Updated Cycling Science thread 2020

brandon429

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The number of parameters measured allowing your start date is now reduced from three parameters measured (ammonia nitrite nitrate) into only one-nh3 form free ammonia. We dont need three-parameter compliance anymore to begin reefing safely. we need know only that ammonia is controlled.


you specifically do not need to move ammonia down from 2 ppm to zero to be cycled, those are the old rules. Most cyclers don’t even own test kits that can report 2 ppm accurately, or when it does move down they’ll still show high levels due to myriad conflicts in non digital color compare kits.

any ammonia moved down, if you own a kit able to show that, indicates a cycle ready because it’s not going to pause on the way to the safe zone. once either the time variable has been met, or the direct dosing of live bacteria has taken place, ammonia does not stick or hover or stall...it moves to the same levels that anyone who owns a seneye machine can see ammonia trending by the hour

search out some seneye nh3 threads to see the consistency when the meter is digital vs a color tube guess. I’ll let you find the working levels on the reports



Where are places nobody has trouble cycling, ever?

every reef keeping convention you ever went to or read about had already been managed this way, it just took us on forums twenty years to accept the notion. When you went to or read about MACNA, was exacting cycling required to start four hundred reefs all by Friday? They lined up one param, not three. A complete reef bioload was carried, not just a partial at these conventions that started on time. Quick cycling is a specific benefit conveyed by putting water bacteria in water and then reselling it to us as a quick filter, or by moving already live rocks among aquariums as filter transfer skip cycles.



-nitrite no longer needs to be factored or tested for in any phase of display tank reefing. to not own the kit saves you money, saves you invalid hesitation. Nitrite is the most unneeded to know param in all of reefing and in direct contrast to YouTube videos on cycling, nitrite does not stall a reef tank’s ability to process nh3 ammonia I believe we can prove with work thread links.
this is one.

how to unstick any stalled cycle (=change out your water and begin, you were never stalled)

We have a hundred nitrite positive reef starts on file when needed for inspection, and nobody agrees that one hundred examples of an api reading are to be accepted as fact anyway. But we all accept api nitrite as incontestable...stop testing for nitrite at all if your goal is to run a display tank reef, it will save you a headache.




nh3 free ammonia is the only parameter we need to verify active control for in reef tank cycling. One param, not three api params to wrestle with.

what nh3 does in every post cycle tank is consistent, not inconsistent

see this example

one water sample, two 100% polar opposite nh3 readings from two of the most popular kits people use to determine cycle status. Forum umpires use these pictures too, in deciding if cycles are done, in deciding if more bottle bac is needed

-if the poster owned only the Red Sea kit, 100% of observers would agree he wasn't cycled.

-if the poster owned and posted only the ammonia badge pic, we'd agree he was cycled. completely polar opposite assertions, independent from the truth.


That's the impact of non digital test kits on cycle assessments the last two decades

This is a hallmark rule from updated cycling obersvations. It means we don’t have to toil with ammonia measurement because we already know what it will be doing by taking a common cycling chart’s ammonia line and referencing that to the age of the tank in question.
in the immediate example above, his ammonia from the badge matches the ammonia drop date from a cycling chart, the badge is correct for nh3 form ammonia

*cycling charts do not vary site to site or book to book* that’s old school cycling that got it right, this inherent consistency in wet biosystems

Reef tank cycles do not stall causing you to need to buy something to unstall

-reef tank cycles do not stall, they complete in relation to the type of boosting used such as bottled bacteria (1-10 days average completion time until a 100% water change does not affect the nitrification ammonia test, it’s truly locked in place per Dr. Reef’s thread) or in the case of cured aquarium live rock transfers, an instant skip cycle into the new glass container.

Moving rocks among tanks in reasonable delay does not kill the cycle or mini cycle, it simply transfers alive with no help. This is the vast majority of instant reefs from a macna convention, which is a collection of folks who’d never be caught stalling a cycle. Shows it’s possible to accomplish what I’m saying....They’ve been pulling off five hundred instant reefs for twenty five years now. Imagine all the other conventions too, collectively, how’d they get so consistent? As you read forum cycle examples, could they have made a given Friday’s start date? What must change for them to do so?

