Grasping the new thinking behind cycling

[mjw011689]

Ok I’ve been reading a ton on the new thoughts about cycling a tank and when it will be ready, and there’s a couple things I’m still trying to understand.

this is by no means my first tank, but in the past I’ve always used cured live rock from an established tank. As you’d expect, never really had to cycle. I’m currently cycling a 90 gallon tank that i started with all dry rock (life rock reef trees) and 80lb of dry sand.

day one i dosed Dr. Tim’s ammonia, as well as Fritz turbo start, the bottle that is good for 100g so they say. I saw my spike in ammonia within a day, that is no longer my concern. From all that I’m reading, the new method seems to not care so much about if ammonia drops all the way back down. I’m reading about 0.15 at this point, so minimal if any. I’m not buying a Seneye to know for sure. However, i DO still show nitrite. It’s on its way down, less than a few days ago, but I’m guessing probably in the 1-3 range (hard to tell). I’m also getting nitrate readings, which implies the bacteria are doing their job and breaking down the nitrite.

my question - is this tank cycled? I’m on day 8. I’m trying to move fish from my 70 gallon to this tank, but I’m not sure if the current level of nitrites are of concern, or if they’re of ANY concern anymore? For what it’s worth, the ammonia tests the same in the new tank and the one that’s been up for 2 years. So I’m really not concerned there. It’s mainly the nitrites. The established tank is not reading any nitrite.

do I wait for my nitrite to come down to 0, or transfer my fish? 2 clowns, and a small/med foxface.

and what about corals? Pretty much just a zoa colony and a gsp colony. Any concern with acclimating them over now? My old school thought process says to wait for zeros. But the more I’m reading, the more it’s contradicting

 

[brandon429]

well said, this is indeed the summary of today's cycle challenges.

You have Dr. Tim stating plainly that nitrite is a cause for concern.


then you have this huge thread with 100 cycles showing nitrite isn't a concern, ever, don't own the kit for display cycling and I got that idea by reading Randy's posts for the last 15 years on the matter, he says it's neutral. the reason I side with Randy is because he's not trying to sell me anything

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

and because that thread above is 100% nitrite-positive starts with perfect happy controls, all fish all cleaner shrimp are fine page after page (the weakest organism in reefing after a basket start and linkia start) owing to the chemistry reasons Randy pointed out.

I believe in the snippets of truth for the updated cycling science. I believe by 2028 we'll all have cheap digital nh3 meters to retro fact check all the soapboxing typed out from prior years on the matter of old cycling science vs new.

 

[sczlars]

I would really wait on the corals, until you're sure the new tank can support them.

I've done three tank transfers. The ones where I just took what was in the old tank and put it in the new tank (no new rock/sand/anything, except for more water) were the successful ones.

 

[brandon429]

*nobody can tell you the absolute truth in cycling, we don't have enough digital meters to know it yet.

but we do have enough digital meter readouts posted to grab a hard true glimpse of the snippets of truth, apply those snippets to other tanks that follow setups exactly like seneye cyclers do (we all stack copious degrees of rock in the center mass of the tank, then feed + inoculate it with bacteria shown to work in less than four days) plus we factor in the fact I haven't owned an ammonia test kit ever nor will I ever pay to own one/yet we work out all those hundreds of cycles anyway and they always arrive at carrying fish or sensitive animals just fine. I'm grabbing onto those snippets of truth from the postverse to process other people's cycles, I expect dead reefs one day if the science is bad or the snippets of truth were over perceived. In my opinion 1000 completed cycles without a crash means the snippets are correct. that, or I should buy a lottery ticket asap to ride the wave of luck.

you have to choose what seems the most likely truth... I myself would never pay for a seneye, they're not needed in your type of cycle/ all those tanks above are bottle bac starts just like yours for pattern verification.

but if seneye wanted to send me a machine for being their 8 year fanboy I would receive that lol.

