Dr. Tim's Fishes Cycle Question

[annablankenheim]

I'm getting ready to set up my new 220.6 today and am going to be using Dr. Tim's to kick off the cycle. Here's my question - I'll be out of town for a few days next week and don't want to ask someone else to do the testing & adding while I'm gone. Will it do any harm to add the water and rock and all that now and then start the fish-less cycle when I get back? It will be about a week total.

 

[vetteguy53081]

I'm getting ready to set up my new 220.6 today and am going to be using Dr. Tim's to kick off the cycle. Here's my question - I'll be out of town for a few days next week and don't want to ask someone else to do the testing & adding while I'm gone. Will it do any harm to add the water and rock and all that now and then start the fish-less cycle when I get back? It will be about a week total.

No need to test until you return. Allow the bacteria to colonize while you’re gone

 

[brandon429]

Agreed Vette


You can be nearly done by then, without any testing at all.

here’s the steps, and below is a link of 31 pages of reefs doing this cycle for proof, it’s testless and time based only.


set up tank fully, add dr tims per directions on the bacteria bottle.


put in two decent sized pinches of flake food you ground into powder


let stew in the tank for ten days, you’re cycled, and can’t not be.

no testing, how easy is that lol you’ll come home nearly cycled.


there is not one stage you do a test, not a confirming one either, testless means testless:

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

it’s not possible to arrange 31 pages of wins using false science, the work thread is proof. The test and dose and counter measure you were about to attempt was going to confuse you and bring early stalling frustration, good thing we just headed that right off.

 

[annablankenheim]

Right on - thank you both!

 

[brandon429]

Dr Tims bacteria carries fish day one when it's added, it's why you see a million threads available doing so. The fish aren't burned, harmed, dying, they're normal because active water bacteria spun down and concentrated and then sold to us in water works great when we add that to our water

The only reason we wait any number of days is twofold: allows implantation time onto surfaces. This makes the cycle immune to water changes. The bacteria are locked onto surfaces

When they're fresh out of bottle that's suspension cycling where waste is still converted but any water changes export pre attachment bacteria.



The other reason we wait is because in testless reef cycling we want the buffer wait time in case of the .01% chance of dead bottle bac. Feed +10 days wait= see the ammonia line on any cycling chart, dropped, controlled. That's the minimum inherent ammonia control by default date in case of bad bacteria, for a fed cycle where some form of fish food or ammonia was provided at the start.

Even though those two different feed options feed two different types of filtration bacteria, it doesnt matter what you choose or they'd have wrote that into a cycling chart. Given ample surface area, it's covered in functional oxidizing group bacteria by day ten wait in a fed cycle, wait fifteen days if you want to go the extra mile.

 

[brandon429]

Waiting past the ammonia control date of any cycle, be it day one suspension cycle or day 10+ bottle bac wait cycle doesn't make your tank safer for fish. People get that wrong all the time, and we see in Jay's forum the landslide tank owners who completed a legit full zero ammonia full zero nitrite cycle presenting for help to the tune of ten new help posts a day, every day, and before Jay it was humblefish working the help threads.

Longer wait time in cycle does not make your tank safer for fish, a rather exact ammonia control date is predetermined for any cycle we elect and waiting past that date doesn't reduce the instance of fish disease, we can see.



Specifics disease preps protect your fish, see Jay's stickies in the disease forum.