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★☆☆☆☆ - Awful Customer Service & Ruined Live Bacteria Be smart and do not buy live products from FishtanksDirect. Pre-sale they will communicate with you instantly, but post-sale you are completely on your own. I ordered a bottle of Fritz TurboStart 700 and paid for 2nd Day Air shipping. Despite the expedited shipping, their cold packing was incredibly poor. The bottle arrived hot to the touch. Because live nitrifying bacteria cannot survive high heat, I ran a controlled test to see if the product was still viable. The results confirmed it was dead: • It dropped only a tiny bit of ammonia. • It created a minuscule amount of nitrite. • It produced zero nitrate. There are two distinct types of bacteria in this product, and both were rendered completely useless by the heat. The second strain of bacteria—the one responsible for converting nitrite to nitrate—is highly susceptible to heat and was completely wiped out. When I reached out to their sales team to explain the scientific proof that the product arrived dead due to their poor packaging, they completely ghosted me. Save your money and buy your live reef and aquarium products from a company that actually stands behind their shipping and customer service.
By Scott M.