2020 cycling evenly distributes allowed start dates for everyone, no flaming allowed. We can all have the quick starts, legitimately, if we want. Also handy: you can now download songs in one second vs forty two minutes. There is a Moore’s law for reef cycling, we‘re in the vortex. Accept it.

*Also in the vortex: thousands of fish to be killed by crypto ich by skipping fallow preps*

Just because nh3 control is easy doesn't mean another killer isn't going to take your fish. It won't be free ammonia as the cascade starter



It is both easy and possible to fully opt out of cycling a reef tank using today’s updated rules for the arrangement and verification. That includes full dry start systems using no live rock, I have handy entire reefs created in one day using bottle bac.

if someone doubts the ability, longevity or equality of a convention skip cycle vs a 60 day ramp old school cycle, let’s compare links. I have links where skip cycle reefs are tracked out years of growth, my own reef is one and its fifteen years old.



why is it that cycling charts are the same duration page to page vs as varying as a forum cycle? why weren't cycle charts written to allow ammonia non control for ninety days, as many api posts show? That misalignment is why we need rule updates


We need to get back to trusting thats not a sixty or seventy five day system; at worst it’s a 30 day system, and nowadays with bottle bac avail it’s under a week to ammonia control and a safe start.


2020 revalues the cycling chart and it’s eighty + years of reliability. Only recently with the advent of single-point api reading did the hobby want to remake charts showing ammonia rising back up and holding for sixty + days at .25. Thats not how cycling works in reefing. It works like a cycling chart, perhaps quicker with the good bacteria :)


Reef tank conventions never failed to be ready by Friday, but forum cyclers had to wait 30-60 days for a legitimate start? I don’t think so: 2020 cycling gives pure control to everyone, equally, with very predictable timeframes.

this poster below hit 8 ppm for days, and was told his cycle stalled as the YouTube videos would agree. Then we applied updated rules, and now he has fish and an anemone in the same tank deemed stalled. We changed out the filthy cycling water and revealed the working filter underneath it. The old rules said you have to wait 30+ days for the wastewater to clear on its own

Can we run a reef conventions off those rules?





Truth in surface area mechanics-

Updated surface area physics rules allow for this massive increase in fish bioload, while not providing ramp up time nor extra activated surface area or bac when the fish were added.


100% of poll takers would vote that impossible, but there it is on file.

can you instantly remove an entire remote DSB from a full blown sps reef and not recycle it? Using updated surface area rules, certainly yes you may


-live rock is the fundamental base filtration system for your reef, you can work with the surface area surrounding the rock in a free manner knowing which portion of the reef runs the life support, it’s not in the sand as some required link. Extra bacteria are expendable at all times in a common display tank.

a sandbed or a bunch of filter media inline is not an integral link to preventing a recycle or inability to handle nh3 waste ammonia just because the tank is adapted to the sand or extra filter media. That’s what the old rules thought

It is possible to remove a sandbed all at once, or a filter, and not cause a cycle because the stand-alone ability of live rock is enough even without your sand. Detritus in the bed can kill a system when cast into the water- but not lack of bacteria from sand removal, so the way you remove sand matters (cast no clouding among your corals and fish) but we do this routinely in large work threads if someone wants to see the patterning. See the forty page sand rinse thread for reference.




removing sand instantly does not mean your live rock must take on replacement bacterial mass, the old rules placed restrictions on actions incorrectly because .25 api was the lowest they were permitted to see ammonia levels. Nobody could move home from a MACNA exhibit if we had to re cycle every time a sandbed was removed....they move the tanks all at once

Live rocks do not take on more bacteria to make up for sandbed removal. Anyone who has ever typed that was following groupthink.


