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How to use Seachem Stability for fish-in cycling

Seachem Stability adds live beneficial bacteria to your fish tank. If you want to use this product when doing a fish-in cycle, you can take a look at this article from Aquarium Blueprints.

Companion Products

Before we begin, we highly recommend that you also get Seachem Prime and Seachem Matrix as these two products will work extremely well with Stability.

Fish-in cycling can be extremely tough for your fish and other aquatic pets as they will most likely get exposed to ammonia, nitrites and nitrates. Thankfully, Seachem Prime is able to detoxify these toxic compounds for a short amount of time. Prime also has other benefits that will keep your fish healthy.

A vast majority of aquariums are capable of growing beneficial bacteria colonies that will consume ammonia and nitrites. To grow nitrate-eating bacteria, however, you need to create surface areas that are devoid of oxygen. The Seachem Matrix features microscopic chambers with depleted oxygen, which provide an ideal environment for the nitrate-consuming bacteria species.

If you are interested and haven’t done so already, you can purchase either of these two companion products on Amazon with the following links:

You can also add plants and lava rocks in your tank as well if you want to make the fish-in cycle even safer for your aquatic pets.

How to fish-in cycle with Seachem Stability

In order to fish-in cycle by using Seachem Stability, you need to take the following steps:

1. If you haven’t done so already, set up your fish tank by adding a substrate, filter, heater and other aquarium equipment.

2. Next, make sure you add Seachem Matrix to either your filter or directly in the tank.

3. Fill your aquarium with water and then turn your heater, filter, etc.

4. Once your tank has been setup, add Seachem Prime into your tank water.

In terms of dosage, you should add 5 mL, which is a capful, for every 50 gallons or 200 liters of tank water.

5. Afterwards, you need to dose Seachem Stability.

For Stability, you first dose should be 5 mL, which is a capful, for every 10 gallons or 40 liters of tank water.

6. You can then add your fish and other aquatic pets to the aquarium.

When adding livestock, make sure that you follow the appropriate acclimation procedure. Otherwise, you can end up causing them a lot of unnecessary stress or sickness.

7. Over the next 6 days, you should dose 5 mL of Seachem Prime for 50 gallons or 200 liters of tank water as well as 5 mL of Seachem Stability.

For Stability, you only need to dose 5 mL daily from here on out.

7. After the 7th day of dosage, you need to use a test kit to check the ammonia, nitrites and nitrates parameters of your fish tank.

For a fully cycled aquarium, you need the following:

  • 0 ppm of ammonia
  • 0 ppm of nitrites
  • Less than 20 ppm of nitrates

If ammonia or nitrites are above the recommended levels, then we suggest that you continue dosing Prime and Stability daily until your test kit no longer detects any traces of these two compounds.

To reduce nitrates, you need to do a partial water change 24 hours after your latest Prime and Stability doses. We recommend doing no more than a 25% water change over a 24-hour period. If you still need to dose Prime and Stability, then you can add both products in immediately after a water change.