One thing that Prime gets wrongfully accused of is slowing a tank cycle.
Some say that since it claims to "bind" ammonia, then the ammonia processing to nitrite and nitrate is slowed by adding Prime. This is incorrect. Here is a demonstration.
I took some tank water, and dosed it to ~1ppm ammonia and split it into three 100mL samples. Two of the three samples got sand from a small cycled tank to process the ammonia.
bottle 1: Tank water + ammonia + Prime (no sand)
bottle 2: Tank water + ammonia (2% sand)
bottle 3: Tank water + ammonia + Prime (2% sand)
left Chart is ammonia testing with API total ammonia. Right chart is Nitrite. Green dashed lines are when Prime was added.
First the ammonia chart. It's quite messy, but it's clear that the samples with sand processed ammonia pretty similarly - perhaps exactly the same, but Prime makes that hard to see. The Prime clearly interfered with the total ammonia test somewhat, and the interference was erratic and unpredictable in the sample without sand. (Perhaps the sand samples broke down the Prime faster and decreased the interfering effect)
On to the Nitrite graph on the right. It's clean and requires almost no explanation. Nitrite starts being produced at the same time, with or without big doses of Prime, similarly it reaches peak NO2 value at the same time and the NO2 gets cleared at the same time - with or without Prime. Neither the bacteria oxidizing Ammonia->NO2 nor those oxidizing NO2->NO3 are slowed in the slightest by repeated big doses of Prime.
So attempts to blame (saltwater) cycling issues on Prime seem totally unfounded. It may make the tests (especially ammonia) harder to interpret - but it doesn't affect the ammonia nitrification process in the slightest. Such explanations from bottle bacteria sellers shouldn't be accepted.
