A thread tracking pure skip cycle instant reefs, no bottle bac

[brandon429]

thats so good, you can feed unlimited because you can remove unlimited, that means the corals can't tell they're not in a sixteen foot forty thousand dollar reef tank. I predict they will simply grow more and more, nice one. that's a high throughput design there's no reason you couldn't keep that going for decades

the ability to flush food in and out bypasses the need for an established biome from normal rock setups. the coral is it's own substrate + food and light acquisition structure, all it needs is that fresh protein recycled + vitamins etc
nice

that can be a powerful setup because it does predictable things each day given certain base controls in place. that can be made to last multiple decades for sure

 

[moretor1]

this is your first reef tank>

Those items selected would be hard to keep if you spaced them out like typical builds/day one with that load is amazing test for first go. That lfs recommended an anemone that fast is that right?

You'll have acclimation challenges, a lot of the scape is dry rock and the lighting details aren't stated/ too bright can kill corals there's acclimation requirements

Your fish likely potentially jumped from a very low to a very high salinity, same for inverts (pet stores keep very low salinity water to suppress disease outbreaks) unstated details like that are missing from the troubleshoot

your stuff is in higher salinity now + no disease preps

the challenges here don't involve cycle control its the speed of reefing/ assembly rate

the way someone prepares saltwater matters greatly, we don't have the same production controls 1st go like we do after reefing for a while with common starting fare and building up stock rates based on success.

I can see it was assembled all though on day one, indeed a lot was packed in.

using the default biocube lights, i wouldn't expect them to be too bright as i see people run them + additional LEDs
i'm going to reduce my white lights to 5-6hrs and see if that helps a bit as i'm pretty sure the frag tank was run 90% blue
The dry rock was placed in the day after. the wet rock went in before the sand because i prefer that look but it's about 70% wet rock by volume

 

[Ben's Pico Reefing]

thats so good, you can feed unlimited because you can remove unlimited, that means the corals can't tell they're not in a sixteen foot forty thousand dollar reef tank. I predict they will simply grow more and more, nice one. that's a high throughput design there's no reason you couldn't keep that going for decades

the ability to flush food in and out bypasses the need for an established biome.

Im actually feeding benepets after water change then coral with their pellets 2 days before waterchange. Pods popped up every where day before.

 

[brandon429]

the first thing I'd do for your tank Moretor is put strips of electrical tape across the lid between the lighting so it's blocked a bit and not as bright, you can pull them up later to let in more light.

it's not that it's too bright for a balanced running setup, it's that it's too bright for a reef in distress with mesenteries etc and huge potential salinity shifting in place, potential water irritants (what makes mesenteries come out, or rough physical handling) several things not disclosed/can't be ruled out yet

not light burning the corals is the first move to getting control over them

how do you get your saltwater Moretor, are you mixing it yourself

 

[moretor1]

the first thing I'd do for your tank is put strips of electrical tape across the lid between the lighting so it's blocked a bit

it's not that it's too bright for a balanced running setup, it's that it's too bright for a reef in distress, with mesenteries etc and huge potential salinity shifting in place, potential water irritants not disclosed/can't be ruled out

not light burning the corals is the first move to getting control over them/

gotcha. Should i reduce the photoperiod as well or would covering some be enough?

Thanks for the genuine advice, much more helpful than reddit :expressionless-face:

I will also ask the LFS what salinity they keep the tanks at but IRC at one point the fish guy was showing me a salinity refractometer and theirs seemed fine. The assistant manager used to install tanks for fortune 500 companies so i get most of my advice from him

 

[brandon429]

I would, too little light isn't a killer.

discern whether or not your water source is safe and reliable for reefing, you may need water changes depending on variables. you can rule out ammonia as an issue for sure. your bioload does not exceed the carry ability of that much cured rock in the display.