Live rocks are full of bacteria already, no open spaces, before surrounding surface area was removed. The reason live rocks do fine as filters in bare bottom setups is because LR is the greatest surface area in our systems, and it’s enough on its own.

If more bacteria had to stack layers on existing ones in order to keep with demand, that would *decrease* vs increase surface area presentation so efficiency would drop- not increase. Filtration would be worse not better if bacteria mass had to relocate to another place in the tank.

filtration is most efficient when the active bio layer is as thin as possible due to flow and water shear such that contact surfaces remain as open as possible, for contact.


the masses have been polar opposite wrong about how surface area works in a reef aquarium, and we made work threads to prove it. Reef tanks are too sensitive to keep lucking into not killing them in our instant sand removal jobs. The work runs five years without a loss because live rocks do not take on bacteria when extra surface area besides live rock is removed. It’s a functional tenet...off paper, and now caring for half a million bucks of reef tanks here:



-the rules about fish + bottle bac + wet caribsea sand + adding it into a reef together at the start vs a 30 day wait have changed.

- don’t take my word for it- ask yourself: is fish - in cycling (Fish plus bottle bac and wet sand and no wait time) increasing or decreasing on a daily basis, across the web forums? It’s quadrupling.

its the new wave, nobody wants to wait and they don’t have to, In this decade we learned that selling aquatic bacteria to someone in water was not revolutionary and that it transfers among tanks quite well. We can accept that now, no more doubt for the sake of doubt, seneye readings are out there to compare nowadays.

bottle bac preps move the bacteria to the new tank and along with initial dilution quite well, the efficacy of bottle bac has presented a forum’s worst nightmare: a deluge daily of new reefers with dry start tanks no longer having ammonia issues with two cycling clowns in tow (the fish behave well and eat and not die because it’s under control) but now there are scourges of dinos invasions and crypto/brook challenges requiring us to look past simple misreading test kit cycling challenges and into some logical way of handling fish disease en masse


Here is final proof using a delicate seneye machine that fish- in cycling is not harming fish, nh3 is instantly controlled.


*Notice* how his seneye was .001 with zero activity in the new setup, then it ran thousandths ppm nh3 on his matured 120 gallon reef (which is what all display reef tanks run at regardless of what red sea or api might have to say) and then in a quarantined setup the nh3 ran at hundredths ppm all on the same meter *** we are seeing actual surface area dynamics at work, live time, for the first time, right there.

Not having to look at the world of nh3 control through api goggles has given a new view, and a new set of rules.

disease control is the challenge, nh3 control is as easy as untwisting a bottle and titling some in the tank


The fundamental summary of reef tank microbiology for 2020 and this decade in my opinion is the amazing consistency and resilience inherent to these natural bacteria, we are not as reliant on retail purchases and careful arrangement control to complete a reef rank cycle as we recently started thinking after the 80s

if you’ve added water, it’s going to cycle. Time is the variable, not ability to complete, and than means you dont need to buy so many supports - these systems work without our help given the timeframes a common cycling chart shows.


critiques as well as testimony from anyone using amended cycling rules or exclusively old ones are welcomed. All the info above is a condensed summary of hundreds of available work threads, for any claim made we have several tanks to track out for inspection. I think I can find a reasonably-matched work thread for any verification needed, more than one per point.

in closing, here’s a collection of fifty reef tanks immediately started with zero cycle wait, NO bottle bac, for the ultimate expression of updated rules for forum cycles in 2020 but still what conventions have been doing for thirty years in secret:
 
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brandon429

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fish-in cycling is now mainstream. I support it because it is true that today’s arrangement can control nh3, the only parameter needed to control in cycling. The challenge is fish disease


the reason it’s important to know what’s changed in 2020 regarding filter bacteria concepts is because your confidence skyrockets, your expenditures are deliberate vs reactive, your actions taken during setup or relocation are deliberate vs hesitating and thereby safer; and we kill less animals due to mistakes and loss waste if a common rule set is found accurately updated. 2020 was about total control over our cycling bacteria, not constant doubt and worry.

