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

[brandon429]

I'm at river city Aquatics in Austin rn

Now this is skip cycle live rock

If kept wet in saltwater it will not:

Starve
Get uncycled
Fail to skip cycle
Cause a mini cycle

See all the coralline

The bottom of the tank has pods and micro brittle stars, all healthy proof of being cycled with no testing needed at all. No bottle bac needed, this is buy and drop and skip cycle reef rock high quality for sale.

also factored from the tank picture: we would fallow prep live rock before it goes into a display.

*reef cycles cannot starve: if you went fallow three years and didn't feed the live rock, the filter bacteria would not die (we have a thread of that proof available)

skip cycle live rocks are chunks of organic material locked in stony crevices/ enough to last years/ can't starve-these reserves feed bacteria indefinitely

cycles inside homes don't starve, so fallow prep of skip cycle live rock does not uncycle it. a rule of skip cycle live rock is that you aren't going to uncycle it unless you dry it, boil it or freeze it.

 

[brandon429]

Austin has only one shop that sells pre mixed premium this is the one. Good store strong frags + skip cycle live rock

 

[GatorGreg]

Austin has only one shop that sells pre mixed premium this is the one. Good store strong frags end skip cycle live rock

I absolutely love your takes on everything and reading your approach to keeping nano and picos gave me the inspiration to start one after quitting due to back to back Dino infestations.

 

[brandon429]

Hey so glad to hear, post any pics of skip cycle setups you make and we can rip clean it into compliance

B

 

[brandon429]

Hey @GatorGreg are you able to score some of this skip cycle rock? If so, that's about 90% reduction in chance of getting dinos

If you'll set up a nano vs a large tank even if you get them, they won't win again due to our combo of skip cycle live rock + rip cleans

 

[GatorGreg]

Hey @GatorGreg are you able to score some of this skip cycle rock? If so, that's about 90% reduction in chance of getting dinos

If you'll set up a nano vs a large tank even if you get them, they won't win again due to our combo of skip cycle live rock + rip cleans

I'd say maybe soft cycle on my current pico. Rock was in shipping for maybe around 12 hours in soaking wet paper towels. Not necessarily a skip cycle. But, my next project will be. It's going to use Tampa bay saltwater live rock. It comes in Wednesday and I'm going to use it to seed about 15lbs of other rock and maintain it all in a bucket with a filter, light and water changes until I'm ready. When that tank is started. It will be as you're describing.

 

[GatorGreg]

My scape is a pile of rocks basically. The top larger peices of rocks are going to be where my corals get glued to.

Once a week I'm going to direct feed the corals. After that I'm going to remove the top rocks that have the corals glued to them and leave the pile of smaller rocks in the tank. I'll put the ones with the coral on them in fresh saltwater while I clean the tank.

Once the rocks with the coral glued to them are out and safe in water. I'm going to drain the rear chambers and clean them and the equipment thoroughly. Next I'll stir the sand bed and turn on the MP10 and let it blast the pile of rocks to remove all detritus and funk that may be in there. That will be the only function of this powerhead. I have it laying around and figured I'd put it to use.

I will then drain 100% of the water and refill with pristine water and reassemble everything.

This is my plan to start with. We will see how it goes. I'd love a critique of this plan if you don't mind.

 

[brandon429]

I appreciate having that post here it's directly a skip cycle tank using live rock with biomarkers on it proving it was submerged before assembly

it's beyond coralline, there are other pigments and attachments that signify it was cured elsewhere before coming into your tank.

that is a perfect plan it prevents aging of the system and even better it allows you to target feed and export vs just let food swirl and settle which is the common method

one thing in consideration is you might not like that frequency of work/having absolutely no cruise control past a week can get exhausting but it will never harm your reef. being free of detritus will never harm your reef while high quality feed is being input and swirled around, but it might make the hobby less fun

if you would stack that reef in strong corals and go very very light on fish bioloading you can take that plan and use it in catchup runs every few mos vs having to focus on cleaning so thoroughly each week, it's a benefit of being in a slightly larger nano vs a small pico reef

you really could go sometimes two weeks just cruising with lighter feed, then right before the big water change catchup give the corals an extra zip of reef energy A and B or a similar booster then just change out hefty water and catch up. save the stronger food run boosts for the day or evening just before a large water change so that polyps are pretty full before the occasional catch up water change.

that reef has enough dilution you can get by with a slightly less busy schedule

until you are having to input a lot of feed, to target feed lots of corals/a truly dense display/that system is already on cruise control and doesn't require a lot of weekly work which is a benefit of sourcing and paying for quality live rock like that. if that was my tank I'd be stacking it in hq frags pretty soon

what light is that, an ai prime? what kind/does it have heavy blue settings

 

[GatorGreg]

Thank you so much! I find taking care of the tank very rewarding. 4.8 gallon tank cleaning isn't much of a chore. Ai prime running the WWC 2g pico preset. I just upped the whites to show true color of rock. It's normal very blue

 

[GatorGreg]

Already signs of life that came with the rock.

