Seachem Stability Fish Tank Stabilizer - For Freshwater and Marine Aquariums, 16.9 Fl Oz (Pack of 1)

I use this to fishless cycle my tanks. I combine it with Dr. Tims Ammonium Chloride. By doubling or trippling the dosage on both of these, I can fully cycle my tank in 7-12 days and its AWESOME! If you dont know what Im talking about, its very important that you study the Nitrogen Cycle and learn what it does in a fish tank before you buy any fish. I also use it when adding new fish just to make sure my beneficial bacteria colony stays strong and stable. And it really does keep things stable!

I used this to help cycle a new tank, and it worked well. It still took 2-3 weeks to fully cycle. The directions say theres no need to add more stability after seven days, but I kept adding the maintenance dose daily until cycling was complete. Be sure to keep testing your water if you have livestock in the aquarium, and dont just assume all is well after seven days. Do the first heavy dose based on the instructions and your aquarium volume. Then test every day for ammonia, nitrite and nitrate. Ammonia will rise first. Once enough bacteria are eating ammonia, nitrite will start to rise. The next event will be ammonia falling to zero, but nitrite remaining high. Once enough bacteria are eating nitrite, it will fall to zero, and youll start getting nitrate. Once you have zero ammonia, zero nitrite, and start detecting nitrate, your aquarium is cycled. If you have livestock in the aquarium during this process, treat the water daily with Seachem Prime. Ammonia and nitrite are very poisonous. Prime de-toxifies them for livestock, but the bacteria will still eat them, so dont worry about Prime stalling your cycle. Also dose Seachem StressGuard daily until cycling is complete to preserve the fish slime coat. Do a 25-50% water change at least every other day while you have significant ammonia and/or nitrite levels. This will not stall your cycle since most bacteria attach to the filter media and aquarium objects, and it will help reduce the toxins while the bacteria colonies are too small to consume them all. I also use the maintenance dose of stability every time I do a water change, replace/clean filter media, or add livestock. In addition, I add StressGuard and Seachem Pristine, another form of bacteria that helps manage waste removal.

I have used this product twice now to successfully cycle my 90 gallon tank, second time I was forced to do a fish-in cycle due to a medication I used that killed my cycle. I had 5 amano shrimp in my 90 gallon when ammonia was reading 0.5. I knew that I didnt have much time to fix it so I started dosing stability - by day 5 now ammonia is at 0 and nitrates are at 5. Does what it says and saved the lives of ALL 5 shrimp. I dosed it together with Prime. For comparison, I set up a 5 gallon hospital tank for the other group of 6 shrimp that I had, and for that I used the Tetra SafeSmart that promises to cycle a tank in 1 day. I was extremely skeptical but since I had lost my cycle I gave it a try. I got a used sponge filter from a pet store along with the SafeStart and my 5 gallon was, indeed, reading ammonia at 0, nitrites at 0, and nitrates at 5 when I woke up the next morning. I put 6 amano shrimp in there and 5 survived. All in all, both Tetra and Seachem did what the promised.

To clarify this is what you use to start the bacterial cycle in a new fish tank and boost an already established tank. It is used to help break down solid waste in a tank and help prevent bad bacterias from developing. I just started a 55 gallon tank with 10 two year old goldfish and we all know how dirty those fish are... I started my tank with this bio bacteria and it works great. You shake the bottle and you hear some carbonated fizzing from the active bacteria and pour a few caps of this directly into your filters to start the process and it will keep your fish from dieing because of New tank syndrome IE all your fish die a horrible death because of chemical spikes. This stuff works miracles in helping to break down solids quickly and keeping fish healthy. It will make your water milky for a day or so because of a HEALTHY bacterial spike and then it levels out and the balance is found naturally. It is the best thing you can buy for a healthy tank and healthy fish. I can not sing the praises of this enough. Totally hooked on Seachem Stability for life. If you have a 55 gallon tank or bigger buy 2 of the 500ml bottles because I wish I did. I used 1/4 of a bottle in a week starting my tank and its a good idea to put a cap full in your filters after you wash them to get the bio filtration action going again. So over a year you will definitely use up a whole bottle maybe more depending on how much you feel you need it. And if you suffer a disaster and have to do a total water change you need this to keep your fish alive in a non established tank.

