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

[NeonRabbit221B]

I appreciate the help!

 

[brandon429]

hey let us know what you end up setting up anyway, seahorse tanks are so neat Ive always wanted one

with today's painted dry live rock you could have a very reef looking setup

finally found his post

Seahorse.com

seahorse.com

 

[NeonRabbit221B]

Just an update on my crazy method I used for the seahorse tank. I put my dry rock in a bucket with SW and roughly 2 ppm of ammonia then dosed bacteria. After 4 days I tested nitrite to ensure it was non-zero. I setup my pico setup with dry sand, sponge filter and 1 piece of the slightly seeded rock. The rest of the rock went over on day 5 (after a good rinse with fresh SW) along with the seahorses. Not technically a skip cycle but enough to make me chuckle at my views of cycling from 2 years ago.

 

[brandon429]

I'm still confused after reading so much lol

Hello everyone! Long time reader, first time post-er. My question is: Is there a way to make sure my tank is actually cycling right now so I don't wait 4-6 weeks (like I've read) before adding any corals just to find out that the tank has been doing nothing this entire time. :D I don't have any...

www.reef2reef.com

posters are telling him to add bottle bac to a live rock cycle, we don’t do that, it’s a royal ripoff to do so.

the reason he’s confused is because our peers don’t have a context for true skip cycling, no help needed. Forum posters 100% assume any rocks set into a tank might not be able, regardless of origin. The answer here is he’s cycled, done, and can’t go wrong, doesn’t have to test for anything doesn’t have to feed anything

live rock will never, ever uncycle even if we don’t feed it ten years. The world is feeding it for us, using microscopic feeds we can’t see, this is hard for forum posters to grasp...that not everything is a retail purchase need. Live rock itself is full of organic slicks and bio flock (set live rock in a white paint bucket of circulating water, you get waste pellets from it every hour on bottom of bucket) and these expressions are permanent bac feed, even if none was getting in from the open top.

to discern if your open top aquarium is getting fed by the world, locate any bachelor you know and go look at his blinds and baseboards. That’s reef food he’s not been cleaning these last couple years/ever if I glance left.


Reef conventions have never, ever failed to meet a start date because live rock transfers simply work out fine all the time. No help needed, the exact date a set of live rocks are ready to reef is the day you set them into a new tank. Sellers are not buyers because they know this trick

take back control of your cycling folks.

 

[mmorriso]

I have just found this thread but I would like to add my nano to the list of successful skip cycle reefs.

I setup a 10 gallon nano four months ago, which I seeded with material from my 600 gallon reef. I believe this is interesting in that while all of the initial water for the nano came from my established reef, I only used a "fistful" of rubble rock from the bottom of my reef to seed the tank, with the rest of the rock being store bough dry rock.

I transferred a range of soft and LPS corals into the tank on the second day and I have never observed any signs of a cycle. I have had a Rainford's Goby in from the end of the first week (Deliberate) and what I believe are a pair of Peppermint Shrimp (Accidental). I think they are good early inhabitants as they emit ammonia to sustain the bacterial population however as they feed off algae and aiptasia respectively, there's no need to feed the tank often.

 

[brandon429]

thank you very much for contributing!

we also found that established reef tank water has many many millions of active bacteria colonies that eat up ammonia to offer as cycling help. major sources says it does not, am aware of that. we all know bacteria resides on live rock

but cycling bacteria are in water too, specifically against the claims of the masses (the same masses who don't have a ruleset allowing for skip cycle live rocks)

Dr. Tims macna video says reef water doesn't hold nitrifiers

Aquabiomics has several reefs where their sampling showed none

but then using work threads to break rules (a theme) we have cycled more than one reef by simply moving over water from an existing and waiting about 20 days.

in your case, even a tiny bit of real live rock is so powerful it will handle initial bioloads on its own...the water conference was a ready boost. excellent example.

in a reef tank, both the water and the surfaces have nitrifying bacteria they tend to distribute. there are not zones of sterility underwater in a reef tank, all vital space is used. we can transfer materials from any portion of a reef tank and that will confer a cycle ability into the new system.

