Cycling an Aquarium

[Lasse]

• Nitrite is around 2ppm
• Nitrate is as below ss.

This means that your NO3 readings are caused by NO2 interference and not a real NO3 reading, For further information - please read this thread

Sincerely Lasse

 

[BillFish Coral Lover]

Welcome to the site! Glad to meet you on your first post.

-It is 23rd day of cycling-

=that means done, not because a test kit shows zero. Most times they don’t, and you’re still done because no cycling chart has a 23 day ammonia line they have a ten day one for a reason. We define mis testing events using this hardfast rule.

no the tank isn’t ready for fish because that would instantly bring in disease by skipping all preps and we can see in the fish disease forum how that goes down.


mods:
UNSTICKY THIS THREAD: IT IS OLD CYCLING SCIENCE AND ITS AUTHOR DOESNT POST ON THE SITE ANY LONGER

this thread should only be bumped when people post. To have old cycling science as a formal reference holds back cycling evolution: no guidance for disease preps is in Brews writing and that’s what makes this a dated old cycling science thread


a cycled tank is ready for fish when the selected disease protocol warrants addition. It has nothing to do with the tested levels

Can you provide a link to a cycling thread that you recommend? And, I’ve been wondering this for a very long time - hire does one “bump”!

 

[BillFish Coral Lover]

Can you provide a link to a cycling thread that you recommend? And, I’ve been wondering this for a very long time - hire does one “bump”!

“…(how) does one…bump”!

 

[brandon429]

I hate to shamelessly plug my own links on brews post ;) but since u asked to see one here's forty pages of cycling meeting these criteria:

-No testing. I don't use testing to cycle reef tanks we use # of days running since all cycling charts also have a timeline to solve for parameters. The reason for foregoing testing is to eliminate misreads which plague all typical cycling threads.

- exact ready dates. Every cycle here was given an exact start date for stocking. None are an open ended wait like most cycle threads. It is possible to know the exact ready date for any type of cycle in reefing before the tank is even built (this is how reef conventions manage to get 200 demonstration tanks ready all by the same start date)

How to unstick any seemingly stuck cycle

Updated Cycling Science in Action This is a testless reef tank cycling thread, the only one from any board. If you ever had trouble with reef tank cycling in the past, you won't any longer after working some jobs with us. chances are you are using/about to use a method of reef tank cycling...

www.reef2reef.com

I'm also open to read anyone else's work threads on cycling matters so readers can select among options for best practices.

We discuss fish disease planning as the first priority, since controlling ammonia without testing is the easy part. I figured if I'm going to poke at brews post for those details/ at least be able to address them in patterned works on file. We did.

 

[brandon429]

The entire point of the exercise above: quickly determine ammonia compliance date and move all focus, intention, planning and detailed study into disease preps.


the current mode of old cycling science threads is to hyperfocus on using cheap test kits to determine a start date after much hesitation and reverification mentioning disease preps never-

I don’t see any guidance towards disease preps anywhere in his write up.

any warning about cycle ‘stalling’ is false science. Nobody here has ever seen a stalled cycle, they’ve seen a misreading cheap test kit though and then claimed it was a stalled cycle.

from Brews write up:
My cycle went fine for 3 weeks but now it stalled, what happened?

It could be any number of things. Did you let your ammonia go to high? Do you have a pH issue?


none of that occurs. I invite anyone with a seneye to audit time-based cycling systems and report back.

there are no stalled cycles where seneye goes

 

[brandon429]

Old cycling science says specifically the tank is ready for fish when the classic three parameters are under control. That's not true, that's killing loads of fish


The tank is ready for fish when ammonia is controlled and only after a viable disease protocol is selected and applied. The choice of plans is what determines fish addition rates.

Disease control is the most important aspect of cycling, it requires all the planning and work and expenditure and discipline. Getting a cycle ready is as hard as looking at a calendar and selecting the ready date based on the planned arrangement, it requires no thought or complex planning nor verification measure. Disease planning should be 98% of reef tank cycle efforts, the plan has to begin right after cycling before any animals are installed

certain diseases like uronema are tank wreckers where you must start over, fallow doesn’t work. Observational qt or buying from someone who does that is worth the time and effort to prevent tank-wiping fish invasions.

