Cycling problem

[docforestal]

So I started a pico 2.2 gallon) 3/7 with ~ 2 pounds dry rock and bagged live sand (to help with fishless cycle)
Added prescribed amt nh3 dr Tim’s as well as his bacteria, ammonia stayed in 4 range no nitrites/nitrates after a week, added more bacteria and microbacter,still no change, using api test kits which I use for other tanks and repeated tests as well as making sure I scrubbed clean the tubes well.
4 days ago, no change so I add 1/2 pound lr rubble and 2 tsp live sand from my 55,
Today:
S.g. 1.025 ( stable with ato)
pH 8.2
Nh3 6.0
Nitrite 0.5
Nitrate 5

so I know the cycle is now going, in fully due to my lr and sand from the main tank - should have done this from the start, and this far along in 4 days I imagine it will be done soon

I tried cycling at tank with dr Tim’s following directions as well as my 55 originally
The55 took 5 weeks before ammonia went away, the qt with nothing but sponge and bioballs still remains with only ammonia in it
I see posts people adding fish same or next day and I just don’t see this, with 2 different batches of dr Tim’s and the biospira, unless they gave me the 1000 time potent ammonia to add,
Bad year?
from here on out I am just going to use stuff from my main tank and not bother with these products as obviously I added ammonia but after 3 1/2 weeks there was zero cycle occurring
I welcome you all’ s thoughts

 

[brandon429]

thankfully there is updated cycling science to fix you, no cycles actually take 5 weeks that's just how long cheap ammonia test kits take to reveal the true nature of ammonia that happens in well under ten days.

 

[brandon429]

lets see a pic of your current setup, the main display with it's surface area etc. your bottle bacteria wasn't/isn't dead, and it breaks down like this:

-nobody should ever dose 2 ppm or anywhere near that much ammonia for a bottle bac cycle. the advice to do so came from bottle bac sellers and the impact to the hobby is they know everyone uses API or cheap red sea ammonia kits, and that level of ammonia fouls the kit/it's not actually that hard for a reef tank to command that ammonia down in a few hours. due to kit overload, the false stall condition presents, everyone buys more bottle bac over and over.

 

[docforestal]

So you are saying the kit is wrong, or should just ignore the ammonia test if adding the bacteria?
I feel the cycle never happened as for 3 weeks, I never saw nitrites or nitrates which would indicate the ammonia breakdown from bacterial action. Within 3 days of putting in a little live rock, cycle is zooming.
I am back to the hobby after a while, and am of the feeling don’t rush to avoid killing anything.

here is a shot of tank today, under lights, but they have been off so far other than ambient light.

 

[brandon429]

How to unstick any seemingly stuck cycle

non digital ammonia test kit readings (api, Red Sea, nyos, seachem badges) make you think you aren’t cycled when indeed you are if you owned a $200 expensive seneye meter, you’d never be doubting your cycle status. since .01% of the reefing population owns these, we need a way to help the...

www.reef2reef.com

that represents the new means for reef tank cycling: testless cycling for 40 pages with perfect outcomes, zero fails.

*the rushing part is a legit concern but it's for the wrong risk assessed: fish disease due to skipping quarantine and fallow are the rush risks, not ammonia control.

as part of the new findings on what bacteria in reef tanks do, Dr. Reef has a 100 page study on all major brands of cycling bacteria, and the vast majority are fully adhere to surfaces in 2-4 days max. that means after a few day's wait time, a 100% water change can't unstick the bacteria stuck to all that surface area in your tank. People who blasted in tons of unneeded ammonia loading didn't kill or stall those bacteria: they merely overpowered the cheap test kits used by 99% of cyclers and were falsely lead to believe the cycle stalled. reef tank cycles do not stall, they're so predictable that 100% of the tanks I encounter on any common cycling arrangement can support animal life after day ten max wait, and, no seneye owner (a very expensive high quality digital ammonia meter) has ever reported noncompliance in a ten day timed cycle. not one time, if the machine was setup and calibrated/slides were prepped correctly.

your cycle is done because you used feed, bottle bac and the live substrate inclusions from another reef tank, plus per that pic you're on a massive surface area to gallonage design, it'll reef right now legit.

fish disease fully independent from cycling is the new risk in reefing, nobody lacks ammonia control at all unless very very atypical setups were employed, such as adding dry rock to a tank of water and adding no feed/no bacteria source at all, that wouldn't be ready by day ten (but nobody cycles that way, we all copy ten days or less setups)

the system is so reliable I don't want any testing uploaded to that thread/it distracts from the truth. people still upload their tests anyway, but I don't factor them in the stated start dates for each reef tank.