I did not see one single failed fish-in cycle due to incomplete filtration in all of 2020.

making bottle bac preps work quicker: add a little ground fish food


I have relayed to many cyclers Dr. Reef’s trick of adding a pinch of fish food into cycles, along with bottled bac, so that heterotrohic-yet-nitrifying strains commonly used for speed cycling can get some carbon. in other words, if you add common bottle bac into a system that has a little fish food already dissolving /finely crushed up high surface area along with your cycling ammonia, the bacteria set up shop faster due to the types of bacteria they used. The fish food is providing nutrients used in metabolism beyond ammonia nitrogen, and ammonia nitrogen isn’t a a complete feeding substrate. If you aren’t dosing the extra carbon and micronutrients then environmental exchanges are handing it, just slower.

the missing link for quicker bottle bac establishment is simple fish food. Just a little, from Dr. Reef’s bottle bac comparison and timing thread.
 
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Zoajohn

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I tend to agree RE: Fish-in cycling / bottled bac. Fritz Turbostart is the real deal. Took ammonia down from 2ppm to undetectable in 36hrs and no spikes following. The only thing I still don't do is add acros immediately.
 
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brandon429

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Well said. one thing the hobby has pressed for is pre-verification before adding life, to eliminate the dead bottle bac risk (but I never saw a single example this year in all cycling threads, many did pre-verify readiness).
The movement you described above to me is now the universally accepted maximum soon start date for a common entry bioload and its feed requirements. Some people such as the BRS approach wants to mature out the reef well past nitrification ability and into supporting food networks and biofilm maturation/ the 4 month brs buildup cycle thats fine as well. but there are times people want a certain ready-date to carry life, and providing that reliably is no longer taboo. By reducing the number of parameters required to comply down to one, and by changing the ways we use test kits away from single point readings it’s now hard to find a cycle that doesn’t meet the date on the directions. The minority is now non compliant cycles and every cycle thread I saw in 2020 was on track for its boosters used, though they originally thought the cycle was stalled due to bottom- end readings always equaled .25
 
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The second most important pattern that emerged from web threads was the fact that the condition of stuck-in-place .25 free ammonia does not actually happen in display tank reefing using today’s typical bottle bac boosting.


thats a borderline rash claim to make...that free ammonia is so in demand once substrates are active that unused tenths are not permitted but we can sample from seneye owners who see nh3 in the active hundredths and thousandths ppm conversion rate, thanks to new digital live-time ammonia testers.


what we used to think free ammonia did in a reef tank, it was not doing. It was never stalling at .25, reef tank cycles don’t stall. Unless we introduce antibiotics, a cycle follows the expected completion time for its particular boost used. We all use so much more active surface area in a display, your rocks and sand either control ammonia and trend to the thousandths ppm conversion rate, or the nh3 levels trend up and you get a tank crash.


-gone- is the notion that nh3 levels can sustain in the tenths ppm every day, same levels, and all animals act the same as they do in thousandths ppm levels. When nh3 is sustained out of control all fish will exhibit toxicity / never eating/ gasping and inflammation and the water will cloud and you’ll have no trouble seeing harm without any ammonia reading. reefs either control their ammonia or they crash/ full consequence, there is no mid-ground hang up and sustain level above at maximum: hundredths ppm.

Looking past subjective color evaluation, digital ammonia measures have restored faith in the eighty year old cycle chart. What reef tanks with rocks and sand (display setups= high surface area) do is very predictable we now know, ammonia remains controlled and always trending safely by inherent design...vs highly varied which is how cycles go if we follow the common approaches forums require with one- off ammonia test reads and three-parameter compliance

when ammonia drops to total control, by day ten or sooner with bottle bac, it doesn’t ever come back up (barring mass death etc, in homeostasis a reef tanks ammonia control can never, ever drift out of line)
New cycling rules restore trust in what filter bacteria do. There isn’t a point in cycling using calibrated, working seneye machines where ammonia from 2 ppm goes down to .25 ppm after adding bac, hangs there days and doesnt go down further. Thats API’s entire testing history with ammonia, it was all false.