 

[Garf]

Adding a fish – while it will work as an ammonia source, why would you make a fish suffer in an environment in which it can’t properly shed its toxins?

I hate to shamelessly plug my own links on brews post

But @Brew12 covered your " fish in " (but not testless) cycling method in the first post.

 

[brandon429]

The universal rule in testless cycling is that a pinch of ground up fish food, ground well, added to the system along with any brand of common cycling bacteria will cycle submerged surfaces within ten days enough to carry a common decent bioload in reefing.

you don’t have to add ammonia to 2 ppm and attempt to detail measure it, simple fish food works fine. It degrades into what we need

anyone with a calibrated seneye machine can report back the spot checks.

cycling charts have a ten day ammonia drop line, maybe twelve days on some. but that’s a tight range…it’s not twenty days on any chart published for example. so we pick a calendar date ten days out for all common cycle approaches and that’s their start date in these testless cycle threads. If they haven’t added fish food, add some then start the count.

uncured ocean rock is the variable set, if it’s full of sponges and tunicates destined to die in the shipping plus tank transfer that can exceed ten days but those aren’t the majority cycle types


bottle bac cycles on dry rocks are the majority cycling type, and that’s ten days under the stew mentioned above plus a water change at the end so there’s no need to test it-that’s how we make testless cycles out of any reef tank. it will be done by day ten and the charts show it so why bother testing for ammonia control it isn’t going to fail in an inoculated, warmed and circulating body of water.

we could be replacing that ammonia testing time with reading in the disease forum to avoid quick disease outbreaks in new tanks.

ammonia is the only parameter we track nowadays in cycling we don’t care about nitrate and nitrite

ammonia control can be predicted off wait times without any testing, testing is now optional.

Official cycling charts are all the same because that’s how many days each parameter takes to stabilize in an aquatic system where inoculated, and of sufficient surface area and presentation in the water table. Testless cycles are merely setup, stewed for ten days, water changed, then you can relocate those rocks into any tank as a skip cycle setup or use them where they sit.

Bacterial adhesion happens within ten days given bottle bac and added fish feed or bioloading, thats the secret of updated cycling science. You don’t have to test it is the benefit.

the entire point of this 100 page thread below is Dr. Reef testing how long the various strains took to adhere to surfaces, look how rigorous his method is:


what’s the recurring completion date among all strains tested there? The dates go even faster when fish food powder is added because that also boosts strains of bacteria that use ammonia as an energy substrate

over time and as additions bring selected species into the system, those initially dosed bac strains die out and are outcompeted for vital space (the filter surfaces)

that similarity across brands is updated cycling science, that reef cycles are so predictable in timing completion you can make sixty year old charts with them and run todays reef tanks off them just the same. The reef-specific part is that we only care about ammonia. If this was freshwater cycling, nitrite would be the top contender and ammonia would be low totem pole.

 

[BillFish Coral Lover]

The universal rule in testless cycling is that a pinch of ground up fish food, ground well, added to the system along with any brand of common cycling bacteria will cycle submerged surfaces within ten days enough to carry a common decent bioload in reefing.

you don’t have to add ammonia to 2 ppm and attempt to detail measure it, simple fish food works fine. It degrades into what we need

anyone with a calibrated seneye machine can report back the spot checks.

cycling charts have a ten day ammonia drop line, maybe twelve days on some. but that’s a tight range…it’s not twenty days on any chart published for example. so we pick a calendar date ten days out for all common cycle approaches and that’s their start date in these testless cycle threads. If they haven’t added fish food, add some then start the count.

uncured ocean rock is the variable set, if it’s full of sponges and tunicates destined to die in the shipping plus tank transfer that can exceed ten days but those aren’t the majority cycle types


bottle bac cycles on dry rocks are the majority cycling type, and that’s ten days under the stew mentioned above plus a water change at the end so there’s no need to test it-that’s how we make testless cycles out of any reef tank. it will be done by day ten and the charts show it so why bother testing for ammonia control it isn’t going to fail in an inoculated, warmed and circulating body of water.

we could be replacing that ammonia testing time with reading in the disease forum to avoid quick disease outbreaks in new tanks.

ammonia is the only parameter we track nowadays in cycling we don’t care about nitrate and nitrite

ammonia control can be predicted off wait times without any testing, testing is now optional.

