Dr. Tim's Waste Away and Microbacter 7 - sludge busters or snake oil?

Just wondering if anyone has experience with either of these products in sludge or brown goo algae busting. ?

 

At someone's suggestion I tried an Aqua Vitro product, Remediation, which is similar to the above products. Unfortunately, it raised my Nitrites some and I had to do some water changes and dose Prime (at 5x the dose, which is recommended for reducing Nitrites) to bring them back down.

The Remediation didn't work but I also tried Phosphate Rx (Lanthanum Chloride) at the same person's suggestion and it got rid of the sludge. It reduced and hasn't come back so far. Unfortunately, a side effect of this was that it killed the four fish that I have. It didn't effect my invertabretes and I don't currently have any corals.