 

[Aldrinlights]

Build Thread - My Skip Cycle 75G Upgrade

It's been a while into this build so I have a lot of great pics and information to post about this one. I have this 20 gallon display with a 10 gallon sump that's been up for about 4 years now. I have moved it twice in that time, the latest from an apartment into a rental home. I always stayed...

www.reef2reef.com

Here's my build thread on my skip cycle upgrade.

 

[brandon429]

Aldrin that is so detailed, so helpful and such a great roadmap for work I can't thank you enough for posting!

 

[brandon429]

Yet another Cycling Post (Maybe I'm ok?)

Good morning! I'm into the cycling phase of my tank and wanted to confirm if I'm seeing what I should be. Realize all tanks are different, but hoping I'm not butchering this process too bad. I'm currently on Day 4 of the Fishless Cycle according to Dr. Tim. Here's some readings over time...

www.reef2reef.com

notice how the initial assessment had doubt on the acceptable start date


but one word from his description changes the cycle approach. This is updated cycling science 2021



there is no published scientific data on what we do


so I’m publishing some in the form of a verbose yet link-heavy work thread using other people’s tanks. Thats gotta count for at least something to the folks on scholar who don’t have applicable articles for what we do



anecdotes rule, right? patterns from web posters are science gold. Anecdote is the ore and skip cycling is a gold vein within a mess of common cycling problems.

 

[RipVanWinkle]

My 36 gallon I skip cycled. I added quality live rock and never bothered testing ammonia/nitrates and added fish just a few days after the rock. I’m about to start my second tank a fluval evo 13.5 and itll be the same thing, just add a hunk of live rock and it will be ready.

This is commonly known in the freshwater community, should not be hard to grasp.

 

[brandon429]

Yet another Cycling Post (Maybe I'm ok?)

Good morning! I'm into the cycling phase of my tank and wanted to confirm if I'm seeing what I should be. Realize all tanks are different, but hoping I'm not butchering this process too bad. I'm currently on Day 4 of the Fishless Cycle according to Dr. Tim. Here's some readings over time...

www.reef2reef.com

Rip thanks tons for posting feel free to add any pics of your sys if you like


we just did one of those skip cycles right there too agreed they're awesome.

when a new reader is informed they've skipped a cycle and need no testing, they're like wut are you talking about you are crazy.
skip cycling is fun


when are the reef authors going to write about it, and legitimize this practice I ask you? When they're ready to sell far less bottle bac, that's when.

 

[NeonRabbit221B]

Ordered myself a seneye because I have a spending problem. I want to develop a test looking at surface area of reef rock and free ammonia processing. Any ideas on coming up with a solid way to measure this? I was playing around with soaking the rocks, weighing them and using a bucket or known weight/thickness of salt/powder to coat and then reweigh. Obviously not explaining it well over my phone but it should give me enough information to derive a surface area

 

[JCM]

My tank might fit in here?

I bought live ocean rock from Gulf Live Rock and KP Aquatics, tons of life was immediately in the tank and I was able to add a fish and corals within a week. My first tanks did the same with Fiji rock. It's far superior compared to using all dry rock in my opinion.

 

[brandon429]

JCM that's very neat to see because everyone fears non curing

@MnFish1 you called that the other day, that this detailed curing may not be required. he's paid for a boatload of great bacteria and uptake organisms on that rock, apparently it works for some like you said.


JCM its neat that even if you had some loss/curing it wasn't enough to overcome the natural surface area and abilities of the paid for bac and active live rock. Very nice to hear, post pics/clean water means a lot to our assessments here since we really only like to see seneye data. api will wreck our entire thread with mistrust lol

Neon I think you'll have fun with that machine after its tuned, I really do. In my opinion these are some questions the hobby has no answer for, and that expenditure can indeed answer:

-actual toxicity level of nh3 to a common turbo snail. and a cerith. subject them to 2 ppm sustained nh3 in a non cycled test tank and see if they live overnite. This data can help ten thousand stuck cycle panic posts breathe easy, not go adding ten different strains of bottle bac/o2 saps into the water as a reaction to non seneye testing. we want to know if a common CUC member set can be a true indicator of cycle status


-how fast does a truly unassisted marine cycle establish. I think this is best way:

two five gallon buckets saltwater, heater, pump no light needed. ambient room light is fine.

dose nothing
no feed.

test one bucket for 1 ppm oxidation movement ability on month 1

the other again on month 2 to reinforce the other seneye finding that tanks can self cycle in sixty days with no help from us.


