Fritz Turbo Start 700 Freshwater (4 oz)

Let me preface this review by saying that I have never used a product and ran to write a review SO quickly. Before this, I have used Seachem Stability, API Quick Start, and Microbe-Lift Nite-Out + Special blend. They did not seem to help during the nitrite phase of the cycle, which I ended up stuck on for more than 30 full days of not for this product. I had crazy nitrites that were measuring over 10ppm (I have a liquid kit as well I use to confirm the tests in detail, the strips are for quick & easy reads). I hadadded quick start at the beginning of the cycle, with no affect. Then I tried adding Seachem stability daily. Nothing for three weeks. Then for a week I switched to microbe-lift Nite-Out. STILL NOTHING, nitrite levels off the charts and I was panicking doing water changes daily at this point with little to no effect. After doing more research and doubting bottled bacteria products even work, I read on a forum that Fritzzyme Turbostart 700 is a bottled bacteria product that is refrigerated and therefore preserves the bacteria through shipping. I decided to buy a bottle to try it out for myself. The package arrived with ice packs inside. They were melted but the bottle wasn't warm, so that meant all was good. I popped it in the fridge for a few hours before use. I added double the dose to my tank. I included pictures of my water tests below. The first test shows how the levels were before I used Fritzzyme. The second picture shows the water test after a few hours. Nitrates and nitrites clearly gone down by a LOT. The last image shows the water test the next morning, after about 24 hours. WOW! This stuff is GOOD. No more nitrites, trace nitrates, no ammonia. Cycle completed after just one time of using this. Miracle in a bottle. I am currently using it on another tank with the same issue and the levels are going down already too. Moral of the story: Don't bother with any bacteria products that aren't refrigerated. This stuff is the REAL DEAL.

I wish I would have gotten this on time, it would have saved me so much stress and hard work. I ordered this mid November with a shipment of fish scheduled for the end of the month. The shipment was a bit unexpected but I had been waiting for these particular fish to come on the market and I didn't want to lose my chance. The fish needed a quarantine tank and I used a bunch of media from my other established tanks to avoid massive water changes and lots of work on my part. Despite all of that I wanted to play things as safe as I could so I sprang for this. Well for whatever reason the ship date on my Turbo Start order kept getting moved and I had to cancel the order twice as amazon was advertising a ship date weeks ahead of the final date they kept giving me. To my ire the Turbo Start didn't arrive until the first week in December, a full three days after the fish arrived and two days after it was scheduled to show up. I was stuck trying to make do with Fluval (didn't have enough phosphates in the water to kick start their bacteria strains) and seachem (hardly made a dent). Those were such a waste, I think I spent around 50 on those products alone. In the end I was throwing those products away because of the massive water changes I was having to do. Once the Turbo Start finally arrived, I was hesitant to use it as it was shipped during a cold snap and almost certainly froze in shipping. Not only that but it was shipped via USPS and got put in the mail box which I don't check every day. Day time temps where well above 60's in the mailbox and froze again over night. After all the work I was having to put into the quarantine tanks my heart broke. The directions say not to freeze the product and it sat in my mailbox over night twice. After another few days of fighting high nitrites (ammonia is way easier to remove with big water changes) I decided to try this, it was either going to work and I wouldn't have to do as big a water change or it wasn't going to work and I was going to end up dumping it with water changes anyway. I really had nothing to loose. I added this to my tank and eight hours later I tested my water and BOOM! nitrites were somewhere between .05pmm and .1ppm!! Not perfect but much less stressful! With the addition of salt, I was greeted by active happy hungry fish. I did spend some time checking the fish after adding the damaged Turbo Start. Fritz recommends not to let the product freeze but I couldn't find any information on their site or anywhere else on what would happen if a damaged product was used. So with some new water on stand by, I added Turbo Start and checked in on the fish every 15 min to half hour and they seamed fine. After a long night of worrying I went to bed. Next morning fish were fine and the water was great! I still don't know if using Turbo start after it had been out of refrigeration and completely froze was a good idea, it smelled like a rotting animal when I opened the bottle (not the surfer smell some people describe), but it worked and I am esthetic! Now that my water is down to .05ppm nitrites I can back off water changes until the ammonia or nitrites rise again and then I will hopefully only have to do small water changes and add a smaller amount of Turbo Start so as not to back slide the establishing bacteria colonies. I highly recommend this product, highly don't recommend not having it on hand before you need it, and defiantly don't recommend in fish cycling. Yes there are the YouTubers who say, "Look! I just set up my tank! In goes Fritz, everything is fine!!". Even if you know what you are doing, in tank cycling is a risk and a time sink. You have to be willing to check on your fish and test your water through out the day and change it at a moment's notice! Don't do it folks, even if you are like, "I got time to do water changes 3x a day!! I have vacation time and am going to do a stay-cation keeping an eye on my new fish!!" Just don't do it... Despite the fish being better off I still have to monitor of fungal infection as result of these last few stressful days. Also don't trust that this product will be fine if it freezes, yeah it worked for me but I won't be rolling that dice twice. Don't bother with others products, this might look expensive but compared to the dosing direction on other products, a little bit of this goes a loooonnngg way and its the only one out of four products from two different companies that worked and helped fix my almost disastrous nitrite levels.