 

[brandon429]

if someone feels just certain they are stalled, the test kit reads too high for comfort after day ten and they just can't release that worry, all we need is for them to run an 80% or higher water change/peels off the wastewater from the system and leaves all the adhered bacteria just like Dr. Reef's thread/ and their tank will be fine. at worst, a simple water change unsticks any seemingly stuck cycle and that's not even because the cycle was stalled, it's to assuage the keeper's doubt that was given to us by purveyors of old cycling science (bottle bac salesmen)

your cycle is done right now, even without a water change. you could add a lysmata shrimp (weakest test animal in reefing) and it will live just fine.

 

[docforestal]

Thanks, will read up more, on it, just confused why no nitrites,trates if bacteria are working,there
I get what you are saying that we may have have been worrying about the wrong things starting a tank, but without the bacteria added I would think old wisdom still holds.it seems you see a lot of new reefers with fish dying before tank is cycled. I will read up more, this old dog can still learn, just need the evidence and will look at that later, and I appreciate the info
.

 

[brandon429]

they are there, but you're not using precision digital kits to test either param. the guess a color titration kits simply mislead everyone. the main change is that there isn't a time we'd be unable to find the cycle completed after ten day's max wait in the arrangement you've copied from others/we all copy this way or ways closely like it...that saves you from having to doubt any aspect of updated cycling science, you're done cycling and into fish disease prevention choices by a few weeks now.

any degree of live rock and sand you added will quickly eat up ammonia and nitrite, that you have none is proof you're done, not proof you're not done.

 

[docforestal]

i hear you, but my ammonia never went down is the point i was concerned with. after work, will read up more and maybe start adding some small invert

 

[brandon429]

the ammonia did go down, the cheap kit can't show it due to other confounding factors. we track lag times between non digital ammonia kits and digital ones: it's pronounced. what api takes 10=15 days to show, seneye showed happening in a few hours. it's that bad, hence the stuck cycle hysteria online

*we routinely get posts where someone does a simple partial water change and API shows 1-2 ppm raised ammonia for days on end. that's false, it does not happen in reefing. its just simply hard to believe how badly these non digital nh4 kits have been misleading the masses.

*one way you can verify the condition though is this: go to google and type in "stalled reef tank cycle"

you will get 400K pages of returns to check going back ten years, they're all with living fish and a non digital test kit causing the alert even though the tank is running fine. if ammonia was not controlled, we'd have a marked % of death/tank losses in those posts. I would like to see any reader post here a mere 3 links showing any recent true ammonia wipeouts, fish losses, in a brand new setup tank using bottle bac. if three can be posted, I can't find any, then we need to verify how they did acclimation + disease controls to be sure it was ammonia

non digital test kits have set back cycling science into the stone ages, seneye is undoing that.

 

[brandon429]

No nitrates and high ammonia - cycled tank

I put an ammonia alert on my tank and it's reading around 0.25. I just ran parameter tests and got back some weird values, mindful that right now I'm waiting for my better test kit to come in, I unknowingly got API before I read that they're not super reliable. Ammonia: 0.5 Nitrates: 0 ?? (they...

www.reef2reef.com

case in point, ironic timing

 

[docforestal]

i also understand it sounds like you sell seneye test kits? I never said i was using api or digital kit - but the nitrate has been zero with several different tests , and i would argue the cycle is not moving if the ammonia remains high and there is no nitrate or nitrate, especially if on other water sources the ammonia level and nitrates are consistent.
going to agree to disagree with you on this

 

[brandon429]

I do not sell them nor would I ever pay to own one



reasons why: you can see from that thread in post #5 ammonia is predictable in all cycling scenarios without testing. I only recommend seneye for two reasons:
1. to assuage doubt in other people about testless cycling details/they can see + audit for themselves
2. so that owners of seneyes can run cycling experiments and post that data, I get my science by the patterns that other seneye owners post en masse.

 

[brandon429]

its ok to disagree, there just isn't any threads of similar size showing the null presentation.

all we have is symptomless panic posts + non digital nh4 test kit relays.

its not easy to unbase people's 20/30 year training on non digital test kits, the hobby is deeply infected by the notion that water bacteria fail/take longer than ten days even though all cycling charts always show a ten day ammonia drop date.

if cycling was really this variable, cycling charts for 50 years would be equally variable. only those using non digital test kits doubt cycling charts. truly it's a fact/not being argumentative.

right there above you see a 7 month tank claiming not to control ammonia, watch us work that post just the same. I'll add it to my false stall thread once pics are uploaded.