Dr Tim's failing to work.

[monkeyCmonkeyDo]

Dont dose that crap. Wait it out.
You wanna speed it up? Add flow. Small amount of light.
D

 

[Garf]

I am now on Day 9 of Dr tim's one and only alongside Dr Tim's Ammonia.

I have been reading exactly the same since day 1.

Now on day 9 - here are my test results from day 1 onwards to today

Temp 27c (elevated slightly as per Dr Tim's instructions)
Salinity 1.024 (lowered slightly but not to extent Dr tim suggests)
PH 7.8-8.0
Ammonia constantly reading 1 - 2 ppm
Nitrite never read any I.E 0 ppm
Nitrate again 0ppm

Sorry, forgot to add using API saltwater master kit. I have used Salifert in the past and personally don't like them, so went back to API which I used to use for tropical.

Now added Fluval cycle to try and boost the bacteria and still no change at all.

Anyone with any ideas, I would appreciate a bit of help on this.

Thank you in advance.

Can you post a pic of the tank, rocks etc, it’s the law around these parts

 

[NanoReeferLancashire]

Coolio, no biggie. Could just be an amount of ammonia added that did not visibily change the readings too much then.

I'd suggest just keep waiting then, some microbe products seem to take longer than others, and so far I seem to have seen Dr. Tim's One and Only as one of these products. If you want to speed it up though, I would suggest FritzZyme Turbo Start 900. This product was found by @Dr. Reef in his experiment to be the most effective and the other day I posted about my success withit and received agreement that it does indeed work great.

Great I will give it another few days, say to day 14 or so, then if nothing. I guess, I will just throw in the FritzZyme.

Thanks again.

 

[Azedenkae]

Dont dose that crap. Wait it out.
You wanna speed it up? Add flow. Small amount of light.
D

'That crap' eh? I would like to draw your attention to this thread: https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/bacteria-in-a-bottle-myth-or-fact.403226/

@Dr. Reef did a thorough examination of the bottled microbes brands. FritzZyme works and works well.

My personal experience is adding Fritz to 8ppm of ammonia and seeing 4ppm less than 48 hours later.

 

[Azedenkae]

Great I will give it another few days, say to day 14 or so, then if nothing. I guess, I will just throw in the FritzZyme.

Thanks again.

Sounds good. Yeah if nitrite starts to show then that'd be great. Fritz work but does cost a bit, so if you don't have to make the spend then that'd probably be preferable. XD

 

[NanoReeferLancashire]

Can you post a pic of the tank, rocks etc, it’s the law around these parts

Will do. give me a few minutes to suss out how on me dog n bone lol

 

[NanoReeferLancashire]

Can you post a pic of the tank, rocks etc, it’s the law around these parts

Here we go. Pretty basic as u will see. Im no artist.

 

[Garf]

Here we go. Pretty basic as u will see. Im no artist.

Were the 2 rocks on top dry when you bought them?

 

[NanoReeferLancashire]

Were the 2 rocks on top dry when you bought them?

Yes. They were all dry. Lfs didn't do "wet" live.

 

[Garf]

You’ve definitely got something going on by the coloration of the background. Wonder if your LFS is open to do some quick tests for you?

 

[NanoReeferLancashire]

You’ve definitely got something going on by the coloration of the background. Wonder if your LFS is open to do some quick tests for you?

The background is black plastic as it hides the built-in filter and the heater. If you mean the white bits, that was the sand as it went in the tank. If u spotted something else please let me know.

Thank you

 

[NanoReeferLancashire]

You’ve definitely got something going on by the coloration of the background. Wonder if your LFS is open to do some quick tests for you?

Lfs will open 12pm. Ill ring and see if they do tests. Cheers

 

[Screwgunner]

Put a bottle of biospera in there and whach it work .I have heard some bad review on dr. Tims so I put dr.tims and biospera in at the same time . And done.

 

[Cell]

Dont buy more bottled bac. API notoriously gives false positive reading. Best workaround is to measure ammonia, this is your baseline. Then spike in enough ammonia to get a measurable difference when you test again. Now wait a day and test a 3rd time to see if it goes back to your initial baseline measurement.

Dont fall for the trap and buy more bottled bac.

@brandon429 probably knows the exact timeline for One and Only effectiveness.