 

[moretor1]

I would, too little light isn't a killer.

discern whether or not your water source is safe and reliable for reefing, you may need water changes depending on variables. you can rule out ammonia as an issue for sure. your bioload does not exceed the carry ability of that much cured rock in the display.

using RODI water from the LFS. Good thing about nano tanks is i can fit all the water in 2 buckets

 

[moretor1]

I'm such a bad father... i forgot about my solid purple false gramma purple dottyback

He has been hiding ever since i added the dry rock in

 

[brandon429]

In my opinion that's too much for a first go. what we provide is the ability to skip cycle, when dealing with setups able to keep corals and fish aside from the initial cycle needs.

this thread does not encompass what the stickies have in the new tanks forum, the minutiae involved in water preps, how to acclimate things per the fish disease forum, disease controls required to keep fish alive. I'm saying I think you harmed things in your setup, that's why it didn't work like the other 14 pages but it can be undone: take them back before they die.

I recommend you take back 90% of that stock purchased. cycling was not your challenge, it's reefing steps 1-8

we need to start with a smaller bioload because your challenge here isn't cycling, it's carrying that much bioload diversity as a first go.

 

[moretor1]

In my opinion that's too much for a first go. what we provide is the ability to skip cycle, when dealing with setups able to keep corals and fish aside from the initial cycle needs.

this thread does not encompass what the stickies have in the new tanks forum, the minutiae involved in water preps, how to acclimate things per the fish disease forum, disease controls required to keep fish alive. I'm saying I think you harmed things in your setup, that's why it didn't work like the other 14 pages but it can be undone: take them back before they die.

I recommend you take back 90% of that stock purchased. cycling was not your challenge, it's reefing steps 1-8

we need to start with a smaller bioload because your challenge here isn't cycling, it's carrying that much bioload diversity as a first go.

i agree it is a bit heavy of a start but the only fatality i've had so far was 100% my fault, not really the product of the tank but of my poor acclimation. i knew it was a possibility and could've easily been avoided. As for the nem it's the same story (maybe)
everything i got at the LFS has been there for a for a while (went probably 7-9 times in the last month to look) and i know for a fact they quarantine their fish and tbh i dont even think quarantine wouldve helped that much because the chaeto came from their fuge (like 3 display tanks) and all their display tanks are connected. So if there were any diseases in their display tanks i wouldve 100% spread it from the aglae anyways lol. (I also used water directly from their tanks, about 15% of my water volume)

I know I'm a bit hard headed but seeing has it's been 2 days already and i've seen no evolving issues i think taking them back to the LFS may just be even more stressful to them

I have a history of riding the fine line at first but i'm confident i can keep it on track

 

[moretor1]

mesenteries

This is exactly the word i was looking for, thank you for help with research.
And yeah it was handled slightly rough, had to reach for him blind under my rocks because i didnt want it getting blown into a crook full of detritus as it settles in a low flow area
Now hes wedged in a rock and much more secure and looks to be getting better as i'm seeing more tips coming out further

 

[moretor1]

Update, From what i can discern the nem had suffered a laceration somewhere around the mouth or stomata and has chosen split along said laceration, leaving what i assume is dead tissue. I actually saw the tissue from the laceration when moving it but thought it was a piece of the cleaner shrimps tail it had latched onto

I still see tips poking out and their coloration appears moderately normal. the nem is about the diameter of a golfball and appears to be splitting 20%-30% off. I have confirmed it is still alive and the side opposite of the split seems to be doing normal

It is still in the process of splitting, will the smaller half immediately smell rotten if it is dead tissue? I'll probably remove it anyways as it is a time bomb but i've heard of nems making insane recoveries

 

[MnFish1]

Update, From what i can discern the nem had suffered a laceration somewhere around the mouth or stomata and has chosen split along said laceration, leaving what i assume is dead tissue. I actually saw the tissue from the laceration when moving it but thought it was a piece of the cleaner shrimps tail it had latched onto

I still see tips poking out and their coloration appears moderately normal. the nem is about the diameter of a golfball and appears to be splitting 20%-30% off. I have confirmed it is still alive and the side opposite of the split seems to be doing normal

It is still in the process of splitting, will the smaller half immediately smell rotten if it is dead tissue? I'll probably remove it anyways as it is a time bomb but i've heard of nems making insane recoveries

Yes if it smells dead remove it.

