Felt like I followed the directions pretty well except for using ocean direct sand. Added 2ppm of ammonia chloride that’s with the live sand reading. I’m sitting at 6 weeks and still cycling ammonia is consistently going down now, nitrites are at about 2ppm still waiting for a reduction in that. Not sure if I got a bad bottle but it did not work for me.

I am 55 and have been doing fish off and on since I was 7, This is my 3rd saltwater fish only setup and I decided to try out this product, well I set my tank up 10 days ago and put a slight overdosed amount in my tank in day 2 after filling with water and on day 3 I went out and bought some Damselfish since they are a quite hardy fish. Now 7 days after adding 10 Damsels in my 75 gallon tank everything is perfect, all test are good, nitrite is 0 ppm and nitrate is around .25 ppm, and no ammonia whatsoever. I used crushed coral as my base so no live sand as a factor of having good levels, I would recommend this product and will use again in the future if need be.

Def recommend this stuff

Mr. Scott was a very helpful and knowledgeable individual. He was well aware of what was going on with my 118 gallon tank. I was initially perplexed because I have a barebottom tank with media in the sump. I followed Dr. Tim's cycle, adding only ammonia-producing bacteria. I had over 5 ppm of ammonia for two weeks and Scott told me that I needed to change 50 percent of the water to bring the ammonia down. He was correct! My ammonia level dropped to 0 after I changed the water. I had over 5 ppm of nitrite and 140 ppm of nitrate for 9 days after that. I was perplexed and unsure what to do. I was told by Mr Scott that I needed to use the MICROBACTERIA STARTER XLM to my tank. After nine days using the MICROBACTERIA, the nitrite and nitrate was still off the chart. Scott then informed me that I needed to perform another large water change. My tank had.25 ppm nitrite and 40 ppm nitrate after the water was changed. I sincerely appreciate his assistance, and he should be named employee of the year. Thank you so much for his assistance. I strongly recommend using the "Microbacteria Starter XLM.

I would highly recommend you use MicroBacter Start XLM for cycling your aquarium. I am a newbie cycling a 40-gallon Red Sea and using a Seneye to monitor the process along with RedSea kits for Ammonia, Nitrite and Nitrate. Also measured pH with Red Sea Kit. Started with the popular Dr Tims and it DID NOT WORK. Grrrr. I am very detailed oriented, so I followed the instructions precisely. My ammonia was STUCK from Day 4 to Day 10 at between 4 – 6. VERY FRUSTRATING having invested mucho $$ into my setup. Emailed Dr Tim and he said the problem was that I was using live sand. Yikes – no where did Dr Tim say not to do this. Called up Brightwell and spoke to the owner for 30 minutes. What company has the CEO helping their customers? Decided to switch to XLM. Note XLM instructions say not to use live sand. The CEO said to leave the live sand in but do a 50% water change. Did that with ammonia at 1.2 after water change. Added XLM per instructions with no additional ammonia added. IMMEDIATELY after adding XLM I saw a slow continual decrease day after day of Ammonia in the Seneye until day 5 when it was gone. It took until day 8 to get nitrite to 0. THANK YOU BRIGHTWELL AQUATICS FOR ALL OF THE HELP!!! My tank is now cycled.

I believe this product works well, but you MUST use a higher grade test kit. I believe in my API test kit but it doesn’t read low ppm. Every time I tested with the API I wasn’t getting any reading at all. So, I thought this product doesn’t work, but when I started using my Red Sea test kit I was getting a clear reading. Make sure to test, but with a really good test kit and you can’t go wrong.