Am I cycled?

[brandon429]

I picked it all up in the fish forum here, they're top sticky threads on it
from poster Humblefish, thirty mins read will catch up

Your tank is demonstrating ammonia control but the current method for best fish lifespan is opposite. You'd stock the tank up to a level it's not boring to look at. Corals first, clean up crew, quality feed and water changes everyone can do well at this active stage. Feed and water changes helps commute those detailed live rock growths onto other surfaces, post tank pics if possible

As soon as you are initially stocked, you stop adding any hard items for eighty days. Only feed and water changes. All this is explained in the sticky threads but at day eighty then you add fish, only quarantined and treated ones. You can make any changes you want I'm only forwarding the most up to date info from the fish forum. The fallow transfer method has specific orders of ops, and they earn the most disease free fish I've ever seen compared to any other method

Don't worry about ammonia testing we should work your tank to get it going. Let's see how much live rock is there/ pic
Choose disease protocol and post pics and we can tell by what date you can start from current details and pics.

Crypto wins the gamble- QT Journal

I am a proponent for having a quarantine system in place for new fish. I proactively QT my fish. I know the risks involved when skirting some of the rules...but ultimately rolled the dice in a few cases while stocking this tank. I lost the gamble. And now my "parasite-free system" has...dun dun...

www.reef2reef.com

thats one of many example threads where slightest change up from protocol wipes out fish, its nothing like freshwater where we bring home fish and add them. were it not for these loss threads and humblefish's work I wouldnt even know that difference, my reefs are too small for fish we only keep tiny coral pico reefs.

 

[Txplicit]

My LFS doesn't sell ammonium chloride or a supplement to dose ammonium. Apparently pure ammonia is illegal to sell in Canada. This experiment might not be able to happen...

I'm hoping to add all my fish before any of my coral. I'm hoping to get around setting up a qt this way. Isn't fallow for eradicating disease once it's there? What's the point of fallow if you're starting clean? Is my live rock the danger here?

Use Dr. Tim's ammonium chloride. It's sold at chewys.com for $2.49

 

[AdamBWS]

Change of plans - it’s science time.

I found ammonia at home hardware. No idea what concentration it is but I’ll figure out.

Goal - put the (previously? dry) rock on the right in this picture in a fresh bucket of saltwater. Dose ammonia to get it to about 1 or 1.5 ppm, measurable on my test kit.

Do I need to heat and mix this bucket?

Test after 12h and 24h to evaluate ammonia reduction potential of the rock in my tank.

Live rock is the one in the front left corner. It’s full of tiny holes and I think there’s a lot of surface area on it.

I’ll be thinking about if I can do full on qt. I just doubt that I can do a good job of quarantining my future corals - I definitely cannot buy them all upfront.

 

[Txplicit]

Change of plans - it’s science time.

I found ammonia at home hardware. No idea what concentration it is but I’ll figure out.

Goal - put the (previously? dry) rock on the right in this picture in a fresh bucket of saltwater. Dose ammonia to get it to about 1 or 1.5 ppm, measurable on my test kit.

Do I need to heat and mix this bucket?

Test after 12h and 24h to evaluate ammonia reduction potential of the rock in my tank.

Live rock is the one in the front left corner. It’s full of tiny holes and I think there’s a lot of surface area on it.

I’ll be thinking about if I can do full on qt. I just doubt that I can do a good job of quarantining my future corals - I definitely cannot buy them all upfront.

That would defeat the purpose as both are in one container (tank). The bio spira and bacteria currently in live rock will use the ammonium chloride as nutrient and spur a more rapid response to the cycle than the dry rock.

It's like saying, "I'm going to put a lump of honey and an ice cube in the same glass and fill that glass with salt and see which will get sweeter first." Lol

 

[AdamBWS]

That would defeat the purpose as both are in one container (tank). The bio spira and bacteria currently in live rock will use the ammonium chloride as nutrient and spur a more rapid response to the cycle than the dry rock.

It's like saying, "I'm going to put a lump of honey and an ice cube in the same glass and fill that glass with salt and see which will get sweeter first." Lol

Isn’t it more like adding ketchup and mustard to a hotdog and trying to tell which is more effective at making it taste good? I don’t care which is more effective, I want to see if the rock I have now is effective period.

I’ve pulled out a previously dry rock that’s been seeded with bacteria. I’m trying to see the ammonia reduction potential of that rock. I’m not putting bio S in the bucket of new saltwater and ammonia with the rock. It’s flying solo.

 

[AdamBWS]

First picture: Hour 0, about 4 gallons of fresh salt water, dosed up to around 1.5 ppm ammonia. I had to figure out what my concentration was via a test, I think it’s around 3%

Second picture: 12 hours later

Probably a decrease from 1.5 to 1.0, but that’s what I want to see. I’m not going to make a decision on stocking until I see the 24h test.

 

[brandon429]

Great work on the separate testing It's just fun to test what bacteria can do and what they tolerate. I can't tell a color difference in the pic above but maybe in person it's easier to see. One day we w all have cheap digital ammonia gear and what we can see will be clearer, was in the mountains Saturday just saw your update

 

[AquaBiomics]

Change of plans - it’s science time.

I found ammonia at home hardware. No idea what concentration it is but I’ll figure out.

Goal - put the (previously? dry) rock on the right in this picture in a fresh bucket of saltwater. Dose ammonia to get it to about 1 or 1.5 ppm, measurable on my test kit.

Do I need to heat and mix this bucket?

Test after 12h and 24h to evaluate ammonia reduction potential of the rock in my tank.

Live rock is the one in the front left corner. It’s full of tiny holes and I think there’s a lot of surface area on it.

I’ll be thinking about if I can do full on qt. I just doubt that I can do a good job of quarantining my future corals - I definitely cannot buy them all upfront.

One thing I will add. I havent seen any description of your lights during the cycle.

If the lights are on during cycling, it promotes algal growth. I'm not concerned about the uglies here, what I mean is that the growing algae will compete for the ammonia (and NO2), leaving them unavailable for the microbes that you want to promote during cycling. If you leave the lights off, the algae can't get these nutrients and all the nutrients are reserved for the bacteria, this promoting their growth. I see measurable ammonia drops without NO2 or NO3 accumulation when I try to cycle with lights on.

I'll also add that in my testing there is no problem with the ammonia kits we use in the hobby including API, the problem is that people are trying to run colorimetric tests without including a blank, which is not really a valid way to run colorimetric tests. If you prepare a blank with freshly mixed* ASW can compare it to that, you can get a better idea of what zero actually looks like. (Of course this is easier to account for if reading the absorbance with some kind of instrument, but even by eye it gives you something to compare to, to evaluate whether your sample is low or zero.)

(* IME this has to be freshly mixed, since some salt mixes contain organics that apparently degrade to ammonia)

 

[AdamBWS]

Interesting, thanks for weighing in.

Lights were off the whole time, other than flicking them on for 15 minutes here and there.

Here’s the photo of the test at 24 hours. I expected better ammonia handling by the rock I used. There is a bit of color change from start to finish but the photos don’t capture it.

Conclusion - it probably takes longer than a couple weeks for dry rock to become live using the methods I used.