New tank fish in cycle. A few issues...

[Byron]

Yes, there is Dr Tim's All in One (the dormant bacteria) and the instructions is to add pure ammonia on top of this. Dr Tim's does his own ammonia (not called all in one) which makes things easier in terms of dosing instruction, but you could use any pure ammonia of course. I used Dr Tims once and Safe Start twice and Dr Tims was better for me in speeding up a fishless cycle.

The All in One bottle is just the dormant bacteria on it's own.

OK, so with Dr. Tim's One and Only you do not want fish in the tank as you are adding ammonia. So Tetra's SafeStart will work here.

 

[AlexT]

Safe Start says to dose and then add fish, but this is just the same principle as Dr Tim's but using fish instead of ammonia I guess? Just a different source of ammonia? Not sure.....

 

[Byron]

Safe Start says to dose and then add fish, but this is just the same principle as Dr Tim's but using fish instead of ammonia I guess? Just a different source of ammonia? Not sure.....

Safe Start is the only bacterial supplement containing the correct species of nitrifying bacteria, so in tanks with fish in them if something happens adding it may help to re-establish the nitrifying bacteria. None of the other commercial products do this, except Dr. Tim's, so if this does not require ammonia presumably it will also help. In other words, these products in this context are meant to give the nitrifying bacteria some encouragement if something has gone south.

 

[Obsessed with fish]

These are ones I have left. The ones that died were getting a bit nippy with the others the day before. Hard to get clear pics as they seem more active today.

All your living guppies look good too me. The dead ones could have died due too the stress caused by the nipping, weakening there immune system, causing diseases. Guppies have been bred into so many different varieties so they are susceptible to dying of disease and other causes.

 

[Essjay]

Both Safe Start and One & Only can be used for fishless and fish-in cycling. Dr Tim promotes fishless cycling as the preferred method (he also sells ammonium chloride so he makes more money selling both products for a fishless cycle) while Tetra promote fish-in cycling. Since they don't sell ammonia and most stores don't mention fishless cycling, they are aiming at the people doing fish-in cycling.