Cycle

[Steven27]

I started my fish tank on Tuesday and on Friday I added bio spira. I took some water samples today and these were my parameters. Where in the cycle does these parameters indicate?

 

[FishyFishFish]

It’s hard to see the Nitrate color in the photo. Is it zero?

Did you add a source of ammonia?

 

[Steven27]

It’s hard to see the Nitrate color in the photo. Is it zero?

Did you add a source of ammonia?

It’s hard to see the Nitrate color in the photo. Is it zero?

Did you add a source of ammonia?

When I read it looks zero. I did not. I’ve only added bio spira

 

[FishyFishFish]

The ammonia is converted to nitrite and then nitrate. With no ammonia, you won’t see anything on those test results.

You can either add ammonium chloride drops (e.g. Dr Tims) or some food and let it decay. The drops are easier to know how much ammonia you have added.

 

[Steven27]

The ammonia is converted to nitrite and then nitrate. With no ammonia, you won’t see anything on those test results.

You can either add ammonium chloride drops (e.g. Dr Tims) or some food and let it decay. The drops are easier to know how much ammonia you have added.

Okay that makes sense! Appreciate it!

 

[brandon429]

Let’s resume here so Ike’s thread won’t get crowded with various mixed cycle setups. His is a dry start cycle


your cycle is done due to using live rock from a pet store, no bottle bac was needed here. What’s next is before you add fish: read the fish disease forum and select a disease prevention protocol. Your cycle is done, moving already cycled rocks to your tank kept them ready, the non live portions don’t matter, this cycle is done.

select a fish disease protocol from the fish disease forum, the cycle is done cease testing for cycling, don’t dose ammonia, done is done.

repeat: we dont dose ammonia in already done cycling setups, ammonia dosing is for dry rocks, those rocks are done cycling as moving them into your tank from a pet store didnt uncycle them. Disease prevention is 100% where you are at, no more detailing about cycling here, it’s all aimed to fish disease prevention
It doesn’t matter if a few rocks were dry, the live ones run the whole setup as a skip cycle reef, they’re powerful.


select a plan by reading the fish disease forum to learn about prevention options. Don’t concern over bottle bac, it was never needed here, don’t concern over cycle testing, you have a cycle that is done already: focus on fish disease prevention.

 

[Steven27]

Let’s resume here so Ike’s thread won’t get crowded with various mixed cycle setups. His is a dry start cycle


your cycle is done due to using live rock from a pet store, no bottle bac was needed here. What’s next is before you add fish: read the fish disease forum and select a disease prevention protocol. Your cycle is done, moving already cycled rocks to your tank kept them ready, the non live portions don’t matter, this cycle is done.

select a fish disease protocol from the fish disease forum, the cycle is done cease testing for cycling, don’t dose ammonia, done is done.

repeat: we dont dose ammonia in already done cycling setups, ammonia dosing is for dry rocks, those rocks are done cycling as moving them into your tank from a pet store didnt uncycle them. Disease prevention is 100% where you are at, no more detailing about cycling here, it’s all aimed to fish disease prevention
It doesn’t matter if a few rocks were dry, the live ones run the whole setup as a skip cycle reef, they’re powerful.


select a plan by reading the fish disease forum to learn about prevention options. Don’t concern over bottle bac, it was never needed here, don’t concern over cycle testing, you have a cycle that is done already: focus on fish disease prevention.

Okay will do! Once again I appreciate the feedback.

 

[Steven27]

Let’s resume here so Ike’s thread won’t get crowded with various mixed cycle setups. His is a dry start cycle


your cycle is done due to using live rock from a pet store, no bottle bac was needed here. What’s next is before you add fish: read the fish disease forum and select a disease prevention protocol. Your cycle is done, moving already cycled rocks to your tank kept them ready, the non live portions don’t matter, this cycle is done.

select a fish disease protocol from the fish disease forum, the cycle is done cease testing for cycling, don’t dose ammonia, done is done.

repeat: we dont dose ammonia in already done cycling setups, ammonia dosing is for dry rocks, those rocks are done cycling as moving them into your tank from a pet store didnt uncycle them. Disease prevention is 100% where you are at, no more detailing about cycling here, it’s all aimed to fish disease prevention
It doesn’t matter if a few rocks were dry, the live ones run the whole setup as a skip cycle reef, they’re powerful.


select a plan by reading the fish disease forum to learn about prevention options. Don’t concern over bottle bac, it was never needed here, don’t concern over cycle testing, you have a cycle that is done already: focus on fish disease prevention.

Okay thank you I really appreciate it. I’m relatively new to this I’ve had several freshwater aquariums in the past. Is this a new process of cycling tanks or has it been around and people just ignored it and cycled for 30 days till? Trying to learn as much as possible. Wasn’t trying to cloudy Ike’s thread was just trying to find some information!

 

[Little c big D]

Is that actually live rock or is that "life" rock that was dry when you started?

