Resources
The technical library.
Written for operators who have been oversold before. Where the evidence is thin, these pages say so; where a figure comes from a vendor, it is labelled as vendor-published — including ours.
01Tools
Two calculators, both showing their working.
Dredging cost calculator
Work out what a mechanical clean-out would cost for your lagoon, using your figures. Total solids percentage and the per-dry-ton rate are adjustable inputs rather than hidden assumptions, and every rate carries its provenance.
Dosing planner
Describe the lagoon and see which product fits — or whether biological treatment suits it at all. Runs in your browser and captures nothing.
02Treatment guides
Start from what you can see at the lagoon.
Symptom-led rather than subject-led. Each one sets out what is probably happening, which part of it responds to biological treatment and which part is an aeration, hydraulics or upstream problem that no dose will move.
Treatment guide
The lagoon is taking more organic load than it can process
What happens inside a lagoon when influent BOD or COD runs well above baseline, which of the consequences respond to biological treatment, and which are a hydraulics or aeration problem wearing an organic disguise.
Treatment guide
A crust or grease mat has formed on the surface
Why fats, oils and grease consolidate into a floating mat on a lagoon, what a crust costs in treatment performance, and the difference between the organic fraction that degrades and the inert material that does not.
Treatment guide
When to start and stop treating
Why lagoon bioaugmentation is a warm-season programme, what water temperature does to biological activity, and how to plan a season so the product is working when the lagoon can actually support it.
03Technical library
Everything else in the library.
Evidence review
Does bioaugmentation actually work?
An honest review of what the published evidence does and does not support for lagoon bioaugmentation, including the failure modes, the evidence gaps, and the conditions under which it does not work.
Pillar guide
Wastewater lagoon sludge
What lagoon sludge is, why it accumulates, what it costs you in lost capacity and permit risk, and the options available for dealing with it.
Methodology
How to measure sludge in a lagoon
The methods available for measuring lagoon sludge depth and volume, what each one can and cannot tell you, and how to produce a survey that is comparable over time.
Technical explainer
Volatile solids vs total solids
The difference between total and volatile solids in lagoon sludge, why only the volatile fraction is available to biological treatment, and how the split is determined.
Comparison
Alternatives to lagoon dredging
A straight comparison of the alternatives to mechanically dredging a wastewater lagoon, including what each one can achieve and what it cannot.
Pillar guide
Lagoon sludge removal methods
The methods available for removing or reducing sludge in a wastewater lagoon, how they differ mechanically, and how to choose between them.
Diagnostic
Why is my lagoon losing capacity?
The common causes of lost treatment capacity in a wastewater lagoon, how to tell them apart, and what to measure first.
Regulatory
Claims and compliance
What SediLogic products claim, what they deliberately do not claim, and the regulatory basis for the distinction under FIFRA.
Sizing
How much bacteria does a lagoon need?
The sizing question answered honestly: where the quantity actually comes from, why a credible answer depends on the lagoon's measured volume and volatile fraction, and why no responsible supplier prints a number before seeing the lagoon.
Buyer's guide
Questions to ask a lagoon bacteria supplier
A buyer's guide to evaluating lagoon sludge products, framed around what separates a serious manufacturer from a packager: guaranteed shelf-life cell counts, species disclosure, dose-table provenance and honest limits.
04Research library
The evidence underneath, with every source cited.
The guides above are written for a decision. These sit beneath them: longer, literature-anchored articles on the mechanism, the organism, the pond system and the published field record. Each one closes with a full reference list, and each figure carries the provenance it earned — a controlled bench study, a peer-reviewed paper or a vendor case study, labelled as what it is.
Mechanism
How bioaugmentation reduces sludge
The biological mechanism by which added microorganisms reduce lagoon sludge — enzymatic hydrolysis of organic solids, cryptic growth, and the volatile-fraction ceiling that limits it — set out against the peer-reviewed sources.
