Cycle process

ColonelCrow · Aug 17, 2022

First marine aquarium eager to start a new tank thread but didnt want to bore anyone with the cycle so curious how close i am.

I will start by apologizing as i am not testing nitrites and am monitoring amonia with an amonia alert badge as in all my fw experience the first two are a waste of time and resources for any higher level of testing.

My tank is a reefer 200xl g2 with 40 pounds of caribsea pink fiji roughly 25 pounds(total guess didnt weight and have about half thr rock left not counting the dust from breaking it up) marco rock(i purchased 60 built something i felt good with and have been waiting tonsee how much room i have left in sump after skimmer and reef mat go in as well as deciding if i want to more more in the display or leave the space for simming or plating monti) and i didnt dose anything i just dropped a nice size fresh jumbo shrimp in on the first of august.

Ammonia alrt badge went in last week and has read virtually 0 ammonia since i thought cant be right must be a bad badge. Buddy ssaid test your nitrates.

Now 17 days in and hoping i never have to use the hanna low range nitrate coloromiter? again i have a nitrate reading of 4ppm(3.9x10 for 3.9 ppm to be more precise) again ammonia alert badge reads zero sorry thats allni can give for params of the water other than it is 0 tds rodi and im running heaters to range 75-76.

Ibwas expecting to go a month or more for this stage until i realized i was running no ammonia and considering alternatives thinking maybe that shrimp isnt enough. Now that i see the nitrates are there...

Am i ready to turn the lights on?
Do i add anything before the evolutions start(i know most call it uglies but i loved the discription in the sticky cycle thread about this is basically watching how earth became oxygenated)
Most humanely:
When should i add the cuc?
When should i add the clowns?

Do i need to provide more information or test for more to help you give me better information?

ColonelCrow · Aug 17, 2022

I guess maybe i should add my apex is reading salinity ad 32.7-33.3 after stably reading 35 almost deat on before i turned turned on the skimmer which leady ato to pump a load of fresh water into the systrm. My refactometer which i have a VERY hard time making out the numbers seems to be at 1.03 but had just added some salt(red sea blue cap) to mix in the display last night and may have been concentrated where i drew the sample from still so going to recheck that in a few days and remove water if necessary before adding any livestock if i am even close to being ready ti add any livestock.

gbroadbridge · Aug 17, 2022

If you see nitrates the tank has cycled.

Add some snails to build some bio load, then in a week add fish.

brandon429 · Aug 18, 2022

Agreed. We have several cycles on file where simple feed/wait 30 days is cycled. No testing is required here, you weren’t going to get a huge spike this is a testless time duration cycle that can’t fail. It’s done before day 30 as mentioned, as you can see, but thirty is a nice round number good for all on the testless approach. I’d easily advocate starting now if you want as mentioned, or wait end of month doesn’t matter.

Latte · Aug 18, 2022

Nitrogen cycling is easy. Add a source of ammonia (fish food, ammonia from Dr Tim's, a prawn/shrimp) and wait a month. I wouldn't even bother testing at all until the last day honestly.

If you want to save yourself hours and likely hundreds if not thousands of dollars now, please take a look at this series.

If I had seen this before I started my tank, I would've saved myself so many headaches.

The main take aways for me were:

1. Get some rubble/rock/biomedia from a dark area of the sump of a friends tank/LFS and put that in a dark place of your sump
2. Run a month or two without lights on in the tank
3. Heavily dose copepods at this point to get the population going early (make sure to add food for them)

Cycling in terms of ammonia is very simple tbh. I would follow the steps above, then add clowns after a month of cycling, along with some cleanup crew, a week or two after that add some tangs and more cleanup crew. From there, you will be in a great spot to start reefing! Good luck and please feel free to ask if you ever need a hand

brandon429 · Aug 18, 2022

Agreed on pods is great idea

gbroadbridge · Aug 18, 2022

Latte said:
Nitrogen cycling is easy. Add a source of ammonia (fish food, ammonia from Dr Tim's, a prawn/shrimp) and wait a month. I wouldn't even bother testing at all until the last day honestly.

If you want to save yourself hours and likely hundreds if not thousands of dollars now, please take a look at this series.