 

[brandon429]

In my opinion it’s going to work out ok due to the second bottle bac already added. Although I personally haven’t seen a dead bottle of bac (temps in shipping aren’t extreme right now, perhaps the bottle sat for sale on shelf after getting frozen a couple mos ago but its rare) the chance the fluval brand is also dead is unlikely. Taricha doing tests lately found one of his bottles was inactive for some reason.

the date on dr Tim’s label is ten days, I haven’t used fluval bac but it’s assumed to take about as long (most do) so what I would do here is wait to day fifteen, change water and go/begin. The reason the posted readings don’t sway me is this: number of folks who report zero nitrate and want to dose stump remover: hundreds, ergo no nitrate reported here means nothing. The stump dosers are cycled, we don’t have to see nitrate to know a cycle or all the stump needers could be diagnosed as not cycled, in years old tanks.

nitrite- neutral. dont care about it, doesn’t even factor.


stuck api ammonia- who isn’t, that is the norm. without seneye to read ammonia we are left with duration cycling (fifteen days wait, change water) and in ten thousand tested cycles I haven’t seen that method fail not once. How the lfs tests using kits again likely to misread doesn’t phase my assessment. I think on day fifteen after a change it’ll be ready/ can keep fish or snails or common starter corals just fine. I wrote in Dr Reefs thread a guaranteed testless cycling method is two different brands of bac, some feed, 14-15 days wait, change water you’re cycled. Looks like we have a perfect test for that. What determines success is not the test readings on day fifteen it’s the living animals. If we had been talking seneye readings this whole post would be going differently

 

[Garf]

Pulled up the Fluval bumpf for anyone interested;

CYCLE BIOLOGICAL ENHANCER - Fluval UK

CYCLE BIOLOGICAL ENHANCER SELECT AN FAQ CATEGORY I would like to cycle a new fishless aquarium by using decomposing food or ammonia. Can I use Cycle Biological Enhancer with this option? Yes, but we don't recommend either method. Ammonium chloride dosing usually results in excess ammonia...

fluvalaquatics.com

 

[John Bolden]

Hey! I've been around aquariums all my life, but school and life got hectic, I starting spawning my own creatures...so the fish tank became a nuisance and dismantled. Here I am today....My creatures found dad's old tank in the basement and want it set up. It sounded great - but man, I feel like I forgot how to swim (and all the brands have changed).

At my highest point, I had a 75 gal Oceanic glass reef tank (big thick glass) that would make grown men cry when we moved it a few times and lights that made me cry when I opened my electric bill.

Then I got into the Nano scene with a few Biocubes. Before finishing with a 29 Gal Biocube HQI.

This is the tank I'm setting back up. What suggestions do you have for me?

I do not want the Metal Halide, I want to move to LED - but I want to have the ability to do any corals as we move along. LEDs were just coming to the party when I quit the hobby

I do not want to go rimless,

I want a sump (to expand the water volume).

What would you do if you were setting up it up?

I love fritz turbo start its always been reliable.

 

[Kal93]

For cycling, API is reliable enough as long as your reagents aren't old. Depending on the system, it may take a while for the bacteria to begin populating. You can either add ammonia or ghost feed.

I'm assuming that you used dry rock...did you go barebottom or use live sand? My tank took ~1 week to start reducing ammonia, and I think that was largely due to live sand (I imagine that it would have taken longer without some pre-seeded media)

 

[NanoReeferLancashire]

In my opinion it’s going to work out ok due to the second bottle bac already added. Although I personally haven’t seen a dead bottle of bac (temps in shipping aren’t extreme right now, perhaps the bottle sat for sale on shelf after getting frozen a couple mos ago but its rare) the chance the fluval brand is also dead is unlikely. Taricha doing tests lately found one of his bottles was inactive for some reason.

the date on dr Tim’s label is ten days, I haven’t used fluval bac but it’s assumed to take about as long (most do) so what I would do here is wait to day fifteen, change water and go/begin. The reason the posted readings don’t sway me is this: number of folks who report zero nitrate and want to dose stump remover: hundreds, ergo no nitrate reported here means nothing. The stump dosers are cycled, we don’t have to see nitrate to know a cycle or all the stump needers could be diagnosed as not cycled, in years old tanks.

nitrite- neutral. dont care about it, doesn’t even factor.


stuck api ammonia- who isn’t, that is the norm. without seneye to read ammonia we are left with duration cycling (fifteen days wait, change water) and in ten thousand tested cycles I haven’t seen that method fail not once. How the lfs tests using kits again likely to misread doesn’t phase my assessment. I think on day fifteen after a change it’ll be ready/ can keep fish or snails or common starter corals just fine. I wrote in Dr Reefs thread a guaranteed testless cycling method is two different brands of bac, some feed, 14-15 days wait, change water you’re cycled. Looks like we have a perfect test for that. What determines success is not the test readings on day fifteen it’s the living animals. If we had been talking seneye readings this whole post would be going differently

Very informative and interesting. Thank you for taking the time to reply and a good deal of info. I'll keep going and follow your advice. Day 15 water change and see how it looks from there. Thanks again.

 

[NanoReeferLancashire]

For cycling, API is reliable enough as long as your reagents aren't old. Depending on the system, it may take a while for the bacteria to begin populating. You can either add ammonia or ghost feed.

I'm assuming that you used dry rock...did you go barebottom or use live sand? My tank took ~1 week to start reducing ammonia, and I think that was largely due to live sand (I imagine that it would have taken longer without some pre-seeded media)

I have dosed dr tims ammonia and yes dry rock and sand was used. Thanks for the reply