those readings were in the thousandths ppm nh3 the whole time, if we are to believe today’s seneye machines who report thousandths - ppm nh3 conversion rates on 98% of systens running, including bare bottom or sandbedded and everything in between. Thousandths ppm nh3 conversion rate is what reef tanks run at, never .25

doubt in what filter bacteria do wastes thousands and thousands of dollars collectively, there is a massive industry to unstick reef tank cycles such as purchasing three separate strains of bacteria because each one seems to only partially work. None of that is true, we can see nh3 ammonia dynamics truth now because access to new testers has arrived


seneye has done more to break old cycling rules than any of us has.


every single rule change stated above has been tested here for five straight years, one single work thread.



we do not require testing of any parameter to cycle any reef, dry or wet, there. We are using submersion timing + known boosts as an estimate, for years on end and no losses no stalls. Cycle charts set the maximum required start time. We did not use one-off api reads for anything.


when we change the meter we use to call a cycle ready, the allowed start dates change, our self-reliance increases, our expenditures drop, and that results in much faster cycling overall along with the emergence of completely skipping the cycle altogether.
 
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brandon429

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Going forward we will see the wait time for starting a reef tank go down


the mortality rate for newly stocked animals will go down, these bottled mixes are good and positive- feedback systems will drive market presence and prominence.


disease and invasion control/response will be the upcoming challenge, we are already well past the date where basic waste control came in a bottle or effectively rode in as live rock from an existing system. Notice as we read all these fish-in cycle threads coming in 2021 how many of them failed. Retention rates for new organisms are now through the roof strong, its disease robbing today’s marine fish of their max captive potential lifespans, it’s never an ammonia spike. Those don’t happen as often as stated, I recall none reported by working seneye machines in 2020


what the hobby needs most in 2021 in my opinion is the effective arrangement needed to beat invasive dinoflagellates at the 80% or better rate, as found in work thread collections. Today’s best patterns appear to help suppress dinos takeover about 35-40% of the time. Most just have to live with it. The gains up from 20% to 40% have been earned my MCarroll, Taricha and Scott and phosphate nitrate balancers. well done work thread, their dinos work thread in the nuisance algae forum. No matter what you read online, I know of no bottled doser, no method or arrangement able to exceed 40% restoration rates in dinos help threads, many tanks live with it until X date subsiding


if someone can clearly arrange a dinos help thread into 80% positive follow up reports and sustained cures that will be what we needed most in 2021, dinos control. Everyone is using dry start rocks nowadays, live rock skip cycle starts are the minority this year at 20% of seen new cycle threads.


In 2006, 90% of all cycled reefs were wet rock, cured live rocks from a pet store like this,
37DE6B95-4FAC-4078-B807-065CC7646DF8.jpeg



notice how we’ve changed. That ratio matters in today’s reefing challenges, but not for ammonia control. That’s inherent by surface area in position.
80% of cycling threads in 2020 involved a dry rock start, with liferock or dry marcos

Tampa Bay saltwater and KP aquatic‘s ability to mail skip cycle ocean cured diverse rock emerged about 10% of the time, in my opinion in 2020.
 
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Thansk @brandon429 In other words... 1. You can add bacteria and fish at the same time - its not detrimental and saves time. I completely agree. 2. If you have Tank A - with cycled rock, fish, inverts - you can safely move them to tank B - without going through a 6 month cycling process - in fact you can do it immediately. (keeping params - temp, alkalinity, etc stable as possible)
 
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brandon429

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Yes agreed

and it’s inherently reliable tank to tank given similar use of boosters, we used to think cycle completion times ranged out to sixty days for some reefs, we didn’t see any of those in 2020.

we didn’t see any examples of dead bottle bac this year, those understandably might require a few weeks to catch up but every bottle bac instant start I saw this year clearly worked, thought it was worthy to stamp that summary for this time in our hobby.



so far, every fish- in cycle post is met with scorn by posters who assume fish feeding and acting normally have been harmed. The owners of the fish know things are fine, so a division emerged regarding basic trust or distrust in what bacteria do, caused by our testing methods.