If I had seen this before I started my tank, I would've saved myself so many headaches.

The main take aways for me were:

1. Get some rubble/rock/biomedia from a dark area of the sump of a friends tank/LFS and put that in a dark place of your sump
2. Run a month or two without lights on in the tank
3. Heavily dose copepods at this point to get the population going early (make sure to add food for them)

Cycling in terms of ammonia is very simple tbh. I would follow the steps above, then add clowns after a month of cycling, along with some cleanup crew, a week or two after that add some tangs and more cleanup crew. From there, you will be in a great spot to start reefing! Good luck and please feel free to ask if you ever need a hand

Agree, endless testing does not speed up a cycle.

If you can see nitrate in the water the tank is cycled.
No need to do any other tests, just chuck in a fish.

brandon429 · Aug 18, 2022

I went to full testless cycling for all approaches simply to be free of stalled or broken / incomplete cycle posts. It’s not possible not to be cycled in the setup above at day thirty, the only mistake that could be made is not having enough surface area/rocks to grab onto during the buildup phase, but given the description and full rock stacks all displays use we can rule out that sole risk. The reason I advocate no testing is to save cyclers a big fear headache at the end of the wait. In 2022, we can name the bioload carry date for any setup going off mere description, and on the stated date relative to the arrangement at hand bioload carry will be certain.

a second reason I advocate no testing and purely # of days waited based on arrangement (any use of bottle bac for example changes the wait time to ten days max) is because in all cycle posts in all forums on the web, we only see fish being carried, we don’t see any failed cycles (api and Red Sea nh4 panics don’t count as a broke cycle)

we do see occasional acclimation losses (I can’t open my shipping fish bag, roll back the top, float it for two hours in my tank?) but we never, ever, ever never see a true ammonia kill from a failed cycle (within the display)

if that was happening, someone among the ten thousand seneye owners would report a loss and we could link the fish kill to their detailed nh3 logs. The advent of digital nh3 testing out to thousandths ppm accuracy has completely removed the fallacy of the broke cycle/ I need new bottle bac to replace dead ones.

gbroadbridge · Aug 18, 2022

brandon429 said:
I went to full testless cycling for all approaches simply to be free of stalled or broken / incomplete cycle posts. It’s not possible not to be cycled in the setup above at day thirty, the only mistake that could be made is not having enough surface area/rocks to grab onto during the buildup phase, but given the description and full rock stacks all displays use we can rule out that sole risk. The reason I advocate no testing is to save cyclers a big fear headache at the end of the wait. In 2022, we can name the bioload carry date for any setup going off mere description, and on the stated date relative to the arrangement at hand bioload carry will be certain.

a second reason I advocate no testing and purely # of days waited based on arrangement (any use of bottle bac for example changes the wait time to ten days max) is because in all cycle posts in all forums on the web, we only see fish being carried, we don’t see any failed cycles (api and Red Sea nh4 panics don’t count as a broke cycle)

we do see occasional acclimation losses (I can’t open my shipping fish bag, roll back the top, float it for two hours in my tank?) but we never, ever, ever never see a true ammonia kill from a failed cycle (within the display)

if that was happening, someone among the ten thousand seneye owners would report a loss and we could link the fish kill to their detailed nh3 logs. The advent of digital nh3 testing out to thousandths ppm accuracy has completely removed the fallacy of the broke cycle/ I need new bottle bac to replace dead ones.

I use a seneye, which is why I know without a doubt that when I see Nitrate the tank is cycled.

if someone is not running a seneye but they see nitrates, that tank is cycled. End of story.

Seneye is one of the best advances in years.

brandon429 · Aug 18, 2022

I get justifiably ribbed lol for being their fanboy and the irony is I'll never own one/no use.

being a non-chemist I can't even attest to their accuracy to the thousandths level, perhaps reef tanks run at .0002-.0006 ppm nh3 and we've yet to design a meter that detects as low levels...those details aren't why I think seneye is the most serious game changer in cycling we've ever seen in the hobby.

