If you are trying to cycle a brand-new tank, or your aquarium is experiencing a spike in ammonia and nitrites, then you can use the combination of Seachem Prime and Tetra Safestart to quickly build up your biological filtration.
To find out how you can use the two products together, you can take a look at this guide from Aquarium Blueprints.
Can you use Prime with SafeStart?
You should be able to safely use Seachem Prime with Tetra Safestart without any problems. In fact, the two products complement each other quite well.
For the uninformed, Tetra Safestart comes with two bacteria strains that will help fortify your biological filtration. The Nitrosomonas species will convert ammonia to nitrites while the Nitrospira species will convert nitrites to nitrates.
If you decide to fill your fish tank with tap water, then the chlorine and/or chloramine may end up harming the Nitrosomonas and Nitrospira beneficial bacterial strains. This is where Seachem Prime comes in as it will remove the chlorine and chloramine from the tap water.
Another benefit of Prime is that it will also bind ammonia and nitrites into non-toxic forms for up to 48 hours. Even in non-toxic forms, both of these nitrogen compounds will still be consumed by the Nitrosomonas and Nitrospira species living in your tank.
How to use Prime and SafeStart to cycle a fish tank
In order to use these two products in order to cycle your fish tank, you need to take the following steps:
- Start off by setting up your fish tank and then filling it with water.
- Next, you need to add Seachem Prime to the aquarium. For the dosage amount, you should add 5 mL of the water conditioner for every 50 gallons (or 200 liters) of tank water.
- Add adding Prime, you then need to add the Tetra SafeStart. For this product, make sure you shake the bottle well. Afterwards, you can add 5 mL of the solution for every 1.5 gallons (or 6 liters) of tank water.
- We then recommend that you wait at least one week to let the beneficial bacteria strains multiply in your aquarium. During this time, you can add a small pinch of fish food daily to keep the bacteria colonies fed.
- After a week, you would be able to slowly start add new fish to your tank.
- After adding a fish, we recommend dosing Prime daily. By doing so, you will prevent any potential ammonia or nitrite spikes from harming your fish.
- To know for sure if you fish tank is fully cycled, we recommend using an aquarium test kit. You should target 0 ppm of ammonia and 0 ppm of nitrites for your tank water.
How to use Prime and SafeStart to fix ammonia and nitrite spikes
If you have an established fish tank that is experiencing elevated levels of ammonia and/or nitrites, then you can try using these two products to make your pet fish safe.
In order to do so, you can take the following steps:
- Do a water change. This will help remove some of the ammonia and nitrites from the tank water.
- Before adding tap water back into the tank, make sure you add Seachem Prime to the aquarium first in order to prevent the chlorine and chloramine from harming the beneficial bacteria.
- Next, you need to shake the SafeStart bottle and then add the solution to your tank.
- We recommend that you repeat the same three steps daily until you get the ammonia and nitrite levels under control.