Has anyone used bottled bacteria and add corals in 24hrs?

Sgolden · Jun 4, 2020

You can stock a tank right away . It’s not today, tomorrow, or the next that are the issue.
its after that. Next week. Eventually there will be ammonia needing to be cycled at some point .
The trick is , how do you maintain coral feeding without introducing the nutrients to keep them alive? The same nutrients that cause ammonia if no nitrites established .
I’m sure at the shows, they set up with portable filtration / canisters etc. but these have been cycled in advance.

Sgolden · Jun 4, 2020

Can go to a local store and buy some live rock, put it in the sump, or tank with good flow. This is what I would do if no option. Live rock is the best for starting a system the fastest.

Sarlindescent · Jun 4, 2020

I have done this due to a "crash" that I believe was related to bad salt. Did a water change at night, and the next morning, 70ish euphylia heads were dead and most everything was doing poorly. The tank had 8-12 hours for the first saltwater to mix. I went to petco and grabbed a bucket of IO, changing salt brands and parameters, but temp and salinity were matched. Around 80 percent of the corals survived this rapid shift and looked better after a few days. Corals included leahters, lobos, euphylia, blastos, pectinia, meat corals, elegance, monti caps, encrusting monti, birdsnest, digis, and acros and some others. All but a few of them managed to pull through. I added 20 acro frags or so a month later and 90% are still alive 8-9 months later.

After a couple weeks, I did add some sponge rock and some live rock to the sump. This was around the same time I moved a sixline. Is this situation ideal? Absolutely not. Was it necessary? Yes. Also, I fed the corals 2x/week sparingly when I first set it up.

This method was not without its problems however. I did get dinos and had corals showing clear nitrate deficiencies after a month or 2. If I were to do it again, I would dose nitrates at a minimum, up to around 5ppm. I would also considers phosphates to .04ish, since food will have to be limited at the start. I did dose aminos every other day or so for the first little bit until I ramped that dosing up.

The tank setup is a IM Nuvo 30L EXT with a diy 20h sump. I run a RO Essense 130 skimmer, occasional (1/month or so) filter sock changes, and a calcium reactor. I did scale up my coral stock in this tank insanely fast. Fish are a sixline and a yellow tang. Very little CUC since the ***** sixline kills everything. If you want to see video progression of the tank, I have a few videos of the progress, this is the first video I have done of that tank: . To note, I have 3 SW tanks atm, so some of the corals missing from video to video were just moved to a different tank. Additionally, I dont have time to add coral by coral progress, but I have some photos of the progression of some corals if that helps.

Rick5 · Jun 4, 2020

andrewey said:
Edit: After reading the post below mine, I owe you an apology. The irony.

If this was directed at me, you don't owe me an apology (although I appreciate it). We're just talking and contributing, bud. Sometimes the way I write has a tendency to miscommunicate my tone. I'm usually either completely joking (90% of the time) or just trying to contribute and learn along the way.

DrewBrees713 · Jun 4, 2020

Now where’s that dang Amazon’s truck!

sreefs · Jun 5, 2020

Patience! Otherwise, there are too many animals that will loose there lives.

DrewBrees713 · Jun 5, 2020

Dump a whole bottle in yesterday. Been over 24hrs and ammo, nitrite still way too high

brandon429 · Jun 5, 2020

here are your choices:

proceed the current way, where you could not make a MACNA convention on time.

or, choose the way you'd use to make your reef start as a full blown ready reef, like they do for 500 tanks at macna, which never fail to cycle on the desired date.

at any phase, we can opt for second option if you'd like.

that's the best way a person can ever see cycles; in forums you're going to find people who do not use seneye who try and set allowed start dates...they range wildly. that wont work or no MACNA could ever exist. you would be amazed at the digging in of heels that non seneye ammonia testers will do; Ive seen people refuse accurate ammonia biology as late as 90 days after the start of the cycle, where it was actually completed in about 3 days with the arrangement they had

what is reported to happen with ammonia by non seneye tests simply doesnt happen- cycles are as predictable as the rising sun even without running one single test.

you can simply choose which option you'd like to use: most assuredly, cycles at macna aren't weak. Those skip cycle tanks have more $ coral in them than we'll ever have in our reefs thats for sure, after a decade. plus fish.

skip cycling is only variable on forums

but irl...

the current way you're proceeding is for option one, where no given date can be expected. but we can shift course, keeping your same rocks sand and water, and change into second option literally any day you like. cycles can be commanded like that. we could virtually prepare your tank for macna, then its ready yesterday.

WvAquatics · Jun 5, 2020

In my experience with bottles bacteria. I have cycled 4 freshwater tanks and one saltwater. For fish in cycle for freshwater the bottles bacteria added day before fish and it handled the load never see nitrites. Ammonia for 2 days and clear a year later all fish alive. With fishless cycle you jump straight to nitrite cycle. 3 freshwater tanks took 3 weeks to remove nitrites. Saltwater bottle bacteria took 1.5 ppm ammonia to zero in 3 days. Now the nitrites are still sky high. I'm holding off on corals or more fish until nitrites are 0.