TetraAqua SaftStart for jump start the cycling

[RobKing]

Just want to report that seems like the TetraAqua SafeStart works. Last Saturday, I started using TetraAqua SaftStart to jump start th cycling process in a brand new tank (55g, water temp = 84 degree, tap water). After dumping a bottle of SaftStart (the label says it is for up to 75g tank) in, I put 6 Cardinal Tetra in after 15 minutes. 3 days passed, all fishs are alive and eating well.

Of course, 3 days are still too short to tell, but I am still excited. According to various post on the internet, no exam should be done within the first week, so I haven't tested the water yet.

I know this method is going to be frown upon by many, but 3 - 4 weeks seem likes a long wait. Please forgive me! :)

If others are interested, I can keep posting the result to this thread.

[Eddie]

Hey Rob, don't want to rain on your snake oil but 6 cardinal tetras in 55 could probably live a lifetime without any biofiltration so I would assume that the safestart is not doing any magic. Lets throw in 7 or 8 discus and see what the ammonia, nitrite levels start doing. Your bioload will only grow as much as you supply it, thats why others use the fishless cycle. You can bombard the filter with ammonia and ensure that all levels max out and drop off until there are nitrates. Do you have presence of nitrates on your tests?


Eddie

[Don Trinko]

I hav not tryed that product but I have tryed "cycle" and "Bioboost". Both were eaquely worthless. Don T.

[kenhappen2u]

i agree with Don & Ed ...they do not work , go with a fishless cycle or a couple of larger starter fish and wait the 4-6 weeks , unless you have some seeded filter midea or gravel from another tank you can help jump start it that way . and save a WEEK OR TWO .

Ken

[Eddie]

One thing I will point out, when using fish to cycle a new tank, there is always the possibility of introducing unwanted bacteria or parasites. I believe the fishless cycle to be the safest.

Eddie

[Singularity96]

hi, can someone maybe post a link to the right way of doing a fishless cycle ?

[Graham]

Sorry Rob toss the snake oils in the cupboard. You would need high quality electronic testing equipment to measure what 6 Cards are giving off even if they were eating pure 100% protein.

The joke in the koi hobby is that it takes 6 weeks to fishless cycle a tank and 42 days days using snake oils.

Then if you were to use one of the real nitrifiying bacteria products the bacteria would die off from lack of food........the Cards just don't give off enough to cycle anything.

Sorry

[RobKing]

OK, everyone thinks the SafeStart is not really doing any magic because 6 tetras are not enough to see any difference in such size tank.

Well, since I am already going down this path, I might just keep going. Successful or failure, it is going to be a good lesson to myself and others.

So, how many fish and what kind I need to add to test the SafeStart? Adding 6 discus are out of the question. Too expensive that I cannot affort to lose.

Thanks.
--Robert

[Eddie]

If you are going to have a community tank, maybe some corys, small plecos (that stay small), a huge school of neon tetras. You'll need some fish that can tolerate significant amounts of nitrite while you are cycling. I will be honest with you. I have used Seachem Stability with success and I even used Discus in the tank, believe it or not. It was 5 years ago but I bought some discus, about 5 little ones and dosed the 29 gallon tank with stability. I did no WCs at all until the whole dosing instructions were complete. It cycled my tank, no problem and the discus were not stressed at all. You will have ammonia, and nitrite test way high but keep on dosing everyday like the bottle says. The fish went through the process, not one died.

Now I do not do that any longer and those discus I bought were not HIGH class so it was a risk I took. Stability is the only one I feel works to a degree. I have tried ALL the rest with no luck.

Eddie

[Graham]

OK, everyone thinks the SafeStart is not really doing any magic because 6 tetras are not enough to see any difference in such size tank.

Well, since I am already going down this path, I might just keep going. Successful or failure, it is going to be a good lesson to myself and others.

So, how many fish and what kind I need to add to test the SafeStart? Adding 6 discus are out of the question. Too expensive that I cannot affort to lose.

Thanks.
--Robert

Robert you're trying to re-invent the wheel...we've all tried the snake oils...save your $$.