We are barely emerging from the requirement to wait varying timeframes averaging 30-60 days for a reefing start. An entire functioning segment of our hobby, the sales- driving reef convention of the pre covd era, was using a different meter for their starts this whole time. Fascinating aspect of 2020 in my opinion.

I give you my word if you typed the exact wording as a poll in 2006 from post #7 100% of responders would have angrily disagreed, yet here we are. It’s now the accepted truth. In 2021 we will see the fear of cycling bacteria stalling or only partially-able to complete their job fade out of reef tank planning. in 2025 we can kick up this thread for accounting. Wanted to list every detail I’ve seen regarding the change in reef tank cycling procedure and biology.
 
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I’ve learned a lot from reading your threads, Brandon429 this year about cycling my tank, thank you for always championing this way of thinking.

it’s kind of funny how in the past “cycling” was so EASY with live ocean rock, many of us didn’t even know what was really happening...it just always worked.

i have a question,on the back of the brightwell bac start bottle it says to not mix it with another bac source or they will compete and stall out. When starting my caribsea liferock I didn’t realize that bac was painted on so I used the brightwell as well and this indeed did seem to stall ammonia consumption (via seneye). have you encountered this at all with bac sources competing?
 
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brandon429

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Brightwell was in pattern slow for us, thank you for filling in gaps with that relay. There’s no telling what’s in the mix lol if they say it will war another strain then that could be the case. tbd


one thing is for sure, someone buys a bottle of biospira for eight bucks and you are set. consistently


This was the most ludicrous speed- yet winthin legal range for a dry start cycle I recall. A whole reef at once. dry rock dry sand, biospira, and life. Plus months of follow up tracking.


Formerly offensive, now the first drop of a complete deluge coming down this is where cycling will trend, instant reefs:
 
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that thread was very important in updated discoveries for new cycling rules.

extended fallow without feeding doesn’t undo a cycle. Withholding feed isn’t antibiotic

when a lab tech needs a clean surface, they don’t begin by withholding fish food :)


Bacteria are to be assumed if you provided water, and or standard contamination pathways theyre not to be assumed dead because we withheld something.

Notice how no cycling charts have a ‘starved’ time zone. When ammonia trends down, it’s down, across charts. cycle-established bacteria feed if the system isn’t sealed off from common exchanges within the room.


if polled and asked before the above thread: “can live rocks unfed for three years keep the cycle in tact?”

the answer would be 98%:
what would you as a reader have voted
:)

here is a classic old school nitrite nitrate ammonia three parameter cycle. At seven weeks after bottle bac, stuck. Can’t reef. Can’t move homes or make a convention start date.
new cycling science can show several old rules in the hobby as wrong.
 
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Best example of 2020 cycling.

His tank was ready faster than a cycling chart permits

his tank was able the minute the rocks were set in the tank. he could have done two back to back 100% water changes and it wouldnt strip the bacteria off the surfaces, his rocks were protected against any degree of water changes because they were fully cycled + organic capping in every pore on every surface and then just moved. not any aspect of that is anti-meiofauna or antibacterial, so skip cycling is alive and well up there.

even bottle bac cannot pass instant oxidation verification per Dr Reef's thread it takes them 1-10 days to be able to adhere and endure unlimited 100% water changes. that adherence date is the new rule for a cycle being completed until better updates are pub'd


we need updated cycling charts, showing zero days for each parameter as an option, he did it above.


not having access to updated cycling charts is so 1908-2019. but no cycles are taking longer than the old charts said they did, all we do is speed them up.


not any are being extended, cycles don't stall in our filthy vectoring homes.
 
