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

[MnFish1]

@MnFish1 @brandon429 thank you both for your very kind words. But more importantly, thank you for your contributions to the community - it’s how I’ve been able to do this well so far!

Thanks alot!!

 

[MnFish1]

I believe this is due to the great level of biodiversity that was present in the tank due to the live rock.

BTW - I think it's because - you have lots of coral covering most of the lit surfaces. So - you could be right - but the biodiversity is not bacterial - rather coral that is shading most of the tank from getting a Dino colony established - especially if you're going adequate maintenance (which by the pictures you are doing a great job)

 

[Lasse]

@Lasse has probably forgotten more about nitrifying bacteria than I know, so I’ll let him chime in on how long it would take to get from early exponential phase (red) to transitional phase (green), but in my experience, it is probably less than a week.

The normal double time for NOB (Nitrite Oxidizing Bacteria) is normally calculated to be around 13 hours in lab (if you not adding any bacteria). If we start with one cell - Day 1 will end up with 2 cells, day2 with 8, day 3 with 32, Day 4 with 128, Day 5 with 512, Day 6 with 2048, day 7 with 8192 and so on

I would say that it takes around 2 weeks to pass the exponential phase at unlimited growth and look at the graph below - most growth is day 13 and 14. This graph can give us an idea about the often seen "switch effect" regarding the breakdown of nitrite to nitrate in an initial stage. From high to low can usually be seen in a single day. Almost as it was digital. The curve below shows that the effect is analogous but due to the exponential nature of the growth it looks like it is off/on. Everything happens on day 13 and 14

Sincerely Lasse

 

[Gregg @ ADP]

The normal double time for NOB (Nitrite Oxidizing Bacteria) is normally calculated to be around 13 hours in lab (if you not adding any bacteria). If we start with one cell - Day 1 will end up with 2 cells, day2 with 8, day 3 with 32, Day 4 with 128, Day 5 with 512, Day 6 with 2048, day 7 with 8192 and so on

I would say that it takes around 2 weeks to pass the exponential phase at unlimited growth and look at the graph below - most growth is day 13 and 14. This graph can give us an idea about the often seen "switch effect" regarding the breakdown of nitrite to nitrate in an initial stage. From high to low can usually be seen in a single day. Almost as it was digital. The curve below shows that the effect is analogous but due to the exponential nature of the growth it looks like it is off/on. Everything happens on day 13 and 14

Sincerely Lasse

Thanks Lasse.

But wouldn’t you say that if you started out with, say, even 0.5kg of sand or rock from an established tank, that is the equivalent of starting at Day 11 or so on your graph?

 

[Lasse]

The time scale in the graph is only valid if you start with very few NOB. If you add extra (bottle, sand, living rocks or whatever containing NOB) and balance population and load - you have it working in very few days. In my example - around 150,000,000 bacteria cells exist day 14 - let us say that is enough to reach your plateau - load and consumption equilibrium. If you add this population day 1 - you are already on the plateau.

Sincerely Lasse

 

[MnFish1]

The time scale in the graph is only valid if you start with very few NOB. If you add extra (bottle, sand, living rocks or whatever containing NOB) and balance population and load - you have it working in very few days. In my example - around 150,000,000 bacteria cells exist day 14 - let us say that is enough to reach your plateau - load and consumption equilibrium. If you add this population day 1 - you are already on the plateau.

Sincerely Lasse

Which is why many companies claim to 'allow' fish and bacteria on day 1. Correct? Or in part correct?

 

[brandon429]

https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/1-1-gallon-oceanbox-p1-g-pico-reef.1043173/

adding to our collection of skip cycle reefs. well done micro pico setup there, we are collecting more of those lately with Ben's addition and now @VintageReefer excellent micro setup. these are the kinds of reefs I like to keep, glad to see new collection building here. Vintage didn't use live rock transfer, he skip cycled with sand transfer from an existing tank, that's a different approach but it still brings in bacteria for sure. coral loading and a few inverts isn't much loading, then again a one gallon reef will never carry much loading in it's entire life arc so what we start with doesn't matter all that much.

 

[Lasse]

@MnFish1 - You have to balance input and consumption - either you will have a rising NH3 or NO2. The main factors is number of active nitrifiers to input of NH4/NH3. Low input fewer bacteria is needed and high input - more nitrifiers is needed, You can reach this equilibrium in many ways - adding a lot of bacteria in one or another way in the start allow faster rise of load and so on. However I would rise the input slowly even if I have a lot of nitrifiers. In theory - yes - in practical terms - rise the load slowly

Sincerely Lasse

 

[VintageReefer]

https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/1-1-gallon-oceanbox-p1-g-pico-reef.1043173/

adding to our collection of skip cycle reefs. well done micro pico setup there, we are collecting more of those lately with Ben's addition and now @VintageReefer excellent micro setup. these are the kinds of reefs I like to keep, glad to see new collection building here. Vintage didn't use live rock transfer, he skip cycled with sand transfer from an existing tank, that's a different approach but it still brings in bacteria for sure. coral loading and a few inverts isn't much loading, then again a one gallon reef will never carry much loading in it's entire life arc so what we start with doesn't matter all that much.

