Tetra Safestart

[three-fingers]

Ended up compromising and borrowing the two ammonia test kit bottles from work. Ammonia is between 4ppm and 8ppm as expected (photo doesnt look exactly right, but I think I took it too soon).

Adding 21ml of Safestart to the tank as the bottle advises now (even though if your actually using to start up a tank, I would advise dumping the whole bottle in).

 

[craig855s]

Id chuck the entire bottle in if i were you three-fingers and then keep dosing ammonia and testing as per the add and wait rule. Im not sure what will happen myself in that situation but im confident a full fishless cycle will be complete a lot shorter than 6 weeks (i reckon 10 days max)

Ah well time will tell.

It seems to me (looking through topics on safestart) that EVERYONE who has used it found it to actually work, and the people who havent used it but are stuck on the "bacteria in a bottle doesnt work " bandwagon

 

[three-fingers]

The whole bottle would be a good idea if you actually need to use it, use as much as possible. But for the sake of this experiment, I'm sticking to the instructions .

Remember this is an unrefrigerated bottle that has been on a shelf through the warm summer... Use by date on bottle is 06/10. So that means this the bottle has been unrefrigerated for 3 months.

Just less than 24 hours after adding Safestart.

Ammonia is still between 4ppm and 8ppm..

Nitrite at 0ppm.

Nitrate at 0-5ppm (looks like slightly less than before, tested twice to be sure, odd stuff).

Will test again tomorrow, only adding ammonia as per the add and wait method.

 

[three-fingers]

Stats still the same 48 hours later.

If they are the same in another 24 hours, I'm taking it that this unrefrigerated Safestart doesnt work if you use it as directed, and I'll add the remaining 29ml and continue testing.

Safestart is going in the phytoplankton fridge at work from now on, and I'll ask about finding a supplier that keeps it refrigerated (heard they exist even though I doubt any wholesalers would bother for a product that isnt meant to be refrigerated).

Will also try to locate bottles that were produced more recently than 3 months.

 

[three-fingers]

I was busy last night, so never had time to test.

Just tested now and the stats are all the same though, so I'm dumping the whole bottle in. This is about 4 days after adding Safestart and it's had no effect yet.

 

[OldMan47]

After 4 days it would not be unusual to start seeing a response with no additives whatsoever. That early about all we usually see is a slight decline in ammonia.

 

[three-fingers]

...so unless I see a drastic shift tomorrow, I'm going to assume it did no good.

 

[Winterlily]

Three-fingers, for what it's worth, my tank(s) are only slightly smaller than the one you're testing on (25L = 6.6 gallons; my tanks are 5.5 gallons) and I used the BIG SafeStart bottle, the one meant for tanks up to 75 gallons. And I used the entire thing.

I know you're doing it differently to perform a test, but I thought I'd mention that anyhow.

 

[three-fingers]

Yup, and your bottle was refrigerated...as the next batch that comes into my work will also be, and I'll try a big refrigerated bottle in the future .

Will test later on today for nitrite and ammonia .

 

[three-fingers]

OK, just tested all stats and they are the same. Nothing ground-breaking, but I'm now convinced that unrefrigerated bottles of Tetra Safestart are totally useless, at least at 3 months old.

I'll try test some refrigerated stuff when I can get a hold of it, but since I have the tank up and running now, I figured it would be worthwhile to find out how useful mature media is. I've used it many times in the past, and got great results, but I've never used it in a fishless cycle while testing so may as well now.

So I washed the filters sponge under tap water, cut a bit off to leave room for a single piece of Biomax that is 2 years and 4 months mature (itself seeded from media that was also years old). This Biomax hasn't even seen the light of day for over 6 months now.

Will test again tomorrow. And yes, I am aware I have completely changed the subject of this thread out of my own curiosity, sorry .

 

[Curiosity101]

I'm following with interest! Who cares if you've stolen a thread...

And you've at least proven that un refrigerated 3month + safestart does nothing.
Which is basically 95% of what is on the shelves in LFS's and particularly is what is sold in 'aquarium kits'

I think you'll find the ammonia has started to shift by tomorrow with the biomax ring.

 

[craig855s]

I think uve made a big mistake here threefingers. I think you should have persisted with the test. As the safestart doesnt claim to contain the first N-bac (ammonia-nitrite) but it does claim to contain the nitrospira, so for the ammonia to begin processing will still take 4-7 days, but when the ammonia does process it will turn into nitrite and the safestart's nitrospira will then turn it immediately into nitrate..this is what i found, i seen 0 nitrite during the whole test i ran. My ammonia came down and nitrite never spiked, meaning there was nitrospira in my filter from the safestart

 

[three-fingers]

I'd heard differently, that it was supposed to be able to deal with ammonia easily but that it still left a nitrite spike, as the nitrite-consuming are notoriously slow to initially multiply.

I've also read that Tetra themselves said it contains Nitrospira, Nitrosospira and Nitrosomonas.

In fact my bottle even says on it "Tetra Safestart is proven to safely reduce toxic ammonia and nitrite".

If you can show me that what your saying is true somehow, then after this I'll test it on nitrite. I'll add sodium nitrite to the tank and then add the Safestart. But I now very much doubt any of the unrefrigerated bottles will do anything.

 

[craig855s]

The bumph from PFK when the product was first released

"Tetra has launched a new bottled product that it says will allow the fishkeeper to add fish on the same day as purchasing their aquarium.

The new SafeStart treatment, sold with the tagline "Enables instant introduction of fish" was launched last month at the Interzoo trade fair in Germany.

When added, SafeStart is claimed to keep nitrite 10 times lower and ammonia 14 times lower than other bacterial cultures on the market.

This is said to virtually eliminate the ammonia and nitrite spikes that commonly occur in maturing aquariums, which means that fish can be stocked much earlier.

Nitrospira-based
Tetra says that it has spent years researching SafeStart, and has based the product on Nitrospira bacteria, rather than the usual Nitrobacter seen in most competing products.

A similar product, MarineLand's BioSpira, which is also based on Nitrospira cultures, was launched in 2002 in the USA.

This product came as a result of Dr Timothy Hovanec's molecular studies on the nitrifiers, which was the first to identify that Nitrospira was the main bacteria responsible for nitrification in aquaria.

Hovanec's previous studies have identified that most aquarium maturation products are ineffective as they are based on the wrong types of bacteria.

BioSpira requires refrigeration, but Tetra claims that SafeStart can be kept for 12 months at room temperature and still remain effective.

The product will be available in 50ml and 100ml bottles and is due to go on sale in the UK soon. "

Nowhere above does it say it contains nitrosomonas. They can claim it "reduces ammonia spikes" on the bottle but as they dont say it contains nitrosomonas then the claim is hogwash, just like the other "cycle" products are hogwash as they dont say they contain anything,they just use the words "friends bacteria"

 

[three-fingers]

And here's a quote from a more recent advertisement article Tetra wrote for PFK:

"SafeStart contains the living Nitrospira, Nitrosospira and Nitrosomonas bacteria that can safely reduce toxic ammonia and nitrite in aquariums".

And here's a link to the article http/www.practicalfishkeeping.co.uk/pfk/...?article_id=612.

Totally convinced Safestart should be refrigerated and otherwise becomes useless much faster than advertised by Tetra.