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Aquabiomics and other DNA sampling techniques made clear breakthroughs in letting us know what was inhabiting our tanks. it was a powerful finding to see that what bacterial mass changes into after maturity was not matching strains commonly associated with bottle bac or even marine bacteria in many cases, per their reports.

you'll have to search out the thread posts to discern the patterns, those are how I saw %'s emerge from reading aquabiomic's results posts.

we are indeed dosing bacteria that handle initial bioloading in otherwise dry starts...the fish-in cycle examples show that efficacy.

but just about any time after basic maturation, surface swabs show total replacement from initial strains and filled in by others associated with the substrates we've all been trading tank to tank.


it is neat to know that bacteria aren't long term impacted by our initial dosing, although it may do an initial job for us.



*

That thread is why there is a need for updated cycling rules, we stop losses, we prevent waste using exacting cycle microbiology/ability to skip cycles on demand like convention reefs.
 
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we contrast and compare old cycling rules to new ones in live time. Is a reef that shows positive nitrite after three months running with animals an accurate reading, and if so, what will be the impact to the reef if they keep it running?
should purchases be made to offset the condition?

do any cycling charts show nitrites uncontrolled at day ninety? should we rewrite what bacteria do because api nitrite said so


____________________________________________________

Surface area concepts challenge test for any reef tank:
____________________________________________________


imagine taking a fully working reef tank here, any one

you hook up three brand new canister filters to the aquarium packed with floss, dose nothing extra and feed nothing beyond norms- leave them in line five months and they’ll self cycle by contact alone (because reef tank water has LOTS of nitrifiers, and so do surfaces, Tuffloud’s proof thread)

the surface area active in the system and in line has been greatly increased due to activated floss and high speed contact/throughput. Massive growth of bacteria did occur in each filter. Sharing oxygen, contributing waste to the tank like the rest of the aerobes...they‘re integrated everyone will agree.

are the canister filters both integrated and required now? Are they expendable at any moment and the original reef still runs like before the canisters were added? If you can answer this, you’re knee-deep in updated cycling science vs old. In 1998 heck no you can’t instantly take the filters offline, it will cycle the system. You’ve robbed bacteria


analysis->

did bacteria have to leave live rock to reside on the floss?


no they did not. Currents brought in shared and sloughed bacteria that would otherwise be skimmed / zapped or changed out, new mass was produced and retained because they were given water + attachment points + time.


how did the filters take on new bacterial mass if we didn’t feed more? Doesn’t bioloading control how much bacteria we have?

anthropomorphism also falls short in aquarium microbiology

wet bacteria feed just fine without us. *****the amount of bioload you run does not determine the # of filter bacteria in your system****** the available surface area is what determines # of filter bacteria post-cycling, and water shear to shave it off surfaces then in suspension they‘re skimmed, floc’d, UV-zapped or eaten in the food chain.


of course over feeding causes bac blooms eventually, in this thread we are talking about -surface area- mechanics and typical feed input rates




so that means filter bac formed independently in the canisters... because they were in contact with water for the timeframe a cycle chart shows. and if you remove all canisters instantly, the original reef runs the same, nothing misses your removed canister filters we know this in 2020.

Your sandbed works exactly like the expendable canister filters. the live rocks in the test system above and in the sand rinse thread handles the fish bioload no matter how much surrounding surface area is removed.

people who move two hundred thousand dollars of instant reef tanks to MACNA depend on this aspect of accurate surface area microbiology, ability to add subtract and handle surfaces without causing a cycle.
 
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MnFish1

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Aquabiomics and other DNA sampling techniques made clear breakthroughs in letting us know what was inhabiting our tanks. it was a powerful finding to see that what bacterial mass changes into after maturity was not matching strains commonly associated with bottle bac or even marine bacteria in many cases, per their reports.

you'll have to search out the thread posts to discern the patterns, those are how I saw %'s emerge from reading aquabiomic's results posts.

we are indeed dosing bacteria that handle initial bioloading in otherwise dry starts...the fish-in cycle examples show that efficacy.

but just about any time after basic maturation, surface swabs show total replacement from initial strains and filled in by others associated with the substrates we've all been trading tank to tank.


it is neat to know that bacteria aren't long term impacted by our initial dosing, although it may do an initial job for us.



