Water Treatments Help Please

[kevlo]

Hi guys and girls, ive posted earlier in the week about setting up my tropical tank. I have another question about treating the water.

I've bought Seachem Pond Prime to use as a tap water conditioner, is this a good product to use?

I plan on buying King British Safe water and im abit confused as on some websites this is advertised as an alternative to Stability (this is the product i would like it to be like as i plan to use it to start off the tank and prevent new tank syndrome i.e introduce bacteria to stabilise the water and populate the filter)

But on some websites i've seen it advertised as a tap water conditioner i.e an alternative to prime which i already have?

any help much appreciated as im abit confused?

thanks
Kev

 

[OldMan47]

Welcome to the forum Kevlo.
Stability and Prime serve the exact same purpose. Both are dechlorinators with some minor benefit of making traces of poisons like ammonia bit less toxic to fish. I have never seen the King British product but based on its name I would guess it is more of the same kind of product.
The only thing that I am aware of that will help you avoid "new tank syndrome" completely is to obtain a true sample of the right bacteria by trading some of your filter media with the same stuff from a fully cycled filter. We have a reference thread right here on TFF of people who have said they are willing to make such a trade. Once you have some mature media, doing a fishless or even a fish-in cycle can be quite easy. I have a link to that thread in my signature area, I think I called it Donors or some such title.
If you cannot find a media donor, your next best bet is to do a fishless cycle. We have both fishless and fish-in cycle threads right here on TFF. I have a link to each one in my signature area.

 

[kevlo]

is that definately correct. the seachem website says different

it says that prime removes chlorine, heavy metals from your tap water

it says that stability is live bacteria to help detoxy nitrate/ammonia etc

 

[OldMan47]

Let me retract that. The Stability page says their product is a mix of bacteria so diverse that they will grow in fresh or salt water and in aerobic or anaerobic environments. It also says that they include nitrifying and denitrifying bacteria. It also says that it does not include any of the bacteria requiring a "narrow" set of environmental conditions, such as we experience in our tanks. I would bet that stuff will give you a nice bacterial bloom but will do nothing to cycle a tank with the bacteria required to process ammonia and nitrites in our narrow environmental conditions.
When it comes to NTS, the only sure cure is a cycle and the next best thing would be lots of water changes while waiting for the cycle to take place. We have seen dozens of things with claims almost identical to those put forth by Seachem over the years but have not seen an effective bacterial additive in the hobby since Marineland quit producing Nitrospira, a product that had a short shelf life and needed to be refrigerated constantly until it was used.

 

[kevlo]

so i presume you are being sarcastic about retracting. thats fine i understand what your saying i have contacted my local donor but i dont think he operates on the forum anymore his last post was in 2010. im in crewe cheshire by the way.

i presume having said the above i presume you still need Prime to condition the tapwater?

Is the stability not worth having at all? or is it beneficial just not to the scale that they claim?