Review on Safely Cycling New Aquariums with Tetra SafeStart Plus: An Efficient Solution by Emily Morgan

We got my daughter's 7" willow goldfish into a 55 gallon aquarium almost immediately. We took a three day trip from to Went home and found that the fish in her small tank in my daughter's bedroom would not do well without daily water changes.We have been talking about installing a larger tank but where it will go, how big and if we will be adding more fish , was a process of discussion and research. Now, in this "emergency," we made the decision that we were getting more fish and that the goldfish needed bigger tanks for their better safety. We chose the largest tank we could could find at zero hour and made sure to add more tanks later.After the trip I even had to change water almost daily in a large new aquarium carry out sel and ammonia treatments! I searched the whole internet and figured out how to drive a tank. The problem is that we had already discarded or dried all the old media and no bacteria could circulate in the aquarium. The information indicated that Willow would be cycling alone in this large tank for months. I doubted it would ever go down without killing her first. Tetra Safestart was a savior. It didn't work right away, it took 7 days for all readings to get 0.25, 0, 5.0 (ammonia, nitrite and nitrate respectively) but their water was about 68 degrees and our normal tap pH is 8, 2. High pH and cold water probably slowed it down, along with such a light bacterial load. I made the happy mistake of lowering the pH of their water by 0.2 which probably helped the cycle. Zero. Yes, I know that I have to vacuum more often. I filled the filters with de*nitrates here and there to absorb the nitrates. I don't have to change the water for any reason other than PH after adding Safestart. 7 days into the start of their aquarium cycle, I used a filter sweep to start a quarantine aquarium cycle for the new residents. Her tank spun even faster! That's enough to convince me that this bacterium lives on, multiplies and regenerates. This is the right type of bacteria, I highly recommend this product. Update February 2014: Three years later I still rely on Tetra SafeStart and am better on the tank cycle. I also have the hob style filter that came with the 55 gallon tank (which we got for Willow and friends, I didn't mention the resizing before) through a Fluval C4 HOB Plus, a large air operated one Sponge filter, with a Fluval canister replaces filter 306 with sponge filter apparatus. It's really important when you have a lot of filter media in your tank to speed up cycle times and water temperatures. I can get my ammonia levels down to 0 in less than a week when setting up new tanks. I'm not worried about pulmonary hypertension anymore, it doesn't seem to be affecting her as much as I thought it would. I use SafeStart for my tetra and ghost shrimp aquarium, and (although tetras need a partial water change during the cycle to keep ammonia levels down as they can't push through ammonia spikes like gold and shrimp can produce) does SafeStart this doesn't work. should be added at a water change unless you are rinsing the medium and want to be sure you are not harming bacterial colonies during the cleaning. SafeStart also includes a water conditioner, so it's a good idea to add it with every water change, or you can use a separate water conditioner. I always have a bottle handy.