Its really quality ... i will buy again

Im sure Seachem Stability works well to stabilize and maintain a biofilter as its advertised, but dont believe the hype that it will instantly cycle your biofilter. Sure, it can help get things off the ground by seeding the filter media with bacteria, but dont expect a colony of nitrifying bacteria in 24 hours or something ridiculous. When used with Seachem Prime you could probably reasonably perform a fish-in cycle in 7-10 days, but Im in the camp that believes a fishless cycle with ammonium chloride and live plants is ideal. Having said that I found significantly better results using Fritz TurboStart 700 to kick off my nitrogen cycle. Stability didnt get me any results after a week using their recommended loading dose and maintenance dose. Im somewhat certain it actually gave me a surface biofilm that Ive never experienced before when using it to start a nitrogen cycle. Once the cycle has kicked off, Ive diligently used Stability to maintain my biofilter by adding it with water changes and stocking new animals. Its never given me problems, but its honestly difficult to gauge how well it performs as theres no water test that can be done to see what kind of impact it makes to an already established tank. I suppose if you have a catastrophic crash in your biofilter or perhaps overload it you could measure its before-and-after performance with ammonia and nitrite tests, but thankfully I havent experienced anything like that. Ill continue to use Stability, Prime, and Pristine in maintenance doses as suggested because as far as I know, its working as intended, and making changes to a stable environment is a recipe for disaster. I just havent had luck with it kick-starting the nitrogen cycle. For that Id put my faith in Fritz TurboStart (or FritzZyme)

This stuff really does work. I had been cycling my 10 gal tank for about 3 weeks when I started it. My tests were just barely showing some nitrite. 8 days later, it was fully cycled. Please note, though, that this won’t work at all if you don’t combine it with an ammonia source. I used Dr. Tim’s pure ammonia to raise my tank to 4-5 ppm for cycling. If you have fish in your tank, that’ll also do it, but fish in cycling is not recommended. I think that some of the negative reviews are from people who thought that this product alone would cycle the tank. It won’t. This adds beneficial bacteria to your tank, but the bacteria will starve without ammonia as a food source. So make sure you have good ammonia levels in the tank before you add this.

I have been hooked on Seachem Stability for a long time but put it to the test when we moved from Utah to Mississippi. I wanted to setup my 9 aquariums as soon as possible so as soon as this was done I started to Use Stability plus a dose of Seachem Prime every 48 hours. I immediately started stocking the tanks with fish, everything from Flowerhorns to a large variety of Cichlids, Plekos,Severums, Parrot Flowerhorns and Blue Dolphins. I have not had even one loss during the cycling, I believe its critical to use Prime in conjunction with Stability, and I have a Pearl Flowerhorn coming in soon that I will cycle exactly the same in a 55 gallon bowfront that I just set up today. Kudos to Seachem for another great well researched product.

I couldn’t get my tanks beneficial bacteria to stabilize and the day we added this changed everything! Stability and Prime are all you need!

I have used Seachem Stability to successfully cycle 2 aquariums now, as well as to restore filter health after medicating or after very large water changes. This product has always worked well to establish or keep my bacterial filter strong and I will continue to keep a bottle on hand for situations in the future. I use it in conjunction with Seachems Prime to turn ammonia into a form Stabilitys bacteria can use. I really like how you cannot overdose it, so when in doubt you can just throw a capful in there then test a few hours later. I love all of Seachems products and use their products exclusively in both of my tanks with plants, invertebrates, and all sorts of freshwater fish with no ill effects.