Thanks for mentioning my tank! One small correction, I did partial live rock transfer (tonga branch from my sump) + one piece of dry carribsea base rock. The tonga branch is about 3/4 lb and the base rock is approx 1.5 lb

I didn’t use any bottle bacteria, I never did any tests, I used experience and planned this to be a cycle less <24 hour setup, watched for visual clues to see if any issues developed, which did not happen. A small dusting of rust on the base rock is expected and at that point I knew things were moving along fine and I added 2-3 small astrea snails to keep things managed.

 

[brandon429]

I like how quickly you've stocked it up with happy/extended corals it's looking great, can u imagine how strong it'll be by June

 

[VintageReefer]

I like how quickly you've stocked it up with happy/extended corals it's looking great, can u imagine how strong it'll be by June

Thanks! I’m stopping here and letting it fill in on it’s own. It’s a good start. Don’t want to overfill and then get crowding issues down the line

Here’s this morning with the micro reef, everything just starting to open up shortly after lights came on

 

[brandon429]

I'm so glad you did a rock transfer step as well I'd misread, that's solid for our repeating pattern collection.

the system is inherently stable that's about like mine/running since 06 as a skip cycle xfer. maritza the vase reef on youtube has theirs going 10 yrs now. you can see that salinity control isn't that big of a deal, once the tune is found then they just run and run I bet you will keep it years. so portable, quick water changes to fix things. any type of rock invasion is quickly chipped and rinsed off outside the tank then set back in

weathers power outages 36 hours easy on a jackery 500 watt battery backup for sure.

 

[VintageReefer]

weathers power outages 36 hours easy on a jackery 500 watt battery backup for sure.

You figured out my secret I revealed today

https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/1-1-gallon-oceanbox-p1-g-pico-reef.1043173/post-12344606
I get approx 60 hours run time on battery in a power outage

 

[BadObsession]

Guys, how many live rocks(like the one in the pic) needed to skip cycle a 70 gallon tank?

 

[brandon429]

if it is coming from a pet store's holding tank labeled live or another reef tank then get twice that much. be prepared to pay well for enough live rock for a large tank but it's worth it. that degree shown above would easily carry two clownfish, for example if you placed it dead center in the display but get much more than that. don't skimp on live rock that's cured and available. get more

 

[BadObsession]

if it is coming from a pet store's holding tank labeled live or another reef tank then get twice that much. be prepared to pay well for enough live rock for a large tank but it's worth it. that degree shown above would easily carry two clownfish, for example if you placed it dead center in the display but get much more than that. don't skimp on live rock that's cured and available. get more

From the sea. I live near the sea. So I still should cycle with that much?

 

[brandon429]

That rock is opposite of the kind we use. It has animal inclusions that may not live in the reef tank. It is uncured rock but very high quality stuff for sure

Cured rock from a pet store is always skip cycle

The act of curing means enough time to remove non reef selected animals has passed so there is no variability like uncured rock has. Simply cure down the rock a while before use in the tank.

 

[brandon429]

Here’s Aquabiomics, the company, telling us five years ago it’s not possible to be cycled for sure without testing

The reason I made this thread testless was for a few reasons he didn’t state:

By eliminating testing, nobody argued about stalls here.

By eliminating testing, nobody got a misread which made them have to test on an alternate kit for proof, nor did they have to make additional purchases in order to reef

By eliminating testing from the thread we were able to focus on disease preps as the priority, not what API or Red Sea said about the cycle. Most cycle threads are endless debates over ready times. Here, we provided an exact ready date for all cases, without testing.

By eliminating testing, linked to the transfer of live rocks tank to tank, reefers are taught pure cycle confidence which they can then use later on for rip clean tank transfers or to fix invasions via tank surgery, again without any cycle confidence loss

The words you use train reefers to associate cost, and testing with confidence in systemic bacteria

But for five years, and more jobs edited in than I can count, we showed what you wrote (and now sell) was not the full picture.

https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/instant-tank-cycle.612166/page-8
Nobody has to pay for updated cycling science work, it’s free, and clearly effective.



It was untrue when he said the absence of nitrite and nitrate mean not cycled. Lots of tanks here are zero nitrate, and dosing for it, but are still cycled.

 

[Lasse]

Lots of tanks here are zero nitrate, and dosing for it, but are still cycled.

Yes my tank normally shown around 2 mg/L NO3 down to 0 but its because I have processes that take care of the produced NO3, If I stop these processes - NO3 will rise because my tank is cycled the way the word cycled should be understood - total nitrification from NH4/NH3 to NO3.

I could change your arguments

Without testing - you do not know if you get a stall or any other problems
Without testing - you do get any read at all
Without testing - you do not get any possible explanations/time to react for/before for a disease outbreak
Without testing - you do not get any knowledge of your system that you can use further on

I can admit - I do not test when I start an aquarium because I start it in such way that I can´t get any toxic amounts of NH3 whatever and have a safe time frame for the start - please see my 15 steps

Sincerely Lasse

 

[BeanAnimal]

Here’s Aquabiomics, the company, telling us five years ago it’s not possible to be cycled for sure without testing

You are conflating "not possible" with "no evidence" and outright attacking a vendor who is offering sane advice to anybody new to the hobby.

There is no "new" science. Nitrifying bacteria were here long before you and will be here long after. The advice to test is a simple way to verify that things have moved along properly in a new or moved system. What if the bottle of bacteria was bad?

The words you use train reefers to associate cost, and testing with confidence in systemic bacteria

Testing provides confidence as opposed to what (honestly)? "Brandon said it can't ever fail so I am good to go with no tests!"