Official cycling charts are all the same because that’s how many days each parameter takes to stabilize in an aquatic system where inoculated, and of sufficient surface area and presentation in the water table. Testless cycles are merely setup, stewed for ten days, water changed, then you can relocate those rocks into any tank as a skip cycle setup or use them where they sit.

Bacterial adhesion happens within ten days given bottle bac and added fish feed or bioloading, thats the secret of updated cycling science. You don’t have to test it is the benefit.

the entire point of this 100 page thread below is Dr. Reef testing how long the various strains took to adhere to surfaces, look how rigorous his method is:


what’s the recurring completion date among all strains tested there? The dates go even faster when fish food powder is added because that also boosts strains of bacteria that use ammonia as an energy substrate

over time and as additions bring selected species into the system, those initially dosed bac strains die out and are outcompeted for vital space (the filter surfaces)

that similarity across brands is updated cycling science, that reef cycles are so predictable in timing completion you can make sixty year old charts with them and run todays reef tanks off them just the same. The reef-specific part is that we only care about ammonia. If this was freshwater cycling, nitrite would be the top contender and ammonia would be low totem pole.

Thanks for the info. Sorry, but I have to ask, do you have any relationship with Seneye?

 

[BillFish Coral Lover]

And, why Seneye over other controllers with testing capability?

 

[Lasse]

I´m sorry to say but Brandon mixing up 2 different processes into a sticky mess. The nitrification maturation process NH4-> NO2 -> NO3 (which can lead to chemical disease symptoms and/or chemical stress syndromes if it does not occur stepless) with fish diseases caused biologically by microorganisms.

And this without even mentioning stress factors that can weaken fish's immune system. My opinion is that it is important to ensure that the entire nitrification process including the oxidation of nitrite to nitrate occurs steplessly. NO2 is not normally acutely toxic to saltwater fish but can be a significant stressor that increases vulnerability to diseases caused by microorganisms. Diseases that an unstressed immune system would normally handle. My advice is therefore to use either a method that normally excludes nitrite peaks (like my 15 steps) or make sure that step 2 of the nitrification process also works flawlessly.

This thread show that the nitrification process can be stuck at the second part even if bacteria in the bottle is in use. My standpoint is that if not the second stage is working and NO2 is building up after a fishless cycling - fish should not be added before the second stage is working well. With methods like the fifteen steps that slowly add NH4 and also give some PO4 - there normally will be no halt in the process.

This thread take up why I still do nitrite measurements

Sincerely Lasse

 

[brandon429]

No I have no relationship i don't even own one.

Seneye is for easing the concern of others regarding ammonia control. As a testless cycle ump i don't need one, or any other test kit to manage ammonia.

Why i favor them: any reader here do a two part search effort and report back:

1. Search out 'stalled reef tank cycle' and its easy to find about 500K examples. How many are from seneye owners?

Second search effort #2. Try and purposefully search out only seneye owners, feel free to use reddit or Facebook pages or any seneye thread ever posted to a web board- try and post back a mere 3 examples of a seneye showing no ammonia control past day ten.

The search results we can find ourselves are why I go with seneye for those who need independent ammonia control verification

Seneye always follows what a cycle chart says about time- based establishment.

Lastly, there are threads on file where fifteen pages of solely seneye owners blast their reefs with test load ammonia and with those precision kits we can see how fast reef tanks truly handle bulk ammonia. We can see the speed at which reef tank assemblies process waste ammonia


Anyone who owns a seneye OR anyone who studies seneye posts will never doubt ammonia control in anyone's reefs tank ever again. It's the ultimate cycle perception aligner

 

[mraysberg]

I just started the cycle on my tank yesterday. I added Caribsea live sand and also some Caribsea life rock. Got a heater, pump and wave maker in the tank running. Can I just let the process run on its own or should I try and add anything in it to start the ammonia process?