 

[Idech]

You should add ammonia, as was suggested, and test in 24 hours later to see if all of it was processed. If so, then you can add fish. If not, then you need to continue feeding ammonia until it can process in 24 hours at least.

Do not risk the life of your fish.

 

[brandon429]

It was ok to add the bottle bac here it didn’t hurt anything for sure it uber cycled the setup ~

it got the dry portions ready quickly as Ike’s thread shows plus you got the benefit from this type of setup here too:

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

THE GOLDEN EXAMPLE OF A SKIP CYCLE DAY 1 REEF https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/octo-high-end-sps-skip-cycle-build.713256/ read that entire thread before you read ours. that's the heart of skip cycling. Everything we do going forward in this thread reflects on that ability above, in the #1...

www.reef2reef.com

you did a good blended cycle



regarding disease preps from the fish forum it distills down to these options

1. take a chance with no preps
2. fallow the tank above and add in only quarantined fish, all definitions found in the disease forum/ fallow is a period of waiting before adding fish, but unrelated to the initial cycle


I 100% agree making sense of any cycle is tough nowadays, no instructions handle the mixed approaches they all say to add bottle bac and dose ammonia yep

 

[Steven27]

Is that actually live rock or is that "life" rock that was dry when you started?

Life rock

 

[brandon429]

In another thread, we’d uncovered the rock was wet not dry when added. wet equals the thread above

we uncovered that based on clues in pics

the name brand of the rock doesn’t matter, it matters if it was wet vs dry, and in another post Steven said it was wet. It wouldn’t matter if he was inputting red bricks into the setup theyd still be counted as skip cycle substrate if they showed up wet, from a holding vat at the pet store called live rock. No, I don’t think the pet store wet the rock five minutes before he showed up to trick him, I think it’s live rock due to Stevens answer.


Steve we should get a pic of the holding vat that rock came from at the pet store

you are looking for details such as scums attached like cyano, or algae, or worms and pods and starfish crawling around, these things indicate submersion time. There has never been a time in history a pet store sold wet rocks to someone that was not cycled, wet equals cycled when you brought them home.

 

[Little c big D]

Life rock

So you started with dry rock. You will need an ammonia source like others said. Although @brandon429 may be right if you used live rock, but you didnt

 

[Steven27]

So you started with dry rock. You will need an ammonia source like others said. Although @brandon429 may be right if you used live rock, but you didnt

I have both live rock from a local fish store and life rock from the local pet store I have 4 pieces of live rock and 2 pieces of life rock.

 

[Little c big D]

I have both live rock from a local fish store and life rock from the local pet store I have 4 pieces of live rock and 2 pieces of life rock.

Ah, I still agree with it being safer to know you're processing ammonia. I suppose know what your plan is would help, as far as stocking goes.

 

[brandon429]

The live portions are so powerful the dry portions don’t matter. it literally doesn’t matter one iota about the non live portions, that isn’t a huge rock stack to count above anyway. The live portion if left by itself would still hold the same presentation in the wastewater as the live + dry portion holds, it’ll be fine.


so, back to disease planning - don’t dose ammonia to live rocks. I have a completely different 25 page thread reviewing this detail, am saving you the read with that reminder, your cycle is done. We have a thread where careful ammonia dosing is added to live rock to feed coral, but that’s not the need here. We don’t doubt cycle status in live rock transfer cycles, thats why we don’t add any ammonia here. Six pods don’t want to be burned and your original cycle umps had the call wrong anyway.

 

[Little c big D]

The live portions are so powerful the dry portions don’t matter. it literally doesn’t matter one iota about the non live portions, that isn’t a huge rock stack to count above anyway. The live portion if left by itself would still hold the same presentation in the wastewater as the live + dry portion holds, it’ll be fine.


so, back to disease planning - don’t dose ammonia to live rocks. I have a completely different 25 page thread reviewing this detail, am saving you the read with that reminder, your cycle is done.

You should explain the harm in checking. So we can all understand why you're advocating against op being sure it's cycled.

 

[brandon429]

Steven if you want any further help just message me, it’ll save arguments. All questions have to be around disease prevention though as this cycle is done. After spending seven straight years defining and proving skip cycle transfers we gotta accept that part as all set, and focus on what Jay tells us to focus on in the fish disease forum. There are some cycles we don’t have to tinker and toil over, this is one of them. You did well using a real live rock component there it’ll help reduce dinos risk


Buy three times more live rock/wet kind and add it. Typical mixed fish reefs have way more live rock than that. The new addition will skip cycle too into this tank and it'll carry a bunch of fish

 

[Little c big D]

Steven if you want any further help just message me, it’ll save arguments. All questions have to be around disease prevention though as this cycle is done.

Exactly. There's no harm as I thought. @Steven27 You donwhat you feel is best. However being sure the cycle is complete is harmless and saves you possible future problems. The cycle very well could be complete but being sure is always good practice. This is alot like jumping into a sewer man hole with out testing the air first.