How to unstick any seemingly stuck cycle

[brandon429]

If in doubt do a full water change, our post history shows bacteria remain on rocks given this long, since you have two fish doing fine thats a great indication horses would too. You are past the number of days we’ve been waiting for each case here / 10



A study in opposites. Look at what trying to cycle by using red sea ammonia and disavowing all the rules we use here is causing:
https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/cycle-question.965264/
old cycling science is guiding that thread.

how would we rate the owner's enjoyment of the hobby, ability to move forward, compared to our thread

stark night vs day is how I'd rate it, he's hating reefing. he's buying 2, 3+ bottles of bac all based on the common link of non digital red sea test kit. We are tracking that here to see how long it takes old cycling science to give him peace of mind.

 

[brandon429]

It’s neat you have two living fish, acting + feeding normally

we usually don’t get that kind of preconfirmation

 

[brandon429]

It looks like you’ve cycled with a chunk of dry rock and some sand, is that right

its been in contact this whole time?

 

[brandon429]

The sole indicator causing doubt is a non digital test kit, not the tanks inability to carry life

that’s all our pages, all our examples. right now in the chemistry forum there’s an exact thread with the same readings, only it’s two months old vs two weeks here. They are handling it as a stuck cycle, inability to control ammonia even though he too has two fish doing fine. His tank is having a bacterial bloom / we must have 200+ examples of cycled tanks getting bacteria blooms from the things people dose to them, people buy UV sterilizers to fix those all the posts show

but since the title of the thread was about a problem cycle, it’s being handled that way, opposite to our thread.


uncycled tanks can’t carry bioload. Cycled tanks carry bioload, it’s the most fundamental overlook impact non digital ammonia tests cause in reefing, it continues strong to this day.

notice on our thread: nobody who owns a calibrated seneye has this issue, not one, not ever.

 

[Mrcote1]

Yes I used a couple pieces of dry rock as well as sand. Nothing live.

Interestingly, my nitrite kit is starting to give a reading of about 0.25 now. I have read through a lot of the posts here so I think I will go ahead and order the seahorses since the 2 fish are doing just fine.

Its funny because before I stumbled on all your posts and reading through everything, I was going to buy another bottle of bacteria to try and speed things up

 

[Garf]

Yes I used a couple pieces of dry rock as well as sand. Nothing live.

Interestingly, my nitrite kit is starting to give a reading of about 0.25 now. I have read through a lot of the posts here so I think I will go ahead and order the seahorses since the 2 fish are doing just fine.

Its funny because before I stumbled on all your posts and reading through everything, I was going to buy another bottle of bacteria to try and speed things up

If your getting positive nitrite, your ammonia is likely real. I’d water change it out.

 

[brandon429]

Agreed, double bac won’t help/ cycle isn’t an issue-ability to carry life is set without testing further. If that was my system I would age it a while before seahorses not for ammonia issues but to get some benthic growth communities in the tank for such sensitive life forms, totally dry setups can be scary/harsh for marine fish we read in the disease forum


get them some hitching posts, or macroalgae/ things that are more welcoming than just white rocks

if they aren’t h. zosterae micro horses the hydroids won’t be as big of an issue, if they are the dwarf horses then hydroids would be a concern hitching in on anything coming from another marine system

I would age the scaping more before adding the horses, and along with our first post there’s no observation plan in place in a holding system to rule out disease, any direct stocking of a display in skipping quarantine observation periods is a disease risk loss not a cycle issue

 

[Mrcote1]

Yea they will be dwarf seahorse, and i planned on filling the tank with macroalgae for hitching posts.

I planned on doing a big water change anyways

 

[Garf]

Yea they will be dwarf seahorse, and i planned on filling the tank with macroalgae for hitching posts.

I planned on doing a big water change anyways

Did you use tapwater?

 

[Mrcote1]

Did you use tapwater?

No I used distilled water. I tested it with my TDS meter and verified it was 0 TDS

 

[brandon429]

Ten of those horses will be less bioload than the two mollies, I would like to have some horses where are you getting them

 

[brandon429]

I can't see any reason two tiny horses couldn't be tried in my pico reef, unless corals can eat them/ my pico is all mouths

 

[Mrcote1]

Ten of those horses will be less bioload than the two mollies, I would like to have some horses where are you getting them

Mysaltwaterfishstore is where i get them. Ive had them before and they are pretty neat. Corals dont mix with dwarfs as any type of sting can injure them and the babies are extremely small and esily eaten. gorgonians and apparently some leathers are compatible.

dwarfs are super dirty as they need to eat live baby brine shrimp every day.

Ill buy them and post on here how they do. I feel pretty confident based on all the other stories on here.

 

[Mrcote1]

Day 3 with the dwarf seahorses and gorgonian. One died on day 1 but others are doing good so far

 

[brandon429]

thats amazing they're so tiny! you have been feeding them decapped brine shrimp>?

 

[brandon429]

I have a bowl/vase sitting ready for years empty, truly this makes me want to cycle up some dry rock by adding fish food, waiting a month, get some hitching macros from our pet store, and getting about 5 horses in it/that's my favorite fish of all

I hope that place you mentioned can ship me some it's fair weather time here in Austin TX

the first saltwater tank I ever had came from the back of a hunting magazine in 1987 a friend brought to our 7th grade class. very last ad page: seahorses, complete kit, send $25 to florida

so I mowed a few lawns, mailed it off and 6 weeks later in the mail was a styrofoam container the size of a large coffee mug sitting inside a plastic fishbowl

it had a package of salt, a bag of about ten horses packed in pressurized air, a fake plant, some substrate, and some complicated instructions I could not understand. So, I put the bowl next to my bed with clean drinking water in it


I added the horses lol


then the salt, with no salinity meter/I just thought you add it.

and they died, but I'm telling you I never forgot what the potential of that tiny aquarium would have looked like :)

I spent my entire life trying to make up for that poor first go.

 

[Mrcote1]

Well i had these shipped while the weather was below freezing where I am so youre definitely good!

And there are 18 of them in the 10 gallon tank, and I could eaaily put another 20 in. Once the tank matures ill add macro algae.

And yes I feed decapped freshly hatched brine shrimp. Super easy and you can actually hatch them, then store in an airtight container in the fridge for 3 or 4 days so you dont have to hatch everyday. You can also decap the eggs ahead of time and store in a brine solution.

 

[brandon429]

I wish you could try alternate feed options, such as reef nutrition artic pods/ it would be amazing to find things they would eat alternatively, just like some did with mandarins who ate dry food pellets

not as a full change to their diet, but just occasional tests to see what was received or not

 

[brandon429]

https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/has-my-tank-cycled.964615/#post-11033814

here is a new troubleshoot, which has a place in this thread.

its relation here is that about 100+ other cycles exactly like this one are filed right here and deemed already done, before they posted :)

 

[brandon429]

Official Trends from this thread on false cycle stalls:


-I have yet to encounter a cycle here, that I can recall for pages, where they weren't already done before posting.

its like that for all reef forums, all the time, years back. this isn't a new trend...being already cycled and not knowing it.

the new trend was seneye posts starting eight years ago telling us that non digital nh4 kits were way, way off the truth in cycling and that the cycling rules from yesterday were completely wrong.