How to unstick any seemingly stuck cycle

[collins.jason.k]

March 08, 2023 Water and Fritz added.
1 pinch of finely ground fish food added.

March 18, 2023 fish will be introduced from another tank in the house, same salinity and temp. Will not test. No lights, I refuse to even mount them so I won't have the urge to turn them on before a good amount of time passes, I know already that it's going to be challenging starting with dry rock and dry sand.

Will add to post with the results, which will I'm sure be pictures of fish that are happily moving to a home that's 100 gallons bigger.

Just an update...

Put together my mesh lid this morning after realizing I was a day behind schedule.

Took two clownfish from another tank in my living room, same 77 temp, same 35ppt salinity.
Placed fish into the tank.
Fish are swimming around doing clown things. No heavy breathing. No erratic behavior.

11 days have passed since adding Fritz and a ground pinch of fish flakes.

No testing, no deaths. Will continue to update.

 

[brandon429]

Jason thanks tons for updates!

 

[mwhitfield79100]

Update from my end. Tank progressing well. I also managed to acquire some pieces of live rock which I’ve added to the tank, levels seem to have dropped off loads.

I added some prime and stability.

since added a coral beauty, the shrimp and hermits / snails all seem fine and active.

is there anything else from my end you would like to hear about?

Thanks for the help and support.

 

[brandon429]

Our proof of cycle completion is the living animals

Never use prime in reefing (if there really was an ammonia issue it doesn't help and leaves the keeper taking no actual action)

stability isn't needed as well here since you're already done cycling

Those aren't harmful but they don't help with anything/ waste cash since we're dealing in completed cycles here.

Regarding prime use, it is ineffective for controlling ammonia in reefing/ made up marketing gimmick per the chemistry forum:

Does Prime actually "Detoxify" free ammonia, NH3?

Do these only bind ammonia for a short period of time? I do not know what happens to the aminomethanesulfonate that forms. It might eventually break down to release ammonia, or not.

www.reef2reef.com

 

[brandon429]

@mwhitfield79100 hey can u post updated tank picture

 

[mwhitfield79100]

Our proof of cycle completion is the living animals

Never use prime in reefing (if there really was an ammonia issue it doesn't help and leaves the keeper taking no actual action)

stability isn't needed as well here since you're already done cycling

Those aren't harmful but they don't help with anything/ waste cash since we're dealing in completed cycles here.

Regarding prime use, it is ineffective for controlling ammonia in reefing/ made up marketing gimmick per the chemistry forum:

Does Prime actually "Detoxify" free ammonia, NH3?

Do these only bind ammonia for a short period of time? I do not know what happens to the aminomethanesulfonate that forms. It might eventually break down to release ammonia, or not.

www.reef2reef.com

Thanks for the update. I will disregard the use of this. I will send some photo updates soon.

I’m discovering batches of diatoms which seemed to clear naturally but has come back.

My nitrate is 0
Amonia - 0.50
nitrite - 50
Phosphate- 0.50

What would you suggest to finally zero this maybe another water change. Done one approx 10-12 days ago, 170 litre tank.

currently housing

1X dwarf Angel
2x hermit crabs only ones active
3x snails only x2 active one recently added.

I’m at approx week 9- 10 I believe. What’s next any advice?

 

[brandon429]

I know it’s a lot to absorb over 40 pages: your api test kit is wrong, that’s why all your tank life is fine and growths that indicate completed cycling (diatoms) are visually seen in your tank

your reading isn’t .5, its a misread/ your ammonia is fine and doesn’t need zeroing, we don’t use guess test levels to fix up your cycle

re read post#1 / page 1 from the thread that will fix you up.

*agreed this seems backwards to any cycling info you’ve read / it’s what makes this thread unique. You will see the levels drop in maybe fourteen days or less but thats just api lag time taking weeks past the real ammonia safety date for your tank, that you’d see a while back if you owned a seneye. Our thread exists here to study the impacts from api misreads (people buy extra unneeded things to fix up false stalled cycles)

if you add nothing new and just watch your tank and ignore the readings from non digital test kits, your tank will be doing fine next month too. Only fish disease independent from cycling is the risk, not ammonia. Fallow and quarantine and exceptional feed habits including live feed are how to best head off disease losses in fish.

our whole study is that if you just ignore your test kits, the cycle is fine because of how long your tank has been running. The ammonia and nitrite testing just misleads everyone from clear exact start dates.