 

[Gregg @ ADP]

The meme in the OP cracked me up. Way back in my LFS days, I worked for a guy who had a multi-million dollar a year store, but had the scientific understanding of a brick.

I was ripping some shop system apart for some reason, and had all the ‘bio media’ in a bucket. The owner walked by and saw it, and just flipped out. He yelled at me, saying ‘This is wet-dry bacteria! You’re killing it all by taking it out of the water!!!’

I didn’t even dignify his tirade with a response. I just kept doing what I was doing :face-with-tears-of-joy:

 

[brandon429]

starvation is what's entrained into buyers nowadays as the fear, we're trained to buy things to keep bac alive and triple their numbers if we whim it, or if api/red sea ammonia testing + old cycling science rules on what ammonia should be doing in a reef tank spurns us to 'help'

that water bacteria evolved to be in water, inhabiting that niche for who knows how long, require our hand/provisions for sustenance is excellent anthropomorphic buyer market training, kudos to all the pushers on youtube.

 

[Gregg @ ADP]

starvation is what's entrained into buyers nowadays as the fear, we're trained to buy things to keep bac alive and triple their numbers if we whim it, or if api/red sea ammonia testing + old cycling science rules on what ammonia should be doing in a reef tank spurns us to 'help'

that water bacteria evolved to be in water, inhabiting that niche for who knows how long, require our hand/provisions for sustenance is excellent anthropomorphic buyer market training, kudos to all the pushers on youtube.

@Lasse and I have had conversations about the ability for nitrifiers to go dormant, often for a very long period of time. He specifically brought up soil nitrifiers during winter, but there would be no reason to think that the nitrifiers in our reefs wouldn’t do the same.

The major flaw in thinking that our bacteria will starve and die off if not ‘fed’ is that it assumes there is no other source of N in the system beyond what we add.

In the thread I’m referring to w/Lasse, I brought up the idea of carrying capacity (K) for a system, and how in regard to bacterial population, the population will shift its K in response to its less available limiting factor, but they will never actually go away. Then, if more N, for example, becomes available in the system, the K will shift accordingly.

Will it happen overnight? Not really. Will it take so long that animals are at risk of being in a toxic environment? Not really. Bacteria have been around for billions of years…they’re not new to the game. Nobody is getting rid of bacteria in their systems by doing anything short of pouring a gallon of bleach into the tank…and even then, something will find a way to survive.

 

[brandon429]

now that Dan_P owns a seneye I expect we'll have the clearest answers ever to that + more questions I have within about 18 mos :)

anyone reading should search out Dan_P and subscribe to his coming works with it. he gets to check a lot of predictions made about what bacteria do in water in the last ten years with that thing.

 

[Ben's Pico Reefing]

I think the biggest issue that causes problems is the term cycling. Everyone uses it and asks, Am I done cycling. The real answer is no. Your take is always breaking down nutrients conctantly hence, cycle.

What the term should really be in my opinion is bacteria establishment. And then do I have enough bacteria for the bioload I desire. We then transition from focus on numbers of parameters and onto the bacteria itself that converts and creates.

Now its more about bioload and tge types of bacteria and population. Focusing on the rise and fall of population based on available nutruents they need.

Putting cycling as part of a constant flux in tanks and focusing on bacteria establishment should be the actual terms in my belief and I think tgis would help new people understand better about bio diversity and where these tests actually test which is waste breakdown.l and nutrient breakdown and use.

 

[Lasse]

@Gregg @ ADP (and others) Look here according to total ammonia concentrations contra toxic NH3 in a mature reef

Sincerely Lasse

 

[MnFish1]

@Lasse and I have had conversations about the ability for nitrifiers to go dormant, often for a very long period of time. He specifically brought up soil nitrifiers during winter, but there would be no reason to think that the nitrifiers in our reefs wouldn’t do the same.

Yes - and its (according to multiple authors is > 3 months). Now this doesn't mean - dry, etc - it only means it just means in oxygenated water - with a small amount of ammonia - they will survive