Cycling advice

[ReeffHusbWifey]

Good morning
Thank you in advance for any help or advice .
June 1st.

June 19 we added 2 clown fish
June 25 amonia 0.25
June 29 added amonia to 2ppm

Far left after adding amonia@12am
Next from left is at 5 pm on the 30th

7am this morning July 1st
Ok so my question is do you think it’s safe to water change out some of those nutrients, and start feefing?
As my thoughts are since the amonia can be processed ,I am ok .
Current state of tank

 

[brandon429]

heres what to do

dont add any more ammonia your cycle is done. your clowns survived both ammonia events because bottle bac is this good. thousands of posts exist to show your test kits as simply not usable to discern safety of your aquarium, those are not digital ammonia kits and if they were, they'd display .00x thousandths ppm free ammonia which is safe, and matches your water clarity and fish health this last month. you skipped the cycle by adding bottle bac, the filter bac implanted on surfaces immune to water changes in about two days after dosing.

 

[brandon429]

you must consider fish disease preps, those are the true fish killers, never an incomplete cycle.


Cease testing for ammonia for the rest of that tank's lifespan. it will only cause you confusion and doubt. if you're determined to test for ammonia, get a seneye, calibrate it and report back the major differences in the two kits.


specifically: you dont actually have free ammonia from the last dose still dwindling, your cycle is done its gone. You have a test kit with a massive massive lag time to report anything, I'm 100% sure your cycle is done and does not need future assessment. If you owned a seneye this would not even be an issue, you'd see the daily thousandths *even* after you added the new ammonia, it went back down in ten minutes. But not per that test kit.

the clownfish have now brought disease into the tank, pull them and re fallow and only add qt fish next round. read minimum five pages in the fish disease forum before proceeding, any five pages. it would be different if this was a nano reef with only two clowns coming

thats a huge reef destined for twenty mixed fish, you must prep the tank or disease takes them by month eight


see trends on any five pages in fish disease forum for age of tank loss trends.

the vials above if misfilled to any degree, ie not exactly 5 mils will wildly misreport. no more nitrite or ammonia testing for this tank, retire those two params. they self control always always after this long after adding bottled bacteria

other additives like Prime cause misreporting, this is why we loathe those kits. we meaning anyone who does cycle troubleshoots and stays around for the outcome.

 

[Uncle99]

The clownfish you added take over as the adders of ammonia, so not sure why you want to add more.
You added clownfish June 19th.
Since they are alive a month later, I’d say, initial cycle completed.
Ok to start water changes.
API tests are not on the higher accuracy list.

Next step, work towards putting all 8 major parameters into the range and monitor to keep them in that range, day in, day out.

You’ll be rewarded in the end with rock solid unchanging water chemistry, which IMM, is paramount.

Very nice rock work, Best wishes.

 

[ReeffHusbWifey]

Thank you thank you so much, i added the amonia from reading a post that said not to worry about the nitrite, and to make sure you could process the amonia , the test actually read the same about a week ago , i was just so unsure if stuff was working because it was kind of fast for it to be reading zero from some other post of people saying it takes months to cycle. thank you , i will proceed and change water , bring up parameters salinity mainly,lower temps and proceed , thank you for all your advice. truly appreciate it .

 

[brandon429]

I agree completely, today's cycling procedures are the messiest they've ever been. the hobby has been around 30+ years now and this aspect is literally starting fresh as we speak. it is 100% impossible to get consistent answers from any site we post on, due to evolutions in effect.

none of the old cycling rules could describe complete skip cycle scenarios, that's why we're in limbo. old cycling rules cannot describe how for decades, entrants into marine aquarium conventions all wrangle twenty thousand dollar complete reefs to be ready by any given Friday, no stalls.

the sellers have all the info that does not need updating every few decades

the buyers get the constant, constant doubt mode so they'll buy more reinforcements. I'm 100% sure that's the mechanism at play lol.

 

[Azedenkae]

Thank you thank you so much, i added the amonia from reading a post that said not to worry about the nitrite, and to make sure you could process the amonia , the test actually read the same about a week ago , i was just so unsure if stuff was working because it was kind of fast for it to be reading zero from some other post of people saying it takes months to cycle. thank you , i will proceed and change water , bring up parameters salinity mainly,lower temps and proceed , thank you for all your advice. truly appreciate it .

