mza1979m

Has anyone tried the product located at the following link? Should I give it a go? Any recommendations?

http://www.bigalsonline.ca/BigAlsCA/...ncycle8oz237ml

That's the website for my LFS.

Tommy Gun

BJP will be your best resource, at least as far as I know of, on this forum for comparisons between this product and others. I have used it and at the time, I felt it was working, however, now that I know a bit more about the hobby and from what I have learned from BJP and others, I couldn't honestly attribute any positive (or negative really) effects directly to using it.

Do you absolutely have to have it? Absolutely not. Could it help you? In theory, yes. Does it provide you with everything it is advertised to do? Maybe...maybe not, there are a lot of variables to consider and I am sure I could only come up with four or five out of the potential dozens.

BJP

If you don't have a clean healthy tank to raid for established bacteria colonies availible then Cycle can provide the start up bacteria you need but not in quantity to take less than a month to establish a tank so far in any of my tests. The product isn't needed at all after you own one established tank.

I have more faith in the speed of Bio-Spira by Marineland in accomplishing the same thing faster but the smallest pack of Bio-Spira costs about twice what the 4oz bottle of Cycle does and is harder to locate for most of us with Cycle availible on the shelf everywhere including Walmart.

If you want more exact numbers follow the link in my signiture.

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mza1979m

I just bought a bottle of NutraFin Cycle from Wal-Mart (had no idea they had them there!) and have a question regarding its usage...

It states on the bottle how to use the stuff and among the instructions it states the following:

"Remove medication with carbon or other filtration before application."

Can someone clarify what this means? Does that mean I should remove my filter cartridge that has carbon in it? Does it mean I should remove my entire filter altogether? What does it mean?

Many thanks in advance.

PS. BJP, thanks, I found your "Cycling comparisons" to be very helpful. I read it a few days ago and tried to locate some Bio-Spira, but it was quite difficult, so I gave up.

PPS. After saving this post, I read on some more on the bottle and although it says "NutraFin Cycle" on the bottle, it also says "Hagen" on the back in small letters. I thought they were two separate companies, according to what I read in your "Cycling comparisons". But I guess this is the same stuff you probably used in your tests?

BJP

Hagen is the company, nutrafin is the line kinda like saying Dodge is the the company and Dakota is the truck.

Some medications kill bacteria. If you just medicatted your tank through a disease outbreak and wiped out your bacteria bed at the same time, they want you to add fresh carbon to get the medicine out of the water before you add Cycle. All of my test tanks with Cycle had fresh new filter cartridges. Carbon will not cause a problem.

You can save a lot of confusion by not wasting time reading all the marketting hype on the bottle and booklet that comes with it. At best they've extremely overstated the products speed, benefits and usefulness. If no fish were in the tank and I knew I was going to give the tank a large water change close to 100% at the end of the cycle before getting fish I'd probably ignore the directions also and add the whole bottle at once. Just be careful though not to trust the first nitrate level if it shows up immediately. The product contains enough sodium nitrate to give a low level Nitrate reading in smaller tanks.

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fishlvr13

Use it!! I have a 10 gallon tank and my nitrites were going through the roof so i got this product and after a few weeks of using it, the levels went down greatly, and may have saved my fish. I use it every week or so and so far has been doing wonders in the way of stabilizing my nitrites because ever since i have been using it (along with partial water changes every 3-4 days)it has been bringing my nitrites down. although this product doesnt work instantly, after a month or so (so the bacteria have time to multiply) it will make your tank a much safer enviroment for your fish.

dlee9707

It usually takes a month to cycle a tank without Cycle

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55 Gallon Tank:
4X yellow lab
Breeding pair of Red Empress
Female OB peacock
S. Fryeri
Syno. Catfish
Blue Batia
Generic Pleco
One Tinfoil Barb (i couldnt get the thing out with a net or anything else, so i guess its there to stay...)