 

[brandon429]

counter point:

chemists who also study updated cycling science do not agree with me that inherent ammonia control happens in under ten days with today's mixes of bottle bac/cycling approaches.

they're onto the clue that pH constants, new tank to new tank, allow for ammonia to be present yet render it neutral in impact solely due to the fact that all these cyclers land at approximately the same pH levels at setup time which makes things safe and gives ammonia time to drop before the pH changes to allow toxicity to set in.

*the reason I don't buy that: all these new tanks are copying things that lend ammonia control: stacks of rocks among heated, swirling water, bottle bac used that works instantly out of the bottle, feed added, plus an average ten days wait in most settings (a cycling chart says that's when ammonia control happens most naturally)

I do not believe for one second that 100 different reef tanks copy each other's pH control means via luck.
some are in apartments vs homes

some are in gas heated homes vs electric

some are in small apartments, gas heated, in the winter where doors and windows are not open, they have six family members and three large dogs (this is the worst pH combo I could imagine for a reef tank)

yet for all those cycles above: I never asked where their stuff was setup and we never asked to see their pH. we only asked if they've used bottle bac, and had water in the tank longer than ten days.

the hobby requires this ongoing tussle/back and forth to evolve cycling science until we get some accurate meters in the hands of ten thousand people to discern what's really been going on.

 

[mjw011689]

well said, this is indeed the summary of today's cycle challenges.

You have Dr. Tim stating plainly that nitrite is a cause for concern.


then you have this huge thread with 100 cycles showing nitrite isn't a concern, ever, don't own the kit for display cycling and I got that idea by reading Randy's posts for the last 15 years on the matter, he says it's neutral. the reason I side with Randy is because he's not trying to sell me anything

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

and because that thread above is 100% nitrite-positive starts with perfect happy controls, owing to the chemistry reasons Randy pointed out.

Thank you for commenting, I was hoping you would see this since it was your posts that I was referring to, I just couldn’t seem to find the one that you posted the link to anymore.

ok, so day 8, dry rock, dry sand… dosed ammonia (even though I should have just done the flake food method like your thread says) dosed fritz, ammonia now reading maybe 0.15, and we are completely disregarding the nitrites = this tank should be ready for fish, correct?

and as for the coral, is the nitrite of any concern to them?

 

[brandon429]

for sure it's ok to proceed, anything you add if acclimated correctly (not by bag floating, that's harsh) will live.

**the whole point in this weird game is to discern the point where waiting longer for the cycle can't make the fish any safer. the point was to discern a clear start date for reefing, so that at that moment we could begin implementing the disease controls from Jay's disease forum. if people are looking back, doubting their cycle, it interferes with disease preps and I find this clear start line demarcation allows a clear time to move from one challenge to the next.
I'm 100% sure nitrite in some small degree, any degree a cycling reef display will see, won't affect any animals. snails, crabs, cycling bacteria, fish, shrimp or delicate inverts. It has to do with the degree of chloride our systems have vs a freshwater setup, where the inverse happens: nitrite becomes the killer and ammonia isn't a big deal at all. fascinating in my opinion.

your tank can carry life right now safely, as safe as waiting 90 more days that's the truth. the fish disease won't be suppressed any better waiting 90 days and starting with fish vs starting with them right now, nearly every entrant in the disease forum completed a legit cycle ~30 days wait thinking it would make the tank safe for fish (old cycling science says just that exactly: once your tank can process 2 ppm ammonia overnite it's safe for fish, that's not true at all. it's safe for fish when we ensure they're not importing velvet right into the new system)

 

[brandon429]

that ammonia at the approximate level of .15 = nh3 as .015 which is well below toxicity. I would not think that two different brands of bottle bac could both be dead; both brands instantly carry fish on day one even if you waited zero days to start, like Ike did here below

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

those are the reasons I feel your tank is ready, it's based on several cycles online exactly like yours and those didnt even use two different brands at the start.

 

[mjw011689]

One other question to add to that… will temperature affect this much? If the cycling tank were around 72 instead of 78, does this change anything? I have zero concerns with ph, I’ve always been above 8.15 with the salt I use.