 

[brandon429]

Quarantine Tank Cycle "Stuck"

Hello Having trouble cycling my QT Tank. Before you say it I know, you don't need to cycle QT tanks, Just monitor ammonia levels and keep up with frequent water changes. Due to my work life schedule I fear that I wont be able to do that correctly. Anyways I've read a lot of the forums, but I'm...

www.reef2reef.com

testless unstall of a quarantine setup. this was the exact formula:

-did the surface area in that setup mimic known sufficient surface area from other qt setups? yes, it exceeded them by average. it had more than average surface area on the bottom floor of the tank and in a hang on back filter. wasn't just three pvc pipes in a ten gallon aquarium

-was the aquarist using bottle bac that Dr. Reef has already tracked to implantation faster than this tank has been waiting? yes, by days over.

-was this aquarium stocked and fed with bacteria and past day ten on a cycling chart for it's wait time> yes

was the intended bioload outside a reasonable load compared to other setups> no

=the outcome is the fish are fine. testing did not factor at all, it misled in fact. when people replicate already known working degrees of surface area and feed a marine setup, the degree of surface area will be the limiting factor in bioload carry past day ten it won't be a lack of bacteria = updated cycling science.

reef tanks that copy surface area constants tend to cycle by the same date. cycles wait times don't vary wildly among reef tank and qt setups. ten days looks to be enough, if forty pages of work aids in proofing.

we didn't buy and add more bottled bacteria. we didn't use a test kit to decide anything here other than temp and salinity.

 

[KnH]

Strange Dead Lazy reef setup 90g, Life got in the way of any progress, starting again, it's just been hanging out running return pump, heater, filter sock, Is my tank cycled? Setup in OCT 2021, sand added, pukani dry rock (didn’t rinse the rock figure the dead biomass would aid in cycling) added some quick cycle ammonia, added some microbacter 7. The glass surfaces are all brown diatoms from ambient room lighting. After a good clearing of the glass am I good to go or start the 10-day fish food cycle?

thanks

 

[brandon429]

how neat, that is so perfect for our thread. Based on precedent here yes for sure it will carry life, clean it out so waste compounds and poison won't irritate/kill sensitive marine animals but it's ammonia carry won't be harmed by that long fallow wait. diatoms are excellent visual proof indicator

dont forget, what a non digital test kit says about ammonia has no bearing/ it's ability to carry life once it's all cleaned up is the proof. the non digital test kits lie a lot lol

the reason we needed a forty page thread to rewrite cycling rules is due to misreads in non digital test kits.

hey can you post a pic of that tank so we can see the details

fallow time cannot starve a reef tanks cycle bacteria. old cycling science says it will, we say it won't, that's the old west duel in action

once we rip clean that tank/don't add any bacteria it's not needed/it will carry life.

 

[brandon429]

Wild salinity swings accounted for

No topoff details were provided but by the nature of having diatoms that means salinity is in the range bacteria would survive just like 'toms did. It would have to be nearly pure salt sludge to kill marine bacteria

 

[KnH]

Looks like I did a blackout. Wiped the glass and now the water looks like grape koolaid. The rocks have patches of diatoms even without any lights. Will start researching on how to beat them or try to wait them out

 

[Garf]

Looks like I did a blackout. Wiped the glass and now the water looks like grape koolaid. The rocks have patches of diatoms even without any lights. Will start researching on how to beat them or try to wait them out

Not a typical diatom condition, is it. Perhaps summit else?

 

[Crustaceon]

I'd never do a blackout for diatoms. They're one of the rare "self-resolving" issues in this hobby.

 

[brandon429]

Look at the sandbed cross section: has big waste cloud contained

Needs rip cleaned or you'll be fighting invasions every month that reef runs if you stock and light it

Algae Identification

Any opinions on what type of algae this is growing on my rocks and sand bed?

www.reef2reef.com

Study this rip clean thread, do what we did take no shortcuts no custom shortcuts just do it the right way for laser clear fix we show

All those jobs are all new water too
No bottle bac is added, we're peeling off waste to reveal live bacteria on the rocks

That tank is for sure cycled it needs old waste compounds removed before you begin, only export can fix that eutrophic condition tank, nothing you add can fix it

Study all jobs in that rip clean thread above do what we did for the long term win here

 

[Mwatts12]

@brandon429

Hello, I have a 225 gallon that is infested with probably a thousand aptasia. I had Dino’s real bad for months, once cleared it revealed a better surprise which was all the aptasia.

I have exhausted nudis, peps, kleinis, CBB and file fish. $$$$$$

My last resort is to do a rip clean and scrape these guys out?

I have about 20 acro frags. My plan is now to take them off the rocks and put them back on plugs and on a rack.

Take out the rock piece by piece and knife the heck out of it??

I believe due to the size of the aptasia they are too big for most of the predators for it.

Any help. From anyone would be appreciated

I do NOT want a restart.

 

[swilliams2207]

@brandon429

Hello, I have a 225 gallon that is infested with probably a thousand aptasia. I had Dino’s real bad for months, once cleared it revealed a better surprise which was all the aptasia.