The bottled arrived warm and I live in Florida so I worried it wouldn’t be effective and even requested a return. I placed it in the fridge in the mean time but after a couple weeks I hadn’t gotten a chance to take it to UPS and I was getting desperate trying to cycle my tank so I decided to use it even though it arrived warm. WOW! I was able to cycle my tank after just two weeks, after trying about three or four other brands of bottled bacteria and being unsuccessful. I dosed my tank with ammonia as I didn’t have any fish in there, and yeah, it worked like a charm! Sooo glad I didn’t return it in the end 😅 I added my fish after testing my tank consistently for a month and everything is running smoothly. Highly highly recommend this product!

Great seller. I paid for faster shipping and it arrived quickly via FedEx and the ice pack was still cool. Time will tell if this product helps speed up my aquarium cycle.

I was having an issue cycling my 75 gallon South American Tank. All my readings would come back as 0 Ammonia, 0 Nitrite and 0 Nitrate. I even tried Dr. Tim's and same results. I even started having a diatom (brown algae) issue in my tank where i would have to scrap the glass every other day it seemed for months. I heard about Turbostart through some aquarists on YouTube such as Cichlid Bros and decided to try it out. I did a complete deep clean of the tank, even the filter and added in whole new water. Starting over basically. I added in bio balls from MarinePure in my filtration and tank and then dosed Turbostart. Alongside that I added seachem stability to help speed up and build an even more diverse and strong biological system. I checked back in a week and I had Nitrates! 2 1/2 weeks later and no diatoms or any sort of algae! My fish are even looking healthy and fine! Turbostart is a bit more on the costly side compared to other Bottled Bacteria's out there but I'm glad I purchased and seeing my water guys thriving in a healthy ecosystem. I can say you and the fish will both be happy! The seller made sure the item was being hugged by a freeze pack so it slows the metabolism of the bacteria and makes sure it's alive when you receive it! The smell was like rotten eggs and the liquid was milky looking. That's how you know you have a good bottle! Note: API's test kit will sometimes show a false reading of ammonia such as 0.25 even thought the real reading is 0 ammonia. Just in case for anyone wondering why the picture provided shows 0.25 ammonia.

So I’m in the process of getting my tank cycle. I have high ammonia & high nitrites right now and I’m waiting for the switch to nitrites. This definitely has helped speed up the process more than usual. I would Say a day or two like the bottle says (unless I’m doing something wrong which is a high possibility) but more like it’s speeding things up. It does have a funky smell, but fish are gross in general (I’m mainly dealing with a goldfish & we know how they are lol). The dosing was kind of tricky since I’m used to majority of brands using a “capful” but with this, you use oz. My tank still isn’t stable yet, but I’m hoping to get there soon. My only gripe is how much you get for what you’re paying for. I know It’s great quality, but I have a 75 gallon tank so that little bottle went so quick! Other than that, it works pretty good.

I've been in the hobby for decades and remember when something like this was snake oil. I've used other brands recently that work well, but this is the real deal if you want to seed your aquarium quickly. I've used this per the directions on 2 10 gallons, a 55, and 125. And in ever case there was no bloom or any other issues or bad tests for the usual. It's only cloudy for a short while which is understandable. And it only stinks if you smell it. My only issue is shipping could be quicker being that this has a short life. So it's not something you can buy and put under your tank when needed. I believe it's shelf life is 6 month when refrigerated. At least according to AI. GREAT STUFF. AND MADE IN USA!!!!!

Short version of this review: It got my aquarium cycled in 10 days. More details if you want to read below: Bottled bacteria is one of those items that's really hit-or-miss for people, particularly when there's so many other variables with cycling an aquarium. For context, I used this in a standard 20" 10-gallon heavily planted aquarium with a completely fishless cycle using ammonium chloride powder to initiate the cycle. I have a canister filter loaded with sponges and a lot of ceramic rings and Seachem Matrix. I used Seachem Stability (another bacteria supplement) for about 10 days with absolutely no change in water chemistry. So, I did some reading around and landed on this product, TurboStart 700 and read a lot of positive things, particularly that it was refrigerated and had a reasonable shelf life, which makes a ton of sense when you consider it's a bottle of live bacteria. So I went ahead and ordered it with hopes that it would arrive reasonably cool during a record-hot July summer. It arrived quickly and with a coolant pack. While it wasn't COLD, it wasn't scorching hot either; probably a bit above room temperature. The first thing that stood out when I opened the package was that it looks and smells like none of the other "bottled bacteria" I've seen or used in the past. It's a dirt-brown cloudy liquid and smells kinda muddy/earthy. Over the course of about 10 days I dosed it twice and had a full cycle complete in about 8-10 days. I dosed ammonia twice more just to make sure it was being consumed properly and it certainly was. The TurboStart claims that you can add fish immediately but I'd still wait for a complete cycle before adding critters, just to be safe. I was a bit skeptical going in, but it really seems to work. It's highly concentrated and I've got a lot left, so now on to cycling my 55-gallon that's been empty for years! For those really interested I documented my progress and my ammonia went from 2ppm to 0ppm in 8 days. They came down much faster after I dosed the TurboStart a second time, about 7 days after the first dose. My nitrites went from 5+ ppm to 0ppm in 10 days. My nitrate level went from 40ppm to close to 0ppm in 10 days, but I'm heavily planted as well so I'm guessing my plants are sucking all the nitrogen and fertilizers from the water column since I've got some rapid-growing plants in there.