Will stress zyme help me cycle my tank? I read on the bottle it is a bacteria booster with live bacteria. That is believed to help in boosting the cycling process. Has anyone in this forum had any luck with it?

I think the jury is still out on a lot of these products, with a lot of people reporting great success, and others who say there was no difference. I used products like Stress Zyme when I first started out as well but can't honestly say that I documented enough to say much from personal experience. An old friend, who a few others here might also know, had a lot of good to say about the Bio-Spira product but I'm sorry that I can't help more on this subject.

Hey no problem I appreciate any information you can give me on the hobby because I am only as good as what I research online or on these forums.

At least you are researching, right?!?!? I certainly wish I started out like you.

The main reason that the bacteria additive conversation is complicated, at least from my point of view, is because the advertising sounds very much like you can buy a bottle of magic potion one day and your fish the next...or that you can use the same potion to save your fish once the water in an uncycled tank starts becoming toxic. IMO, this is misleading and from my few years of hanging around on forums like this one, I can't recall anyone who has ever reported back that these claims are true.

On the other hand though, because you are fishless cycling, these products might, in fact, come in handy because they may be a valuable as a way to populate your tank with bacteria faster (how much faster might be up for debate though). Using these products is very much akin to "cloning" an aquarium by removing items such as filter media, substrate, or even decorations from a cycled aquarium and placing them in yours; which is usually much more accepted as a guaranteed way to speed up the cycling process. This is why my experiences with products like Stress Zyme are so far in the past, I simply clone new tanks from my current ones.

So, in short, the reason I'd have a hard time answering your question is because "it depends"...meaning, I don't feel it is a great idea to skip fishless cycling because you have access to bacteria additives but would support the notion that these products could help you speed up the cycling process, if that makes any sense.