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I was going to put just some phyto in with themSafe? Probably.
Advisable? No.
Why? What's in the tank for them to feed on, unless you're going to feed the tank.
Well considering that my reef has been cycling since a little over a week now and I've used Dr. Tim's, Microbacter 7, and TurboStart, I'd say that with no ammonia and only nitrite sitting at 1 ppm, I'd say it's close to being cycled but I just wanted to be sure just in case. I know copepods can be very fragileconsidering that the 100 page bottle bac thread shows all common brands of bottle bac getting adhered to surfaces, unable to be removed by any degree of water changes within about 3 - 5 days max (cycled definition/excludes nitrite readings focuses solely on ammonia) what are the chances your reef isn't cycled?
So what do you suggest I do then?no because of disease concern. the system will for sure carry them, but nowadays there's a higher risk you'll waste the fish due to disease expression within a few months compared to any time in the past.
most ignore this, and begin anyway, and the fish live and eat fine but you can see from reading any weeklong set of pages in the disease forum how that turns out 80% of the time within a few months. everyday I see new posts from people's tank we cycled months ago, and warned them to do preps, pop up in the disease forum asking to stem fish loss. people nearly refuse the method until they've wasted several fish, you should begin with it.
reasons why this impacts you: let's say you did consider some form of protocol where your dry start tank gets to skip fallow because bottle bac is all that's been added (non disease vector) and then you added quarantined fish, that's a tight disease prevention approach. well, the load of corals and clean up crew about to be added by skipping fallow undoes all the original control, opening the tank up to disease. ideally you'd leave out fish for a long time, stock the tank up and running, fallow the tank, add qt fish.
you need to do self guided study in the disease forum before adding fish, to put together a sensible loss prevention protocol.
other details you'll uncover in the hunt: no degree of cycle wait or prep stops disease expression. fallow and quarantine is what stops and lowers disease expression, thats why 100 pages of work in the fish forum uses those means.
No, this doesn't apply to marine tanks. In most cases, ammonia is the killer.I'm using Salifert tests. I'm also coming from freshwater and we're always told that there has to be no ammonia and no nitrite in order for the cycle to be over
I agree with @brandon429, but many find the prospect of setting up a quarantine system in tandem with their display to be a daunting/impossible task, although it's the most prudent thing to do. Once you put fish in your display, you're going to introduce potential disease vectors, and it then becomes very difficult to get rid of the disease from the system. Some people end up breaking down their tanks because of this, and that's not something that you want to face.So what do you suggest I do then?
Just want to be clear here, you're suggesting add the copepods, corals, and whatever CUC is needed, wait out the FALLOW period, then add the fish?Nano-reef.com is an interesting trove of info, they’ve been setting up nanos with two clowns skipping preps for twenty years all logged for inspection, the vast majority do fine like that. Over here though, speciation is nearly guaranteed to quickly surpass merely two clowns, and added to that are the ways we stock reefs now from pet store frag tanks that have unprepped fish swimming around, or clean up crews held in community tanks at one point
the disease forum is the best place to get info, because using any method that doesn’t come from there for new cyclers is causing the losses. You can find single author threads where no quarantine works, but you cant find forums built around it or any stickies in the disease forum on the issue because it’s a false claim, with no ability to do anything for the hobby. People who advocate skipping preps only have threads of their own posts singularly to back the claims. They regulate all disclosed info, good and bad, and magically the statements always come out 100% positive
if their claims were true, I’d think there’d be a running forum where they help people like Jay does, live time. Never mentioning their own reef in any job.
Just did a water change, I did a full test and there’s still a slight presence of nitrite and 40 ppm of nitrate. It’s my understanding that any bit of nitrite can interfere in the nitrate reading. Just wanted your take before I added my first fishskim down just the threads in this forum on page 1 and page 2, look at the questions regarding fish
see how zero references to disease preps are in play/its all about what relayed parameter settings/ that's what drives the fish disease forum to hundreds of pages of constant battles needing help, its 10x over the most busiest forum on this board. we start all that, here.
we are all trained to meticulously ensure nitrite is zero and ammonia is zero, then add fish. That is a horrible formula for keeping fish alive apparently. The updated findings are: you really can't mess up ammonia control nowadays, bottle bac makers have it figured out, nitrite doesn't matter in display reef setup cycling, and actual disease preps are needed to keep fish alive nowadays.