I have exhausted nudis, peps, kleinis, CBB and file fish. $$$$$$

My last resort is to do a rip clean and scrape these guys out?

I have about 20 acro frags. My plan is now to take them off the rocks and put them back on plugs and on a rack.

Take out the rock piece by piece and knife the heck out of it??

I believe due to the size of the aptasia they are too big for most of the predators for it.

Any help. From anyone would be appreciated

I do NOT want a restart.

I took @brandon429 s advice and did a full rip clean because of Dino’s. Rinsed sand bed with tap water, cleaned rocks in old tank water, cleaned entire tank, changed 50% of water, and reassembled everything. Held all rocks/corals/fish in 30 gallon tubs for about 30 hours or so while all this was going on. No fish or coral loss. No new cycle. My tank is mostly SPS with several acros. Best decision I ever made. Whatever Brandon says is the way to go.

 

[Mwatts12]

Thank you for the reply. However my tank is bare bottom with hundreds of pounds of rock. The aptasia is growing in the bottom of the tank as well and on the corners of the glass etc. etc. EVERYWHERE

I think I’m looking for the best way to do this?

Pull rocks out and knife the aptasia out, use a razor blade to scrape the bottom of the tank as well….. just don’t know where to begin.

I’ll post a pic tomorrow when lights are on.

Any help advice would be appreciate from all. Lol.

 

[Dburr1014]

Thank you for the reply. However my tank is bare bottom with hundreds of pounds of rock. The aptasia is growing in the bottom of the tank as well and on the corners of the glass etc. etc. EVERYWHERE

I think I’m looking for the best way to do this?

Pull rocks out and knife the aptasia out, use a razor blade to scrape the bottom of the tank as well….. just don’t know where to begin.

I’ll post a pic tomorrow when lights are on.

Any help advice would be appreciate from all. Lol.

How were the nudis implemented? How long ago?
What live stock do you currently have?

Nudies can not be done when you are using another natural method.
For instance; nudies with a file fish. The fish will eat nudies cuz they taste the same.

 

[brandon429]

I don't want any common methods advised in this thread, they don't work and we want only atypical methods advised here this isn't a common work thread its a unique one. I don't want to argue with anyone about methods in my own threads, alternate takes can easily start their own aiptasia thread

Mwatts so sorry to miss your message sent i don't usually do that, there's been tons of drama threads/ arguments/ distracting me lately here and it's really taken my focus away from my friends who just want to do good on the site and solve friendly problems.

SWiiliams thank you so much brother for the kind words am so glad a $ tank like that was helped with deep surgical cleaning you did the job really thorough to have them comply in one pass that's for sure, I'm not always that lucky in dinos battles they're the top scourge in reefing

@Mwatts12

Mwatts just like all 40 pages of this thread are completely opposite rules for cycling compared to any read you can find or sample from a cycling article, the same goes for aiptasia

There's a common path people tell each other to take (animals, injections to them, joes juice, f aiptasia additive) then there's what we do that would never involve any of that: deep rasping surgery outside the tank. My concern is that after this much buildup time the numbers are too daunting to employ our screwdriver trick which works wonders and is the only way I would ever ever use or recommend.

Animals as aiptasia grazers, injections and concoctions applied simply only work sometimes and they rarely work when someone is told to control aiptasia that way. When they do work is when someone gets lucky with those ways, and its not common or aiptasia wouldn't be the third worst scourge in the hobby they'd be beaten. The masses advise each other in ways that promote reproduction of aiptasia though they don't mean to.

The easiest path to fix your bad invasion is to switch out all your rock for new cured live rock from a pet store that has no aiptasia. This is costly bigtime, can't be dry rock must be live cured rock $$ and we can simply move your corals onto it and continue with your reef without any invasion

It'll save you days and days of complex surgical prep. Then you can use the correct prevention method to prevent any new ones from taking over your live rock.

*if that's not feasible and you must keep current rock then the job works like this: a razor blade can't be used for aiptasia on rock because it's too weak to cut rock

Has to be a sharpened flathead screwdriver which is tapped or pushed up under the aiptasia with your target rock sitting out on the counter in the air. It'll look like little golf divots dotted all over the rock when you're done which is why this is best used at the start vs at the end of an aiptasia invasion

You must chip up under the aiptasia, small damage to the rock, which lifts out its footing/pedal attachments to the rock which is what injections and animals leave behind to reproduce. The divot will fill in with coralline or coral growth over time.

If you want the arduous task of rasping your entire tank free of them vs a skip cycle live rock changeout let's do one example rock here from your tank as pictures

Take out a sample rock, set it on the counter, and go to town like an 1800's gold miner on it with a tap hammer and a screwdriver and manhandle the anemones off the rock they came in on, be forceful, notch them out at the base working carefully around corals. Do one rock to completion and post pics so we can see progress