*

That thread is why there is a need for updated cycling rules, we stop losses, we prevent waste using exacting cycle microbiology/ability to skip cycles on demand like convention reefs.
I like the aquabiomics tests - one problem - I sent multiple samples from multiple areas in the tank - with some pretty 'varied' results. Additionally - my diversity was one of the lowest they had seen in one area - and one of the highest in another. So - its very difficult to tell...
 
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brandon429

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why did you put a reef in that
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it was neat to read the differences in all the tanks when that system was running strong on send-ins/feedback posted agreed. I would not be surprised to hear of zonation even within our small systems for certain groups, I think it will take more companies providing readings to provide a benchmarking/ Eli certainly has a lot of work documented in threads to be counted as one of the first if not the first references for this kind of classification. very neat to be in on that era/in ten yrs will seem commonplace to know our clades per section lol. make that fifteen.

I was surprised to hear all the different species that can reduce ammonia, far beyond the typical three strains we read about in the late 90s. heterotrophs crossing over, dedicated nitrifiers meshed in, also found in the water to a substantial degree (to address the classic question on whether reef water carries a little or a lot of suspended nitrifying strains, consider Tuffloud's connecting two reefs thread where a dry system is cycled in 20 days solely by another tank's reef water contact)

There are direct youtube videos from macna saying reef water doesnt have many nitrifiers.

*I think that means the classic strains/ nitrosomonas etc. it certainly doesnt mean the strains that can reduce ammonia so we can add fish safely.


-also pointed out by Eli/Aquabiomics was the fact that species alternate as tanks age. what we add in bottle bac doesnt stay in place.

we can see those strains accomplish a job and meet a market need, a safe start date for adding life, but they aren't the long term resident species imported on frags
 

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I like the aquabiomics tests - one problem - I sent multiple samples from multiple areas in the tank - with some pretty 'varied' results. Additionally - my diversity was one of the lowest they had seen in one area - and one of the highest in another. So - its very difficult to tell...
That there's differences in different areas of a reef system shouldn't surprise us. I've seen many times over the years a coral does well in one location but not in a different location even though water and light parameters are close. Further, research shows different microbes are promoted in the water column above different benthic organisms. Aquabiomic's tests are a huge step forward in helping to understand what's happening but we still have a long ways to go in understanding the interaction of microbial processes in the water and in the coral, sponge and algae holobionts.
 
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very nice.

I like that you have a quote from Eric Borneman, the person who drove my interest in reefing the most bc he took time to chat with me in private message at reefcentral about pico reefs, before they were mainstream. if I had a miyagi it'd be him.
 
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In this decade, we saw the final address as to whether or not reef water has cycling bacteria in it, or if they're fully and solely stuck to surfaces.


result:

free reefwater is about half as fast as bottled bac for cost. end result

see above :)


old school cycling rules would have rendered this in a poll: ask in a poll if reef water has cycling bacteria. You get 98% no because a youtube video says it doesn't have any. everyone knows its on the surfaces.

but per that thread...its in both places, surfaces and water. who would have guessed swirling wastewater had floating bac



but if ten other species are willing to take over who cares what the initial speciation might be all mixed around, the point is we can use them for free cycling, rather quick. 20 days per above, this again matches cycling chart times.

cycling in 2020 knows that reef water is teeming with mixed genera that accomplish the task of nh3 oxidation / conversion metabolism free of charge.
 
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A worm with high fashion and practical utility: Have you ever kept feather dusters in your reef aquarium?

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    Votes: 63 36.6%
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  • I have not had feather dusters, but I hope to in the future.

    Votes: 24 14.0%
  • I have no plans to have feather dusters in my tank.

    Votes: 26 15.1%
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