Fishless Cycling Question

dbroncos · May 22, 2023

Hello question for you all. I am planning on a fishless cycle the tank will contain live rock and live sand. Question is do I even need to add nitrifying bacteria i.e. Dr Tim's One and Only with live rock and sand? I realize I will need to add ammonium chloride.

bushdoc · May 22, 2023

Nowadays Live rock is a term which doesn't guarantee that it is The Live Rock like many years ago. Otherwise is it maricultured Live Rock or some man made rock from LFS?
If it is real Maricultured or even natural Live Rock from the sea, than you are virtually ready to go. There would be enough bacteria on the rock and depending how was it shipped, some dye off would provide for ammonia, so you even wouldn’t have to add one.If there is lots of growth on it than you need to cure it though. Otherwise if it is some “ Wet Rock” from LFS, I would add both bacteria and ammonia.

brandon429 · May 22, 2023

A thread tracking pure skip cycle instant reefs, no bottle bac

THE GOLDEN EXAMPLE OF A SKIP CYCLE DAY 1 REEF https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/octo-high-end-sps-skip-cycle-build.713256/ read that entire thread before you read ours. that's the heart of skip cycling. Everything we do going forward in this thread reflects on that ability above, in the #1...

www.reef2reef.com

Read that

Nine pages of live rock, no bottle bac, no test, skip cycling. Get the live rock from the pet store=instantly ready. You might be tempted to buy test kits out of doubt, but if you read that work thread you won't have any

Spare time · May 22, 2023

For dry rock, just add ammonia or fish food, add the whole bottle of bacteria, wait a week or so, and you're good to go. Its a simple as that. Avoid dr tims if it may get very hot during shipping. For live rock (i.e. rock from an aquarium), you don't need to add bacteria assuming the rock wasn't just placed in the tank. The benefit of the bacteria bottle and ammonia method is you get to avoid the pests of live rock, especially that cultured in tanks with fish and coral at an lfs.

dbroncos · May 22, 2023

brandon429 said:
A thread tracking pure skip cycle instant reefs, no bottle bac

THE GOLDEN EXAMPLE OF A SKIP CYCLE DAY 1 REEF https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/octo-high-end-sps-skip-cycle-build.713256/ read that entire thread before you read ours. that's the heart of skip cycling. Everything we do going forward in this thread reflects on that ability above, in the #1...

www.reef2reef.com

Read that

Nine pages of live rock, no bottle bac, no test, skip cycling. Get the live rock from the pet store=instantly ready. You might be tempted to buy test kits out of doubt, but if you read that work thread you won't have any

Great to know thank you - instant cycle. So would you recommend turning all filtration on when these are first added to the tank. I mean filter roller and skimmer? Or would you wait at all?

brandon429 · May 22, 2023

those items won't matter at all, so go ahead. if you didn't own them, those rocks alone will filter your reef tank and any number of fish you want. live rocks are truly enough, always. it's easy to tell what live rocks are at a pet store, ask the reps which set of rocks are underwater already, with coralline, and animals attached like snails and worms and pods and algae. that's live, and it doesn't mini cycle, it just transfers to your home and makes your tank instantly ready. don't get tricked into buying bottle bac just in case, that's a sales ploy and you can see we don't use it.

brandon429 · May 22, 2023

at my pet store, here's the live rock tank. it meets the description criteria stated above:

when you buy that rock make them wrap it in wet newspaper, take your own news paper if you need to be prepared, they'll place it in styrofoam and you take it home and move it into a tank and then the tank is cycled. that's the point we've made for 10 pages of jobs. study those actual jobs on file too, so you know the setup we've repeated over and over.

specifically do not buy ammonia tests. if you do, even though for ten pages we did not, you will get a low level reading which you'll attribute to a failed cycle then you'll add all kinds of reactive things into the new tank, which we did not do for ten pages. your reefing confidence will be destroyed and you'll be on the dole of bottle bac purchasers who can't reef any other way, exactly like when evil plankton on spongebob movie controlled all his minons by making them wear wireless receiving tin buckets as hats and they had no more self thought. be confident

research fish disease preps, fallow and qt, that's your real risk. it's not cycling. your risk is cycling fully off live rocks, then killing fish by other means having nothing to do with the cycle because they are disease-laden even if the pet store says they're not, and require special preps even if the pet store says they dont

spend time reading the stickies in the disease forum before adding fish.

brandon429 · May 22, 2023

let's say you choose to buy white rock instead, which requires cycling, and is a very bad choice compared to the rock above which costs more but saves you two years of headaches...this is how to testless cycle dry rocks:

buy the rocks add into the tank setup with pumps and water and heater all running. put all the other filters in line you want. buy the bottle bac brand either dr tims, fritz or biospira- only one of those three kinds. order it if your pet store doesn't have those three kinds to pick from, don't let them upsell you other brands.

don't buy any other brand. dump a third of one of the bottles you bought into the tank. add in a large pinch of fish food ground up into powder in the palm of your hand. wait fifteen days, test for nothing. at the end of fifteen days, change the water and you're cycled without testing. at this point your tank carries any fish you want BUT since it's dry rock your requirement to use disease preps is tripled, it has no disease suppression ability whatsoever and even though live rock does to some degree, you must be doing disease preps or all your fish will die within 8 mos if daily patterns from the disease forum mean anything. be reading several pages of help threads in the disease forum to discern disease patterns from folks who skip or do incomplete disease preps.

cycling takes no effort and no thought, we already mapped out cycles for both types of rock. all the work is in disease preps: that's a really really hard part.

a forty page thread of dry rock testless cycling

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

Spare time · May 22, 2023

brandon429 said:
let's say you choose to buy white rock instead, which requires cycling, and is a very bad choice compared to the rock above which costs more but saves you two years of headaches...this is how to testless cycle dry rocks:

buy the rocks add into the tank setup with pumps and water and heater all running. put all the other filters in line you want. buy the bottle bac brand either dr tims, fritz or biospira- only one of those three kinds. order it if your pet store doesn't have those three kinds to pick from, don't let them upsell you other brands.

don't buy any other brand. dump a third of one of the bottles you bought into the tank. add in a large pinch of fish food ground up into powder in the palm of your hand. wait fifteen days, test for nothing. at the end of fifteen days, change the water and you're cycled without testing. at this point your tank carries any fish you want BUT since it's dry rock your requirement to use disease preps is tripled, it has no disease suppression ability whatsoever and even though live rock does to some degree, you must be doing disease preps or all your fish will die within 8 mos if daily patterns from the disease forum mean anything. be reading several pages of help threads in the disease forum to discern disease patterns from folks who skip or do incomplete disease preps.

cycling takes no effort and no though, we already mapped out cycles for both types of rock. all the work is in disease preps: that's a really really hard part.

Honestly I disagree about live rock saving someone a headache. Just get the right clean up crew and a tank won't get a terrible ugly start. Long run it can cause more headaches depending on where the live rock was cultured. I shut down a tank because of the use of live rock and vermatids. Never had them again after that.