If you really want to test this product go and buy 6- 4'' pond Goldfish, and some 40%+ protein pellets. Feed the fish several times per day, but do not over feed. Remove any un-eaten food

Keep the pH in the mid 7's and the KH around 100ppm. Don't do any water chnages and follow the dosing instructions on the product

Then test the water every 2nd day at the same time for pH, NH3, NO2 and NO3.....using something like an Excel program or some old fashion graph paper plot the readings. Then come on back and post the findings

[Joshcat]

I'm am certainly not as experienced as Graham or Eddie and mean no disrespect at all. My husband and I have tried many of the quick cycle products and truthfully most of them DO NOT WORK! Believe it or not, I think Aqua Safe Start is an awesome product and we cycled 2 of our discus tanks using this product, in addition to a severum tank. We have done fishless cycles and cycled with hearty fish as well. We have also tried Cycle, Stress Zyme, Gel Filter Cartridge Inoculant by Ecological Labs and Nitromax and none of them worked for us. But all three times we used this product it created a stable environment with no ammonia or nitrite spikes. Before we put our discus/severums in the tank we used our convicts that were purchased solely for cycling purposes and the parameters remained perfect.

I myself after 21 years of fish husbandry have never believed in cycling products and my husband just kept bringing them home. Every time I would tell him why do you keep throwing money away on something that doesn't work. When this product worked I couldn't believe it! Especially being a tetra product. But it truly did...

Cathy

[RobKing]

I'm am certainly not as experienced as Graham or Eddie and mean no disrespect at all. My husband and I have tried many of the quick cycle products and truthfully most of them DO NOT WORK! Believe it or not, I think Aqua Safe Start is an awesome product and we cycled 2 of our discus tanks using this product, in addition to a severum tank. We have done fishless cycles and cycled with hearty fish as well. We have also tried Cycle, Stress Zyme, Gel Filter Cartridge Inoculant by Ecological Labs and Nitromax and none of them worked for us. But all three times we used this product it created a stable environment with no ammonia or nitrite spikes. Before we put our discus/severums in the tank we used our convicts that were purchased solely for cycling purposes and the parameters remained perfect.

I myself after 21 years of fish husbandry have never believed in cycling products and my husband just kept bringing them home. Every time I would tell him why do you keep throwing money away on something that doesn't work. When this product worked I couldn't believe it! Especially being a tetra product. But it truly did...

Cathy

Thank you for the confirmation, Cathy. It is certainly good to hear that someone has succeeded with SafeStart.

I did a water test last night. The numbers are below:
Ammonia: 5ppm
Nitrite: 0ppm
Nitrate: 5ppm

That was an hour after I added 10 more Cardinal tretras and 2 cory files in. They were still alive until this morning. Hopefully, they are still alive after I come back from work. Fingers crossed!

[Don Trinko]

The question in my mind when someone has success with one of these products is: Did it realy speed up the cycle or just bind the ammonia and nitrites untill the cycle was complete. If you did not test regularly for ammonia and nitrites you realy would not know and the fish would be fine.
Don T.

[Singularity96]

Have any of you seen Organic Aqua in the states before ?

http://www.organicaquariums.co.za/

seems like another "snake oil" with some huge claims :)

[Eddie]

Also, if your tank is cycled, your ammonia would be reading ZERO.

[Graham]

Thank you for the confirmation, Cathy. It is certainly good to hear that someone has succeeded with SafeStart.

I did a water test last night. The numbers are below:
Ammonia: 5ppm
Nitrite: 0ppm
Nitrate: 5ppm

That was an hour after I added 10 more Cardinal tretras and 2 cory files in. They were still alive until this morning. Hopefully, they are still alive after I come back from work. Fingers crossed!


Those numbers make no sense what so ever and if this snake oil was working as claimed in thier marketing there would 0.0ppm in all the readings anyway.

Then 6 Cards + 10 new additions could not generate that much NH3 if they died in 55 gallons of water.....maybe 0.5ppm but even that low level is doubtful. You would have to have tons of uneaten food laying around, rotting to get that number...

If you were to follow Tetra's instructions you would have added all the fish...the tanks capacity and I think they reccomend 1/2'' of fish per litre in one shot....and ended up with 0.0ppm readings

They claim to have true nitrifiers in this and that it's a knock off of Havonec's Bio-spira....but there's tons of people that haven't had any luck with it either. There're very few products that actually work and most have no shelf life at all or need to be cold.