 

[BillFish Coral Lover]

I do not have the more detailed analyses postulated by the much more knowledgeable gentlemen above, but the most basic next step is to add reef salt mix, then nitrifying bacteria and a source of ammonia. You want to buy your choice of Red Sea Salt, Instant Ocean Reef Crystals Reef Salt or other salt of your choice. Then a bottle of beneficial bacteria like Microbacter 7, Dr. Tim’s One And Only, etc. If personally go with Red Sea Salt and Dr. Tom’s. And then pinch of finely ground fish food or nitrite additives now sold for this purpose, with detailed instructions. Look at the above posts and you’ll find lots of information. Welcome to reefing and may the fish be with you! (Uh, good luck!)

 

[BillFish Coral Lover]

I just started the cycle on my tank yesterday. I added Caribsea live sand and also some Caribsea life rock. Got a heater, pump and wave maker in the tank running. Can I just let the process run on its own or should I try and add anything in it to start the ammonia process?

I do not have the more detailed analyses postulated by the much more knowledgeable gentlemen above, but the most basic next step is to add reef salt mix, then nitrifying bacteria and a source of ammonia. You want to buy your choice of Red Sea Salt, Instant Ocean Reef Crystals Reef Salt or other salt of your choice. Then a bottle of beneficial bacteria like Microbacter 7, Dr. Tim’s One And Only, etc. If personally go with Red Sea Salt and Dr. Tom’s. And then pinch of finely ground fish food or nitrite additives now sold for this purpose, with detailed instructions. Look at the above posts and you’ll find lots of information. Welcome to reefing and may the fish be with you! (Uh, good luck!)

 

[BillFish Coral Lover]

I just started the cycle on my tank yesterday. I added Caribsea live sand and also some Caribsea life rock. Got a heater, pump and wave maker in the tank running. Can I just let the process run on its own or should I try and add anything in it to start the ammonia process?

And read and ask questions at your local fish store and then read some more!

 

[mraysberg]

I do not have the more detailed analyses postulated by the much more knowledgeable gentlemen above, but the most basic next step is to add reef salt mix, then nitrifying bacteria and a source of ammonia. You want to buy your choice of Red Sea Salt, Instant Ocean Reef Crystals Reef Salt or other salt of your choice. Then a bottle of beneficial bacteria like Microbacter 7, Dr. Tim’s One And Only, etc. If personally go with Red Sea Salt and Dr. Tom’s. And then pinch of finely ground fish food or nitrite additives now sold for this purpose, with detailed instructions. Look at the above posts and you’ll find lots of information. Welcome to reefing and may the fish be with you! (Uh, good luck!)

There is already rodi saltwater 1.025 in the tank currently as it cycles. I did buy a quick test kit from api till it cycles than I’ll buy the hanna checkers. Running my parameters as we speak just so I can know what’s goin on in the tank. Haven’t added any bacteria at all just from scratch still

 

[brandon429]

To cycle that system without testing simply add two small ground up pinches of fish food and wait 30 days. It'll be cycled, we have threads on file using this testless method:

Build Thread - My SPS Waterbox Peninsula Mini 15

Hi all. Long time member (I think I joined right around when R2R started or took off years ago) but got out of the hobby for about 6 years and now I am back! I don't see many build threads for the PM 15 (mostly the 25) so thought I'd share my journey here. This post will be a bit behind...

www.reef2reef.com

If you add bottle bac it'll speed up the ready time.

 

[mraysberg]

Just a little update been running tests after adding Fritz zyme 9. Ammonia .50ppm, nitrite .50-1.0ppm, and nitrite 10ppm. We are getting there slowly but surely.

 

[Garf]

Just a little update been running tests after adding Fritz zyme 9. Ammonia .50ppm, nitrite .50-1.0ppm, and nitrite 10ppm. We are getting there slowly but surely.

Where has the ammonia come from? Have you added some fish?