I'm a seneye fb for this reason:

search every api and red sea ammonia post ever made in all forums. the direct result of sample is above 50%+ of posts are remarking on dangerous ammonia levels, and these measurements do NOT reflect the basic biological controls we see posted in the tank pics from the given threads. It's fish swimming for days on end, fed, creating waste in perfectly clear water stacked in rocks long past the ammonia drop date on a cycle chart (day ten in most arrangements, except the fully unassisted marine cycle nobody has charted yet) and the panic posts outnumber the zero read posts by orders over. It is rare, rare, rare to ever get an API or red sea kit to accurately reflect the living conditions we can plainly see looking into any tank.

by contrast: I put small paypal bounties out for any seneye owner to ever show me a legit broken cycle after day ten, and none can, and the offer still stands lol. Has to be a display reef, stacked in rock, using any of the common means we use to cycle. All those are a pass by day ten unless it's this mode above of feed + natural bac wait up.

Seneye, if trimmed and IF slide preps are done and the proper selection is made for fw and sw etc/all the nuances required/ will always show a reading that reflects the basic layout we can see in the tank.

Cycle conflict stops when accurate seneyes are on board. we learned via seneye that ALL reef tanks who approximate this rock stack in the middle of circulating water flow are driving down their daily nh3 levels to amazingly-connected levels be it in a pico reef or a 600 gallon setup with eighty fish.

They're all running the same basic nh3 levels, and attaining these controls by an astoundingly consistent date I'm so amazed cycle chart writers of 80 years ago with no seneyes were able to chart. And then our hobby spent the last 30 years denying those basic compliance dates thanks to api and red sea and a slew of folks like me who didn't originally know or care to know the difference between nh3 and nh4 in reefing lol. that's my cycle soapbox anyway.

brandon429 · Aug 18, 2022

I got booted off reefcentral in the chemistry forum in 2014 solely for writing that .25 ammonia can never occur, it's not possible as a sustained daily reading, in any post-cycle reef tank lol.

the mods were so mad, TMZ and Disc-1 lol, from prior peroxide battles (they said it kills all life, recycles a tank etc) they just weren't open to any ponderances about the falsehood of broken cycles. I had no idea what reefs ran at, I did have an idea from working with wastewater for employment that a bunch of swirling wastewater contacting high degree surface area in a fish tank will quickly reach ammonia control and retain that. but since API had its notorious .25 thing going, our hobby chose to fault the bacteria as the first go, always, and they still do.

And now that it's 2022 and we have a good decade to look back on peroxide use in the reef, and we now have digital nh3 meters, to those two gents I say:

he he. I wouldnt want your login access back if you paid me lol.
B

I thank you personally TMZ for the motivation to go out and discern down to the bottom line what cycles have been doing, and are doing, I thank you for that motivation buddy. also: we're up to about one million uses of peroxide in a reef tank, how do we like them results?

gbroadbridge · Aug 18, 2022

brandon429 said:
I got booted off reefcentral in the chemistry forum in 2014 solely for writing that .25 ammonia can never occur, it's not possible as a sustained daily reading, in any post-cycle reef tank lol.

the mods were so mad, TMZ and Disc-1 lol, from prior peroxide battles (they said it kills all life, recycles a tank etc) they just weren't open to any ponderances about the falsehood of broken cycles. I had no idea what reefs ran at, I did have an idea from working with wastewater for employment that a bunch of swirling wastewater contacting high degree surface area in a fish tank will quickly reach ammonia control and retain that. but since API had its notorious .25 thing going, our hobby chose to fault the bacteria as the first go, always, and they still do.

And now that it's 2022 and we have a good decade to look back on peroxide use in the reef, and we now have digital nh3 meters, to those two gents I say:

he he. I wouldnt want your login access back if you paid me lol.
B

I thank you personally TMZ for the motivation to go out and discern down to the bottom line what cycles have been doing, and are doing, I thank you for that motivation buddy. also: we're up to about one million uses of peroxide in a reef tank, how do we like them results?

I think you're preaching to the converted

brandon429 · Aug 18, 2022

that was a trite and smug mini rc soapbox I got on, am good for another ten years lol. Let the record reflect that Agu/nanos forum mod is a chieftain of reefing and among the kindest folks I know by an online handle.