  QCD plasma instabilities, caused by an anisotropic momentum distributions of
the particles in the plasma, are likely to play an important role in
thermalization in heavy ion collisions. We consider plasmas with two different
components of particles, one strongly anisotropic and one isotropic or nearly
isotropic. The isotropic component does not eliminate instabilities but it
decreases their growth rates. We investigate the impact of plasma instabilities
on the first stage of the ``bottom-up'' thermalization scenario in which such a
two-component plasma emerges, and find that even in the case of non-abelian
saturation instabilities qualitatively change the bottom-up picture.