Do some reading on the nitrification

[Graham]

Have any of you seen Organic Aqua in the states before ?

http://www.organicaquariums.co.za/

seems like another "snake oil" with some huge claims :)

That's a good one:rolleyes:

[Singularity96]

That's a good one:rolleyes:


Thought you might enjoy that :D

[RobKing]

Those numbers make no sense what so ever and if this snake oil was working as claimed in thier marketing there would 0.0ppm in all the readings anyway.

Then 6 Cards + 10 new additions could not generate that much NH3 if they died in 55 gallons of water.....maybe 0.5ppm but even that low level is doubtful. You would have to have tons of uneaten food laying around, rotting to get that number...

If you were to follow Tetra's instructions you would have added all the fish...the tanks capacity and I think they reccomend 1/2'' of fish per litre in one shot....and ended up with 0.0ppm readings

They claim to have true nitrifiers in this and that it's a knock off of Havonec's Bio-spira....but there's tons of people that haven't had any luck with it either. There're very few products that actually work and most have no shelf life at all or need to be cold.

Do some reading on the nitrification

No, I have never claimed the cycling process is done. According a lot of posts about this, the water test will show some bizzard numbers within the first week and suggest people not to test it. That is why I didn't test the water until someone asked for them.

BTW, the SaftStart is the replacement of bio-spiral.

Anyway, I don't know if SaftStart is useful because it is still too soon to tell. We will see how it goes after 2 or 3 weeks.

[Eddie]

Right Rob but even if everything cycles, you are going to need a greater amount of fish to build a sufficient bio culture.


Eddie

[Graham]

No, I have never claimed the cycling process is done. According a lot of posts about this, the water test will show some bizzard numbers within the first week and suggest people not to test it. That is why I didn't test the water until someone asked for them.

BTW, the SaftStart is the replacement of bio-spiral.

Anyway, I don't know if SaftStart is useful because it is still too soon to tell. We will see how it goes after 2 or 3 weeks.


Jees I don't see anything written here that states that the water parameter numbers will be senseless in the 1st week....I see them telling you to add a binder if the numbers rise....isn't that what this product is suppose to eliminate.....

Then unless the product is adding nitrate there is no way that you would get an NO3 reading....Hmm maybe they're adding it to get de-nitrification but then there should be a nitrite reading:confused:

To expand on what Eddie just stated...if the product has live nitrifiying bacteria in it then they need a source of NH3 to remian alive. Using a few pip squeak cards will have 90% of the added bacteria dieing off for lack of food.

Study up on nitrification


Good luck with this but do not be surprised when you add an actual decent fish load...Hmmmmm isn't that what they actually recommend.............. that the tank actually does cycle itself


http://www.tetra.de/tetra/go/7B4FA824079E3BE3B2540904EC663F1D/?seite=6&group_id=299&group_2_id=12&lang_id=20


When setting up a new aquarium: Set the aquarium up and turn on all equipment, using Tetra AquaSafe to condition the water. Wait at least 24hrs to ensure that the equipment is working correctly, and to allow the aquarium to reach the correct temperature. Then add 5ml of SafeStart per 6 litres of water, at the same time as adding the fish. We recommend adding a moderate number of fish, under the direction of your aquatics outlet.

As a precaution, in the two weeks following the introduction of the fish, we recommend regularly testing the ammonia and nitrite level using TetraTest kits. If levels rise, perform a partial water change using Tetra AquaSafe to reduce them.

Following filter maintenance, water quality problems, or water changes: Add 5ml of SafeStart per 6 litres of water.

If storing SafeStart, keep between 10°C & 30°C. Aquarium water must be 20°C (room temperature) or above. Shelf-life of 12 months.

[Don Trinko]

In reading their directions it sounds to me like what you are realy doing is binding the ammonia and nitrites to protect the fish while the cycle gets started. They might actualy be adding bound ammonia to get the nitrite cycle started. It will be intersting to see how long it takes to complete the cycle. If it takes 6 weeks you have wasted your money.
Many of the discus breeders do large wc each day. Under these conditions they probably don't need to "cycle" because they are eliminating most of the ammonia each day with wc.
I have cycled tanks in various ways. Just in case something goes wrong (murphy's law) I always have some chemicals around that bind the ammonia and salt to render the nitrites harmless. Don T.

[Eddie]

Or some Prime, it will handle the ammonia and detoxify nitrites when dosed in high amounts. ;)