Seachem Stability Fish Tank Stabilizer - For Freshwater and Marine Aquariums, 16.9 Fl Oz (Pack of 1)

This stuff really does work. I had been cycling my 10 gal tank for about 3 weeks when I started it. My tests were just barely showing some nitrite. 8 days later, it was fully cycled. Please note, though, that this won’t work at all if you don’t combine it with an ammonia source. I used Dr. Tim’s pure ammonia to raise my tank to 4-5 ppm for cycling. If you have fish in your tank, that’ll also do it, but fish in cycling is not recommended. I think that some of the negative reviews are from people who thought that this product alone would cycle the tank. It won’t. This adds beneficial bacteria to your tank, but the bacteria will starve without ammonia as a food source. So make sure you have good ammonia levels in the tank before you add this.

I have been hooked on Seachem Stability for a long time but put it to the test when we moved from Utah to Mississippi. I wanted to setup my 9 aquariums as soon as possible so as soon as this was done I started to Use Stability plus a dose of Seachem Prime every 48 hours. I immediately started stocking the tanks with fish, everything from Flowerhorns to a large variety of Cichlids, Plekos,Severums, Parrot Flowerhorns and Blue Dolphins. I have not had even one loss during the cycling, I believe its critical to use Prime in conjunction with Stability, and I have a Pearl Flowerhorn coming in soon that I will cycle exactly the same in a 55 gallon bowfront that I just set up today. Kudos to Seachem for another great well researched product.

I was having a hard time getting my tank to cycle before the fish I ordered arrived in the mail. Because I was running out of time I ordered this product, started it on a Tuesday, put my fish in on a Saturday, and was done by the Monday. I just tested my water and have no ammonia or nitrates and between 5 and 10 ppm nitrates. You need to use the Prime with it every other day during the cycle (1 mL per 10 gallons) to bind any ammonia to make the tank safe for the fish while the tank is getting started. I would not have known this if I had not called Seachem support. Seachem support is AMAZING. So helpful. They explained how the products worked together and answered every single one of my questions, which there were many as this was my first fish. I recommend this product, but more I recommend this brand.

Doing research on this product I knew going into it this would be very much a hit or miss outcome. For me, it was a miss, but a mild miss so far. I recently set up a 125 gallon aquarium. On a Sunday I filled it and added the initial dose of Stability. On Wednesday I added a large number of live plants (rooted, non-rooted, stem, and floating) in addition to a school of 10 Harlequin Rasboras. On Friday I did a water test and thought all was well, 0 ppm Ammonia, 0 ppm Nitrite, and 5 ppm Nitrate which is the lowest reading the API liquid test will show. I added a school of 6 Peppered Corys. On Saturday I did the last final dose of Stability, giving a full 7 days of use. By Monday however things went backwards with 0.25 ppm Ammonia, and zero for the rest. Tuesday up to 0.5 ppm Ammonia and again zero on the rest. So for me, this product only worked while I was using it and didnt sustain long afterwards. The directions confirm a theory of mine. I believe it may contain a bacteria that does do the nitrogen cycle, but is not able to reproduce in the aquarium. Thus it establishes at a certain level of ammonia production, and slowly dies off. It is the only way I can explain why the instructions direct the continued use of this product with a monthly dose, and a dose whenever any fish are added. I can see adding a dose with new fish, but the monthly maintenance has to be there for a reason... Without that initial small reading of Nitrates I would of said this product didnt work at all and my live plants are the reason Ammonia has stayed low. Since I do have live plants in this tank (and a lot of them) I cant say definitively that this product worked or didnt work so Im afraid this review may not be all that helpful. I just wanted to share my experience and state that using this product and following the directions, I did not get a cycled aquarium meaning constant 0 ppm Ammonia and Nitrite.

my son told me about this product, he uses it for his 100 gal tank, i use it for my 5 gal tank. easy to use and works great.