-we'd like to see tests on surface area removal

so in the home depot bucket reef add a little activated sand to the bottom, some rocks, heater pump and clean water and a real bioload this time, maybe some chromis and some snails run for a few days on seneye to get a performance baseline, and have a few fish we want a stronger vs weaker bioload test.

be removing rocks...how many do you have to pull to get the nh3 to rise uncontrollably

 

[JCM]

There was definitely some die off, but it stopped within a couple days. I'm not familiar with what seneye is. I did have a cheap ammonia test but mostly just waited for the tank to stop smelling bad before adding fish/coral. That took 4-5 days maybe. Here are a few pictures. First pic is on day 4, the rest from day 9.

 

[MnFish1]

JCM that's very neat to see because everyone fears non curing

@MnFish1 you called that the other day, that this detailed curing may not be required. he's paid for a boatload of great bacteria and uptake organisms on that rock, apparently it works for some like you said.


JCM its neat that even if you had some loss/curing it wasn't enough to overcome the natural surface area and abilities of the paid for bac and active live rock. Very nice to hear, post pics/clean water means a lot to our assessments here since we really only like to see seneye data. api will wreck our entire thread with mistrust lol

Neon I think you'll have fun with that machine after its tuned, I really do. In my opinion these are the leftover questions the hobby has no answer for, and that expenditure can indeed answer:

-actual toxicity level of nh3 to a common turbo snail. and a cerith. subject them to 2 ppm sustained nh3 in a non cycled test tank and see if they live overnite. This data can help ten thousand stuck cycle panic posts breathe easy, not go adding ten different strains of bottle bac/o2 saps into the water as a reaction to non seneye testing. we want to know if a common CUC member set can be a true indicator of cycle status


-how fast does a truly unassisted marine cycle establish. I think this is best way:

two five gallon buckets saltwater, heater, pump no light needed. ambient room light is fine.

dose nothing
no feed.

test one bucket for 1 ppm oxidation movement ability on month 1

the other again on month 2 to reinforce the other seneye finding that tanks can self cycle in sixty days with no help from us.


-we'd like to see tests on surface area removal

so in the home depot bucket reef add a little activated sand to the bottom, some rocks, heater pump and clean water and a real bioload this time, maybe some chromis and some snails run for a few days on seneye to get a performance baseline, and have a few fish we want a stronger vs weaker bioload test.

be removing rocks...how many do you have to pull to get the nh3 to rise uncontrollably

I think there is plenty of evidence that just adding fish to a bucket with sand a heater and water flow is not successful (from the early days of reefing), right?

 

[brandon429]

Hey those rocks look perfect that coral would not open at all if the water was imperfect regarding burning nh3
the water couldn’t be clearer it’s perfect as is.

 

[JCM]

Here are a few pics from today (day 21) with one from the end to show clarity. The macro algae and some turf algae is growing pretty well. I'm not concerned about that at this point, once I add a few herbivores it should clean up fine. There's too much competition for any one nuisance algae to dominate, which is another big benefit in my mind.

 

[JCM]

Hey those rocks look perfect that coral would not open at all if the water was imperfect regarding burning nh3
the water couldn’t be clearer it’s perfect as is.

Thanks! Yeah I don't pay much attention to ammonia. Once bacteria is established you shouldn't have to worry about it again. Unless something catastrophic happens obviously but then you're probably looking at a full redo.

 

[RipVanWinkle]

most recent picture I have there’s a lot more frags now all growing I did kill one favia though not sure why light maybe. no QT no dips no cycle time tank is 2 months old at this point. The flame angel had a spot for a week randomly but it went away on its own