 

[brandon429]

hey I thought it was a 15 nice scaping ha for the eye effect

looked much bigger thats a solid plan, best light in pico keeping it'll carry any top shelf corals you like

what feed do you have planned

 

[brandon429]

those pictures of benthic markers up close are so valuable here/ wow those are nice rocks. because we can see those animals on the rock, we know cycling bacteria were there months or years ago. when I was being reef trained for cycling in the days back, nobody told me some reefs can be known cycled by looking at them/without testing

several reef trainers have said it's only possible to cycle a reef with testing, that's a no-test reef tank you have there.

any rocks brining in a zoanthid free of charge fit that bill ha nice.

 

[GatorGreg]

I

hey I thought it was a 15 nice scaping ha for the eye effect

looked much bigger thats a solid plan, best light in pico keeping it'll carry any top shelf corals you like

what feed do you have planned

I'm still combing through conversations you've had with others trying to nail down a solid feed plan.

 

[brandon429]

Here is link #2, from page one, proving skip cycles don't expire.

Nothing goes wrong with our method, it's perfect. Don't let naysayers make up consequences for something they don't have links for

https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/day-8-of-32-gallon-cycle-new-creatures.785507/#post-10974218

 

[brandon429]

-

 

[GatorGreg]

Mine seems to be doing just fine. Got a coral order coming in Thursday whoop whoop. Haven't had coraline bleaching yet. I'm thankful
(These are pictures robbed from my journal)


This rock hit my doorstep Jan. 4th. I ran it for three days in a bucket doing water changes daily. Then on the 4th day set the tank up. Been chugging along since then. Salinity stable, temp stable and copedpods everywhere. Hitchhiker zoas and feather dusters always out and happy.

 

[bmelvin20]

So this is the exact thread I was looking for. I have had a 55 gallon tank of rock from a previous tank In my basement for about 8 months to a year. It was not heated but it was kept in saltwater.

I am assuming this should fit the criteria of skip cycle worthy rock? I have my new 220 get up and flowing salt water now with 220lbs of live sand and was getting ready to order a cycle start kit when I found this thread.

would I be save to assume this rock does not need to cycle?

 

[brandon429]

I’m 100% sure that will skip cycle thank you for posting

if polled, the majority will say if you didn’t carefully feed the rock the bacteria ‘starve’

not true, bacteria feed just fine from home contaminants that exchange between the holding vat and the surroundings. If your stored rocks in water were capped, sealed off, then the benthic life forms on them will likely smell really bad/be dead and it needs re-curing in air but even that won’t kill filter bacteria… you’ll just need to wait with air added in for re-curing

if it was stored with air exchange allowed they’re simply good to go and are now fallow prepped against disease, excellent.

Cycles cannot starve or stall if kept wet, that’s a firm rule in updated cycling science and beneficial here as well. When people ran three month fallow pulls then put all the fish back, no cycle starved

triple that time is still not a starve, cycles can’t starve at three years fallow wait we have a thread on that example as well.

You will see when it’s all set up, fish you add will be just fine using that rock and that much water dilution coming up would work anyway even if you didn’t have live rocks, that’s a huge tank coming

it would truly be a waste of money to add bottle bac here/ any type of cycle help.

 

[brandon429]

https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/first-cycle.966871/page-3#post-11088016
We corrected cycle umpires there.

We are studying how forum peers mislead new cyclers into buying bottle bac and never allowing for skip cycling which runs reef conventions

That's a skip cycle, with benthic growth indicators that confirm cycle readiness without testing required (algae on rocks)

The extra bottle bac sold to him redundantly by the peers and pet store didn't get him this algae: already being cycled when he set up the tank got him this algae, the benthic clue growth proof of his cycle

 

[nejohnson]

I was out of the hobby for a few years 2013-2020. My biggest shock coming back was everyone wanting these pristine, white, sterile bare-rock systems and having tons of cycling problems. This just didn't exist back in the day. We got some live rock, some live sand, and boom tank's cycled. If you killed your rock, you just run it in a trashcan with a power head and a heater for a while to let the dead stuff rot off. When I observed this new paradigm, my first thought was "who's making a ton of money from dead rock and bacteria?" Nothing has changed about biology and chemistry, just marketing.