 

[brandon429]

I am positive that won't affect anything. it would take extreme cold to matter. I wouldnt have a problem if you did this cycle at 68 then brought it up to 78 - 80 to add the animals. all that variation is just fine for water bacteria for sure/bulletproof rascals they are.

*even if you didnt add ammonia, still fine. the first post didn't mention how you fed the bacteria but it didn't bother me. if you dosed fritz and dr tims, no feed, then your whole tank is one swirling mass of hungry bacteria awaiting food. like they were inside the bottle waiting on the shelf to be fed

clean tank water doesn't kill them, it distributes them out into the water column. the first fish/bioload you add would kick them into gear and you'd have a common fish-in cycle and nothing would go wrong.

 

[brandon429]

I recommend this initial dual bottle bac approach you did because it simply allows for testless reef cycling and it erases the potential of a dead bottle holding things up. two separate bottles from two different companies isn't going to be two dead bottles, one or both are alive by raw % from all cycling studies done on bottle bac.

you can see above we don't even factor for a dead bottle in forty pages: it's so rare I'm not concerned and the natural dilution people present for two clownfish would handle things anyway without a burn, those aren't pico reefs we're cycling those are normal sized reefs with decent dilution. but to add two different name brand bottles, from the top three studied brands in reefing (fritz, biospira, and Dr Tims) is bulletproof. if one bottle was dead, the other had you covered anyway.

 

[mjw011689]

I am positive that won't affect anything. it would take extreme cold to matter. I wouldnt have a problem if you did this cycle at 68 then brought it up to 78 - 80 to add the animals. all that variation is just fine for water bacteria for sure/bulletproof rascals they are.

*even if you didnt add ammonia, still fine. the first post didn't mention how you fed the bacteria but it didn't bother me. if you dosed fritz and dr tims, no feed, then your whole tank is one swirling mass of hungry bacteria awaiting food. like they were inside the bottle waiting on the shelf to be fed

clean tank water doesn't kill them, it distributes them out into the water column. the first fish/bioload you add would kick them into gear and you'd have a common fish-in cycle and nothing would go wrong.

Yeah I used the dr Tim’s ammonia. Ammonium somethingrather or whatever it’s called, can’t remember.

I appreciate your knowledge and passion on this topic. Not going to pretend I’ve read through every post on there, but the point seems to be identical on each, so I see no reason to be hesitant going forward

 

[brandon429]

I don't understand all the chemistry either for sure. the only thing we have down very accurately is predicting whether a given arrangement + timeframe is going to kill someone's new fish or make them live just fine, I pick up on those clues post to post. thanks tons for posting, please update here once life is in the tank kicking around

 

[brandon429]

I'm actually about to use chatgpt to remind me if high or low pH causes ammonia toxicity lol that stuff is so complex. Dan has told me fifteen times I just can remember, I can search out the little chart online too for a reminder.

 

[mjw011689]

Will do. I’ll update next week when everything has been in there for a while.

 

[Soren]

Ok I’ve been reading a ton on the new thoughts about cycling a tank and when it will be ready, and there’s a couple things I’m still trying to understand.

this is by no means my first tank, but in the past I’ve always used cured live rock from an established tank. As you’d expect, never really had to cycle. I’m currently cycling a 90 gallon tank that i started with all dry rock (life rock reef trees) and 80lb of dry sand.

day one i dosed Dr. Tim’s ammonia, as well as Fritz turbo start, the bottle that is good for 100g so they say. I saw my spike in ammonia within a day, that is no longer my concern. From all that I’m reading, the new method seems to not care so much about if ammonia drops all the way back down. I’m reading about 0.15 at this point, so minimal if any. I’m not buying a Seneye to know for sure. However, i DO still show nitrite. It’s on its way down, less than a few days ago, but I’m guessing probably in the 1-3 range (hard to tell). I’m also getting nitrate readings, which implies the bacteria are doing their job and breaking down the nitrite.