The adding of ammonia only apply to fishless cycling, it's not good to add so much ammonia for fish-in cycling.

 

[TnFishwater98]

Welcome to da Reef! Beautiful Tank! Just take it slow and you will be good with the clownfish in the tank. Just something to think about, have you considered order real LR from the gulf? It would add so much life and color to that already amazing tank .

 

[ReeffHusbWifey]

Welcome to da Reef! Beautiful Tank! Just take it slow and you will be good with the clownfish in the tank. Just something to think about, have you considered order real LR from the gulf? It would add so much life and color to that already amazing tank .

not sure where to look for that

 

[Azedenkae]

not sure where to look for that

Gulf Live Rock.com

Gulf Live Rock Specializing in wholesale and retail sales of Aquacultured Live Rock and live sand at direct from the diver prices. Free Shipping! coral reeftank

gulfliverock.com

 

[brandon429]

cycles like these are opportunities for microbiological study but only when we're all comparing calibrated digital readings. until then its us attributing bacterial strength/weakness to a test setup that can vary drastically over today's digitally calibrated readout options for ammonia.

When you added that second bit of ammonia, the reason it didnt poison the fish and cause clouding was all that rock and sand, attachment points + dilution (that's no pico reef above) and in the end that jolt was like an energy drink, not lethal.

a slow-to-convert ammonia system has simply never been shown on a seneye, its nearly always shown on red sea combined with api on every cycle posted. the reason everyone's fish are doing fine is because ammonia is controlled, vs burning and uncontrolled, which those kits can't display correctly above.


we have several fish + bottle bac cycles using this exact approach logged now, ammonia is handled day 1. color compare kits rarely agree with seneye, they're not TAN converted for one reason (seneye is nh3 and to get that reading from above we divide out per instructions)

and then even after tan conversion, the kits above aren't right. only digital is, that's why cycling info is not going to line up for the forseeable future but as we watch patterns, everyone's fish keep turning out just fine.

Imagine all those fish-in cycles using no bottle bac, how would that go down

the common thought would be: this tank is new, its slow to convert ammonia due to that


and then when owns seneye, 100% different take on bacteria and timing and ability, that's how it always goes down. lastly, a large portion don't accept seneye as right, therefore removing literally every testing option we have regarding validity for the next ten years, heh. gotta pick one to go with

either use the meter resetting the rules, or use the meter claiming inability to control ammonia in thousands of tanks all with totally healthy fish and daily feed input. multiple times daily in some cases.

 

[brandon429]

I vote going off raw pics the ammonia to be .25 above, tan converted out to .025 nh3 and that's classified as not lethal, worst case scenario, though I disagree its in the hundredths as no seneye would show that. They'd show .00x thousandths given this many days + inoculation but that mixed kit above can't be seen to that degree. we dont expect hard zero on running reefs, there's a known conversion rate in the thousandths on all of them, but only if seneye can be believed.



seneye also shows amazing accuracy when tuned and ran on a display tank (will show ammonia turnover in the thousandths at all times) and then moved to a low surface area display, it bumps up to hundredths rate in response to surface area restriction. that is what makes me believe them, the dynamic registry ability compared to red sea and api: you're stalled. always, no matter what.

 

[ReeffHusbWifey]

so the seneye is the monitoring unit ?. SENEYE REEF MONITOR

 

[KStatefan]

so the seneye is the monitoring unit ?. SENEYE REEF MONITOR

Yes. The following is an example from my tank that is cycling now.

 

[brandon429]

Yes but there’s some issues to consider before buying


-only the ammonia meter shows any consistency, the other readouts for pH and lux aren’t very well accepted accurate. You’re about to spend two hundred bucks on a meter for the one param we are already certain about and does not ever fail to self control in a bottle bac reef with rocks and sand given this many days

you are better off trusting new cycle science than investing in a seneye…said by the guy who loves seneye. We merely use them to make cycling proofs that are shared among all tanks. To right the complete wrong that color tube kits cause. To gain trust on the allowed start date for fish, exactly as marine aquarium conventions never have trouble attaining

I’d never own one myself or buy a seneye, and if given one, Id sell it on the used eq forum. I’ll get microbiological proofs off seneye owners post patterns, no need to own