The organism
Bacillus in wastewater treatment
Why Bacillus is the workhorse of biological sludge reduction: its dominance as an industrial enzyme source, the endospore that lets it be sold dry, and the contrast with nitrifiers that explains why a dry product cannot address ammonia.
The lagoon system
Waste stabilisation ponds and sludge accumulation
How waste stabilisation ponds treat wastewater, why a sludge blanket is an inevitable product of that treatment rather than a fault, and what the review literature says about how that sludge accumulates and is characterised.
Controlled studies
What the controlled enzyme studies measured
A close reading of the controlled and bench-scale studies behind biological sludge reduction — the protease and lipase mixtures, the strain-optimisation work, the enzyme-synergy research — and why a laboratory percentage is not a lagoon percentage.
Field evidence
Field evidence, weighed by provenance
What the field record for lagoon bioaugmentation actually shows once each result is sorted by who produced it — the handful of peer-reviewed full-scale studies, the vendor case studies, and the wide scatter that both reveal.
Mechanism
Spores, drying and shelf life
How a bacterial endospore survives being dried and reactivates in a lagoon, what drying costs the organisms, and why dry spore products carry the shelf lives they do.
Delivery
Getting bacteria to the sludge blanket
The central, under-studied engineering problem of lagoon bioaugmentation: getting living organisms down through six to fifteen feet of water to the benthic sludge layer, and keeping them there long enough to work.
Conditions
Temperature, oxygen and pH
Why biological lagoon treatment is seasonal, how water temperature governs enzyme activity and spore germination, and the dissolved-oxygen and pH conditions the organisms depend on.
Conditions
Mixing, aeration and bioaugmentation
Why every serious source treats mixing and aeration as complementary to biological treatment rather than as alternatives, and why a poorly mixed lagoon should be addressed before any product is dosed.
Lagoon science
BOD, COD and TSS explained
Plain definitions of the three numbers that dominate a lagoon discharge permit, how they are measured, and how a growing sludge blanket feeds back into the effluent values.
Choosing a format
Sinking solid versus soluble pouch
Which product format a lagoon problem needs, decided by where the material sits: only a sinking solid reaches a benthic sludge blanket, while a soluble pouch treats water-column load in an adequately mixed lagoon.
Choosing a product
What CFU per gram tells you
How to use a cell count without being misled by it: why organisms delivered is concentration times dose, why the end-of-shelf-life figure matters more than the one at manufacture, and what a count cannot tell you at all.
Documentation
What live microorganisms on a label means
How to read the documentation behind a microbial product — the Safety Data Sheet, the certificate of analysis, the biosafety level and the cautionary statement — and what each should tell a careful buyer.
Regulatory
Is sludge-reducing bacteria a pesticide?
Whether a microbial lagoon product is a pesticide under US law, the exact line EPA draws between acting on material and acting on organisms, and why compliant products describe only what they do to material.
Honest limits
When lagoon bacteria will not work
The five situations in which biological lagoon treatment disappoints, why none of them is a dosing problem, and why a supplier willing to name them before taking your order is worth more than one who never does.
Limitations
Why a dry product cannot fix ammonia
Ammonia is lowered by nitrifying bacteria that do not survive drying, so a dry-only product line structurally cannot address a nitrogen permit. An honest limitation, stated as one.
Choosing a format
Liquid versus dry, the biology not the marketing
Why the liquid-versus-dry debate is really a debate about which organisms you need, how drying selects the organism, and where each format genuinely wins.
05Scientific literature
A cited bibliography, from 1914 to now.
Beneath the research articles sits the primary science itself: 358 landmark and representative papers on bacteria in wastewater treatment and on biological sludge reduction, from the founding of the activated sludge process in 1914 to recent work. Each is summarised, each carries its provenance, and the closing section shows how to search the literature for more.
358
peer-reviewed and reference works, each verified against a real bibliographic record and grouped by theme — from the activated sludge process and pond ecology to bioaugmentation, sludge reduction and the enzymatic mechanism.