my question - is this tank cycled? I’m on day 8. I’m trying to move fish from my 70 gallon to this tank, but I’m not sure if the current level of nitrites are of concern, or if they’re of ANY concern anymore? For what it’s worth, the ammonia tests the same in the new tank and the one that’s been up for 2 years. So I’m really not concerned there. It’s mainly the nitrites. The established tank is not reading any nitrite.

do I wait for my nitrite to come down to 0, or transfer my fish? 2 clowns, and a small/med foxface.

and what about corals? Pretty much just a zoa colony and a gsp colony. Any concern with acclimating them over now? My old school thought process says to wait for zeros. But the more I’m reading, the more it’s contradicting

If ammonia is processed low enough to potentially be test error within a short amount of time, the nitrifying bacteria populations are established enough to handle the bioload of the fish you intend to add. Fritz TurboStart 900 is meant to be immediate bacteria populations, so there is no surprise that the bacteria is enough as shown in the ammonia reduction.

As the ammonia is processed, it is reduced to nitrites, which are not toxic at practical levels in a marine aquarium (they are toxic in freshwater). See this article by Randy Holmes-Farley on nitrites in reef tanks.

Are you measuring nitrates yet in your tank? A rise in nitrates would indicate that the bacteria is reducing the ammonia to nitrites, then the nitrites to nitrates. Most reef tanks do not sufficiently complete the nitrogen cycle all the way with the final reduction of nitrates into nitrogen gas, so nitrates are controlled with organisms that uptake nitrogen (many corals and macroalgaes) or through dilution by water changes.

If you are seeing reduction within 24 hours of a measured ammonia addition per Dr. Tim's method and seeing nitrates rising, the tank should be established well enough to transfer your fish.

From what I have read, but with little personal experience, a tank started with dry rocks needs some time for the ecosystem to mature in order to keep corals healthy in the long-term, so it seems recommendable to wait on the corals.

 

[mrpontiac80]

and what about corals? Pretty much just a zoa colony and a gsp colony. Any concern with acclimating them over now? My old school thought process says to wait for zeros. But the more I’m reading, the more it’s contradicting

I am 100% no expert, but I do listen to people I trust, Jake Adams, and others. Having said that, I think moving the corals over is fine. The ammonia and nitrites do not affect them like they livestock with blood and such.
My personal opinion is as long as your parameters are in check for your coral’s needs, they will be fine. I feel like the common new tank ugly stage is what hurts the coral. Algae smothering or absorbing things they need are the problem.
Again, just my opinion.

I just recently did a tank upgrade from a 65 gallon to a 180. I used lots of new dry Life rock, and new RINSED sand. It’s been two weeks since the transfer and everything is good. I got some diatoms on the sand and such but it’s already clearing up. I transferred all my rock with corals. But even prior to the transfer I placed some tester corals like acans, zoas, and stuff in the 180 for a week or two with zero issues.
I also used FritzZyme turbo start 900

 

[Soren]

... I feel like the common new tank ugly stage is what hurts the coral. Algae smothering or absorbing things they need are the problem.
Again, just my opinion.
...

Agreed, this is one reason to consider waiting before introducing the corals to a dry-rock-started system, since the ecosystem war or struggle of different organisms to dominate during the "ugly phase" is potentially detrimental to the corals. How soon corals are introduced (anywhere from immediate to a year+) does depend on skill level and methodology for stabilizing the system, though.

 

[mjw011689]

Yep. I know my post was a long one, but I mentioned I’ve already got nitrates, so to me that implied the nitrites were indeed being broken down.
As for the corals, it’s a bit of green star and one massive zoa colony (breaking up the colony though) so it’s nothin I’m worried about.

 

[taricha]

However, i DO still show nitrite. It’s on its way down,

This is the one marker you need that you are done.

NO2 is dropping - proving both ammonia oxidizers that created NO2 and nitrite oxidizers to process away NO2 are there in enough numbers to handle a system.