Pros: -Fast-acting. I rely on it often during emergencies, and its potent. For example, I recently used 3 caps on a terribly neglected 3-gallon tank of water with ammonia readings as high as 8ppm (-In other words, ultimately lethal to most any fish that dont have the ability to draw oxygen from the water surface like bettas and gouramis. And even they will eventually chemically burn their gills by breathing it in, anyway), and 8 hours later the ammonia readings came back at 0ppm. Cons: -Make no mistake; ammonia concentrations over .50ppm WILL kill the beneficial bacteria colony youre trying to estabilish from your bottle of Stability. If you really cant do a full water change and need to use this on an already highly polluted setup, use a generous amount of Seachem Prime to temporarily detoxify said ammonia so that the beneficial bacteria have time to eat it before it kills them. -It is not uncommon for a fresh bottle of Stability to arrive carrying pollution of its own. I would suggest immediately using an ammonia test kit (-Do NOT use tests in the form of strips if youre new to aquarium keeping) on the contents of the bottle. If concentrations are higher than 1ppm you will likely only be adding dead microbes to your tank, and as they decay they will make things even worse for your fish. -Although harmless, large quantities of Stability can cloud your water. If you experience this and it really bothers you, take it as a sign that you need to cut back on the size of your doses. -Although it does have a decent life expectancy, do not assume your Stability will last until the purported use-by date. I would not recommend buying large bottles of it unless you know, for certain, that youll be using it within a few months.

Stability is a great product to help quickly start your cycle. Cycle of a tank goes down to a week unstead if 6-8 weeks. Go slow adding fish still as the cycle is still new. Great product

My stepson got a 55 gallon tank for christmas, and I had been trying to get it to cycle for some time before he moved his fish into it, using added ammonia. No luck, so the fish were moved over and we used Seachem Prime (another exellent product) and continuous water changes to keep the ammonia levels down. Two weeks and a couple of bacteria products later, we were still getting 2ppm ammonia and 0 nitrites and nitrates. I ended up getting Stability and the same day the ammonia went down to .25ppm and we finally got readings on the nitrites and nitrates. It has worked very well for us. WORD OF CAUTION: If you get this or any other live bacteria product, make sure you do one day shipping (at least if it is summer or winter). The temperature extremes during average shipping can kill off the bacteria, leading to this being as useful as a bottle of water.

Have been using this for some time now and detected no changes to stabilizing water or improving tank stability. I still add it just in case - because I have terrible water problems and hope this helps with the water cycle. I notice no difference. Also for those cycling a tank - do NOT cycle with fish in it, a far better way is to use household ammonia instead of fish to start the cycle going. Look online for the exact amounts of ammonia to add each day - and you actually make the ammonia rise and fall multiple times along with the nitrites until your last dose cycles and both ammonia and nitrites are zero. At that point is when you want to do a water change to get rid of the left over nitrates and just generally get the aquarium ready for your fish. Make sure it is just plain ammonia, nothing with a detergent added. No risk to killing your fish or sacrificing cheap fish to cycle the tank - how cruel and stressful to the fish. My tank lost its cycle probably due to adding too many fish at once. but Stability didnt help - 2 months of trying to get it to cycle and its just now producing nitrates - I feel bad for my fish who have had to suffer through this - if you do have fish in your tank make sure you use Prime daily (they say 48 hrs but I did it daily to be safe). When my ammonia reach 8 ppm I purchased AmGuard which very slowly has help lowered my ammonia levels.

Some people say it allows you to speed up the cycling process even in a complicated reef tank set up... Others say its just snake oil, meaning, it doesnt do anything and you just have to trust it works. My verdict? Ive set up numerous reef tanks, some using this product, some without. Ive also done water changes with and without this product (with, per instructions). Guess what? I have no clue what this does. If it does something, great. If it doesnt, well, at least it didnt make anything worse. So my advice is if you think this will help, it may- and it wont kill anything. If you dont think it will work, it wont. Duh! Its only real if you believe, man. So why 4 stars? I can only assume the guys at Seachem did their research and theyve concluded improvements in the system using the product versus not. Im not a microbiologist, marine biologist, chemist, or alike... Im just a hobbist and enthusiast with a decent noggin. Youre not the fish whisperer, nor am I. Even the tiniest fractional change in water conditions is detected and deeply felt by marine animals. Imagine if earths gravity changed by 0.1 lbs. Imagine if there was a little less oxygen... Youd feel it, youd know, and it would play an epic toll on your body. So remember, whatever it does it doesnt kill your fish. It could be making things better for your tank, or making minor non-painful changes, but until I see death Im not concerned. I can only assume that real scientist developed this solution for a real problem and we should consider using it. Skeptics, shut up unless youve spoken to swimmy the fish. You can never conduct a perfect one to one experiment between using and not using, even if you two identical tanks, water, sand (impossible), rocks (impossible), filters, etc... Every minor difference, even where each tank is resting in the room (slightly different air exposure) makes a difference. Believe, and it works miracles.