Am I ready for “sacrificial fish” to keep feeding ammonia in cycle?

[VashonBigs]

Using Dr Tim’s one and only for about 4 days now. I have a hardy fish in second tank I could move over to be the ammonia feeding the nitrogen cycle. Thoughts?

Blue= Ammonia
Green = Nitrite
Black = Nitrates

 

[JoshO]

How did you dose ammonia initially?

 

[VashonBigs]

How did you dose ammonia initially?

Dr Tim’s Ammonia using a dropper

 

[VashonBigs]

I started ammonia before the bacteria, hence the 2ppm

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

What is ammonia now? The graph is not very useful to get an exact number.

When it is quite low, I'd add 2 ppm ammonia again and watch it decline to zero before adding a fish. I don't think "sacrificial fish" is appropriate.

 

[JoshO]

As @Randy Holmes-Farley has said, there is no need for a sacrificial fish. Re-dose ammonia to 2ppm

 

[VashonBigs]

As @Randy Holmes-Farley has said, there is no need for a sacrificial fish. Re-dose ammonia to 2ppm

Ammonia is about 1-2 ppm. The fish is tough as nails. Lived through everything. Don’t actually want to kill him. Will leave it another day until ammonia hits close to zero I am thinking.

 

[JoshO]

Ammonia is about 1-2 ppm. The fish is tough as nails. Lived through everything. Don’t actually want to kill him. Will leave it another day until ammonia hits close to zero I am thinking.

I'd allow it to get to zero then re-dose ammonia to 2ppm. There is absolutely no need to put a fish through that stress

 

[brandon429]

The bacteria will never die or starve out after the initial dose of ammonia, we got to see some interesting fallow test work done in dry cycle starts over the years. It took extreme withholding of the initial dose plus a nearly totally sealed lid for Dr Reef to demonstrate starvation of bottle bac in a 14 mo never fed + restricted from environmental input test. To starve bottled bac after feeding and set in place among sand and rock-not demonstrated

so what you do or don’t do after the initial dose doesn’t matter to keeping the cycle going, Dr Reefs threads show your bacteria have adhered and are immune to full water changes and starvation by this many days underwater after feed and initial dose.

moving a test fish over wont be sacrificial to anything other than disease protocol

per the chart, ammonia is able unless this is a no surface area quarantine tank. If you have normal rocks and sand, your tank is able to begin, thousands of fish in cycles are on file.

fish aren’t burnt when they’re acting normal. bottle bac has really progressed lately, for ammonia control.

skip cycling doesn’t burn fish or you’d see the signs in cloudy water and rapid breathing and seneye would show it happening



thousands of fish-in cycles would fail and post irritated fish....not actively feeding normal ones that die two months later due to velvet (most fish in cycles are not an ammonia risk at all, thats the easy part)

Dr Reef has a fish in cycling + seneye thread coming up, will get to check accuracy of the claim.

 

[Bethany Yates]

Sacrificial fish is not the best method for cycling a tank. If you can add small amounts of ammonia and watch it go to zero a few times, that is the best way to make sure a system is cycled. When I was new to fish keeping I got stuck with some huge aggressive damsels that my lfs gave me as sacrificial fish that were not compatible with the organisms I was planning on keeping.

 

[brandon429]

I agree to that. if he inputs the fish nothing will happen, it lives as normal because packing viable bacteria in water $9/ dose to be dumped in our tanks is easy, and effective. by adding a test fish, he gets instant disease vectoring, proof of bottle bac viability #3114 and maybe a very rough bully / have definitely heard that on cycle fish yes

but that fish will swim, breathe, eat normally


and if he used rocks and sand, attachable surface area, the tank is already able to reef with the first pass down on the graph for ammonia, the other two not factored at all. the way we know only one pass down/ controlled ammonia works is the sheer volume of successful fish-in cycles. I can’t locate any nonsuccessful ones. If first pass down ammonia doesnt remain down by rule of surface area mechanics, all the fish-in cycles are dead within two days.