Cycling with livesand, bacteria starter or both?

[Magostini]

Hi, I am about to start running a new 100g reef and I want to move my fish and corals as soon as possible from my red sea 130.
The question is about efficiency in cycling.
I already bought substrate ocean direct original grade from caribsea because of the bactérias.
But I am analyzing two alternatives now: should I start with Brightwell Microbacter start xlm or should I use red sea reef mature? Brightwell seems very good but they highlight they don't recommend to use with live sand... Red sea do not mention anything about it...
What do you think? One of this or another suggestion? Thank you!
Marcelo

 

[brandon429]

Use biospira or fritz they’re charting faster than brightwell. Whether or not you have sand won’t matter in this cycling arrangement: add your bottle bac and a pinch of flake food and a zip/approximation of liquid ammonia for cycling the ammonium chloride from dr Tim’s has a #drops instruction for adding


wait out the number of days on the bottle and then you are cycled. It cannot fail and none has ever failed in posts (Twenty thousand test misreads might disagree, but they‘ve no basis in truth)

some have concern the bottle bac will have died in shipping or in holding - to assuage the masses simply run one nitrate test at the end. If there’s any that’s proof the bottle wasnt dead. It will always work by the dates on the bottle and in this case we didn’t mess with testing for ammonia or nitrite, a little flip on the normal approach.

here’s a man who did not even wait one second, the steps above were ultra conservative cycling lol

Bio-spira works great

I just started a new tank a little over a week ago. I started with all dry rock and new sand. I added a bottle of Bio-Spira and put fish and coral the same day. Never saw any ammonia and fish and coral seem healthy.

www.reef2reef.com

now that’s new school cycling

brightwell works but these two above are testing faster in cycling threads.

 

[Magostini]

Use biospira or fritz they’re charting faster than brightwell. Whether or not you have sand won’t matter in this cycling arrangement: add your bottle bac and a pinch of flake food and a zip/approximation of liquid ammonia for cycling the ammonium chloride from dr Tim’s has a #drops instruction for adding


wait out the number of days on the bottle and then you are cycled. It cannot fail and none has ever failed in posts (Twenty thousand test misreads might disagree, but they‘ve no basis in truth)

some have concern the bottle bac will have died in shipping or in holding - to assuage the masses simply run one nitrate test at the end. If there’s any that’s proof the bottle wasnt dead. It will always work by the dates on the bottle and in this case we didn’t mess with testing for ammonia or nitrite, a little flip on the normal approach.

here’s a man who did not even wait one second, the steps above were ultra conservative cycling lol

Bio-spira works great

I just started a new tank a little over a week ago. I started with all dry rock and new sand. I added a bottle of Bio-Spira and put fish and coral the same day. Never saw any ammonia and fish and coral seem healthy.

www.reef2reef.com

now that’s new school cycling

brightwell works but these two above are testing faster in cycling threads.

Thank you!! The only problem is that those two I will not find here in Brazil. Only red sea and brightwell unfortunately.
But do you think Brightwell would work with live sand too? I don think bacteria from sand and from the bottle will kill each other, right?

 

[RobW]

Hi, I am about to start running a new 100g reef and I want to move my fish and corals as soon as possible from my red sea 130.
The question is about efficiency in cycling.
I already bought substrate ocean direct original grade from caribsea because of the bactérias.
But I am analyzing two alternatives now: should I start with Brightwell Microbacter start xlm or should I use red sea reef mature? Brightwell seems very good but they highlight they don't recommend to use with live sand... Red sea do not mention anything about it...
What do you think? One of this or another suggestion? Thank you!
Marcelo

Read the bottle on the xlm. I believe that one of the brightwell products says to absolutely not put any livestock in the tank while using the product. But I think its the bottle that goes in conjunction with the xlm. The smaller with the silver label. Ill look it up.

 

[RobW]

Ok so its the quick cycle. Sorry didn't see the above mentioned post. Me personally... I have used bio-spira and I have also used brightwell products. I like Microbacter-7. I also use brightwell for my salt mix. It mixes up really clear with no impurities ending up in the bottom of the bucket. I've never had any ill effects from anything brightwell. The microbacter-7 is easy. 1 cap full per day for the first 14 days per 25 gallons. I also use the x-port bio cubes in one of my media chambers or the bricks in the refugium of a sump. Soak the cubes or bricks with a full dose of the microbacter7 overnight in a container then add them to your system. In 24-48 hours I transferred my fish, corals and inverts into my new tank with a little bit of prime. No issues... period. That was also with dry rock, crushed coral and one bag of special grade live sand. I changed 10 percent of my water after week 1. Monitored it. Im rocking and rolling. All corals, shrimp, fish... perfect.

 

[RobW]

I have also used the bio-spira and added fish and inverts the next day without issue. I think that either way you go, you should be just fine. There are so many approaches to starting a tank.

 

[Reefguy13]

If you have an established tank already soak a sponge or if you have some marine pure blocks in it for a week or so then put in your new tank along with the microbacteria. I used algae barns cycle starter with Fritz and it worked well

 

[brandon429]

It’s also ok to use brightwell by the date on the directions it will work fine, i think that brightwell kit even comes with its own ammonia feed source too. It will work too per its directions

if it was my tank I would never believe mixing sources of water bac to be bad, I know they wrote it on bottle not sure why. These mixes are beyond contaminated with bacteria after a few days feed, even if none were comingled on purpose several strains will be alive and kicking, we contaminate everything during reef builds.

it is physically impossible to build a monoculture of bacteria in a home setting aquarium, when assembling a reef tank and feeding it open-topped after dosing it and natural contaminations playing out.

 

[Magostini]

That's true, thank you!
Another option that I am thinking now is to put little bit of dry sand, all the rocks, start cycling with start xlm and after 7 days, I would add the live sand....