Expedite your cycle! For all setting up a new aquarium.

My opinion

whilst most of my tanks have been set up and matured without the use of bottled bacteria products I have occasionally found them to be of value

I have not got access to the Dr Tim product
but have tried various other brands

Brightwells MB7
Seachems stability
Hagens Cycle

I have never wanted to set a tank up using these, for the simple reason of confidence

you can (some do, and if the volume of water is large enough I am fine with it, having done it myself often) cycle with a hardy fish YTB Damsels are often the candidates

you can cycle using dead rock, dead sand and introduce somthing to rot (most use table shrimp, a friend of mine used a quarter of a thawed out burger patty for the same purpose)

you can use live rock/ live sand or a combo of that, and allow die off to to feed the bacteria and cause it to multiply

all the above methods work

my concern with the bottled bacteria product, is definitely related to my reluctance to substitute a proven method, for one that I had not used before

as such, if I did purchase a bottled bacteria product and used that for a week
I would probably still want to add a less sensitive species of fish to make sure everything was still OK for future more sensitive additions


the above changed with my 4ft set up
which after only 7 weeks of being set up, has 4 leathers, 1 hammer, 1 bubble, and 4 torch corals in it- and they look perfect to me
tell me what you think?

diatom stage almost cleared now
and during the weeks, 2, 3 and 4, I added 5 mils of MB7 every single day to the tank
after 4 weeks lights went on and snails went in
weeks 5 and 6 , I purchased 4 corals and added them

I do not have any fish in there yet
Im sure they would be fine if I added them
although I would still only want to add one per week or 2 if it was fish that I wanted to pair up, like clowns for example



not for one minute suggesting that every newbie to the hobby should follow the above

I would however suggest that bottled bacteria products can be very beneficial, in helping to establish a biological filter, and they can certain help to mature it faster than nature would on its own.