also, possibly, covered with a release agent left over from manufacturing. New, untreated, plastic media can take much longer to mature with bacteria than any natural media or foam. When it is mature, it can be a superb filter media but we advise using additional foam in the filter to initially house the goop bacteria while they colonise the plastic media. If you are able to pre-prepare the plastic media prior to adding the bacteria, this can help massively. Some advise the use of Potassium Permanganate to chemically strip the surface of the new media and also tumbling the media with an abrasive sand to etch the surface can help a lot as well.DURING THE COOLER MONTHS PLEASE BE AWARE THAT THE BACTERIA WITHIN THE POND SLOWS DOWN. BREAKDOWN OF BOTH AMMONIA AND NITRITE CAN TAKE MUCH LONGER THAN DURING THE WARMER MONTHS. Each pouch of Nitrico Goop contains trillions of true, freshwater Ammonia and Nitrite Oxidising bacteria. These bacteria are alive and ready to colonise your Aquarium. They are hungry for fish waste and will break down the ammonia and nitrite in your aquarium to ensure that the water continues to be safe for your fish, shrimps, frogs or any other aquatic life that you are keeping. You will receive a highly concentrated bacterial goop. This is not like any other bacterial product on the market. It has a short shelf life of only a few days and should be used as soon as you receive it. The shelf life can be extended by a week if refrigerated but cannot be kept for extended periods of time. Yes, there are dozens of products available on shop shelves that claim to break down ammonia in your aquarium. Sometimes some of them may work but, as far as we are concerned, most do not! Many don’t even contain the correct bacteria to do the job. There are other bacteria that will break down ammonia if they have no other feed source but they are not the correct type to colonise your filters or to complete a nitrogen cycle in your aquarium. These Pseudomonad based products work almost as a stop gap, helping break down the Ammonia with the hope that "REAL" nitrifies from the environment will colonise and actually start the cycle themselves, one of the issues here is that those products need to be repeatedly added as they cannot reproduce and if they aren't added the system often crashes. In our view, it is impossible to keep live Nitrosomonas and Nitrobacter bacteria alive for extended periods of time in an enclosed and anoxic environment like a bottle. The main aim of a cycled filter and aquarium is to efficiently break down the waste produced by the tank’s inhabitants, whether that be tropical fish, turtles or axolotl etc. Any inhabitant that will live in that tank will excrete waste 24/7 and any artificial ammonia source that may be used, should mimic this as closely as possible. Adding a big hit of ammonia in one go does not mimic this. If you add a 2ppm (or worse 4ppm) hit of ammonia, you immediately provide the Nitrosomonas bacteria with a huge amount of waste to break down. Nitrosomonas increase in number rapidly (generally doubling approximately every 24 hours) and so they immediately start to increase in number. This increase uses up valuable minerals in your water which is seen by the depletion of KH etc. and pH.