Dr Tim’s Cycle

[Anthony Cusumano]

Still pegged at 8+ppm. Doing a 15% water change and test tomorrow.

 

[Dr. Reef]

i will highly recommend putting a pinch of fish food in the tanks along with bacteria.
Also make sure there is something like sand, rocks, ceramic rings or other bacteria harboring media in the tank. Bacteria likes to stick to surfaces and not glass or suspended in water etc.

 

[Anthony Cusumano]

I have dry rock and dry sand (reef flakes) and 2 new maxspect bio plates.

 

[Anthony Cusumano]

Wouldn’t adding fish food raise the ammonia even more?

 

[Dr. Reef]

A pinch wont raise a whole lot but if there are Heterotrophic bacteria in your tank, they need carbon. Only way to introduce carbon source would be food or fish.
Heterotrophic bacteria are basically sludge removers that require carbon in order to turn ammonia to nitrites.

 

[Anthony Cusumano]

Ok got it. Do you recommend pellet or mysis or does it matter?

 

[Anthony Cusumano]

Initially started with dr tims one and only. I’ve been dosing microbacter7 everyday since last Thursday. Looks like I’m in between 4 and 8 ppm (api) after 10 gallon water change.

 

[Dr. Reef]

Mb7 in my study did not work in sterile tank until I introduced carbon in form of food, so ahead and drop a pinch or 2 of any kind of food. I used pellets.
My test tanks were 5gal.

 

[Dr. Reef]

By switching from Dr Tim (true nitrifier bacteria) to MB7 ( likely Heterotrophic) you are causing the bacteria to out compete themselves before they can start to colonize your tank.
Stick to one and drop in some food you will start to see results.

 

[Anthony Cusumano]

I added the dr times once on 9/12 with the ammonium chloride. I will continue to use mb7 and will add a pinch of food tonight. Thanks!

 

[Rollman]

Hi-
so I changed 100% of my water and am still getting nitrite readings of .20ppm. What would I do now? Do I have to recycle?

 

[Dr. Reef]

Hi-
so I changed 100% of my water and am still getting nitrite readings of .20ppm. What would I do now? Do I have to recycle?

this is a new sterile tank right?
why did you change 100% water?
sorry i didnt read the whole thread.
if ammonia is 0 and nitrites are there no worries, you are safe to add fish.
Nitrites are not harmful to fish even in 100's of ppm.

 

[brandon429]

we were doing that to balance out a bunch of unknown ammonia amounts. tank is now gtg

we dont expect testers for nitrite to be correct/factor it out agreed its pure luck to get 10 people reading a nitrite test and seeing the same shade amnts.

 

[Dr. Reef]

i skimmed over the thread. Tank is good to go.
A few things i read and i want to clear.

Dr Tim bacteria needs to be shaken like your life depends on it before using. Also draw the solution out from middle to bottom of the bottle. Use some sort of tool that can draw stuff as big as grain of sugar. Dr Tims bacteria is suspended and attached to sand particles in the bottle, If you use fine tip syringe that only draws solution and not the grains, you are not pulling bacteria.

Secondly Dr Tims bacteria is not dump ammonia and then bacteria and wait for ammonia to go down to 0. He recommends adding fish and bacteria together or adding bacteria first then add ammonia and test daily till ammonia hits 0.

 

[lpsouth1978]

this is a new sterile tank right?
why did you change 100% water?
sorry i didnt read the whole thread.
if ammonia is 0 and nitrites are there no worries, you are safe to add fish.
Nitrites are not harmful to fish even in 100's of ppm.

I have always been under the impression that Nitrites are ABSOLUTELY harmful to fish and even more so to corals. NITRATES on the other hand are harmless to fish unless they are VERY high.

 

[Dr. Reef]

I have always been under the impression that Nitrites are ABSOLUTELY harmful to fish and even more so to corals. NITRATES on the other hand are harmless to fish unless they are VERY high.

only in freshwater.
Nitrites in saltwater are not harmful at levels our tanks go through cycle. Corals and inverts yes absolutely harmful. Nitrates are also harmful to corals and inverts. Nitrates are generally not harmful to fish but there is such a thing called nitrate shock. If you bring a fish from low nitrates to high nitrates without proper acclimation it will got into Nitrate shock which can lead to death.

In a study large quantity of clownfish were subjected to Nitrites and if i am not mistaken it took over 300 ppm to kill 25% of the population.
i have personally placed fish in tanks that hit ammonia 0 but still showing nitrites without any harm.

 

[brandon429]

Somehow the chloride presence in marine salt levels neutralizes nitrites agreed, Randy has threads on it.

We don’t use nitrites in my cycling threads bc they’re too apt to misread, and everyone is using Prime but not always reporting it so there are too many false positives in testing anything but ammonia behavior. Since nitrites can’t burn or harm a reef we don’t care about them using newer cycling approaches.

For sure nitrites rise and fall, they do factor but google cycling charts already show when that occurs, no need to test.

 

[Anthony Cusumano]

Looks like after the water change and adding food im around 2ppm. I’m going to continue adding mb7 once per day. How often should I add food?

 

[brandon429]

any amount you want. that initial input of carbon is going to cycle around over and over that'll do, or add more. doesnt matter. the rest becomes part of the detritus chain

 

[Rollman]

Thanks for all the help guys. After adding food yest, I believe I’m cycled.