Thanks for the input, I think I will just wait and see how day 20-30 go for now as I am just about to get fish in QT observation so I am in no rush. Funny thing is I am going to use Biospira to set up the QT.thanks tons for posting
The issue with bottle bac directions is they don’t account for constant misreads, which is any cycling param not from a calibrated digital read.
we have no way to meet their directions with today’s tools
our angle here is that for the last twenty years the hobby decided to attribute bacteria as the weak ones and not the test kits...so forum cycles take 30-90 days and MACNA cycles were instantly ready for decades, to sell us products used to skip cycles
we use known wait times plus minor clues such as some nitrite, some nitrate, to prove added bacteria weren’t dead - those are active footprints for nitrification.
so for our thread what we’ve done is reference work threads that charted out bottle bac brands using accurate kits, setting known timelines for completion and by extension no bottle bac takes longer than a cycling chart shows to complete, they're all thirty days maximum duration to finish. Most brands of bottle bac are ready in three days, or sooner, it’s why fish-in cycling doesn’t kill fish the bottle bac is fairly good nowadays
At the end of any given cycle (a pre chosen time underwater, not a test kit reading) we change water, add life and begin without consulting the test kits. Our thread is unique in that we don’t believe their readings, they are only approximations.
if you are in doubt of where the cycle is, simply let the current mix stew and in thirty days (you are already ten days wait) change for new water. If you have rocks and sand then it’s all cycled, and cannot fail to be. For anyone, cycles don’t fail to complete on at least this date.
this particular brand has been taking close to thirty days anyway to reliably move ammonia when people ran the three part ammonia test from page one. You can easily run that method on the ammonia kit (a series of three pictures) on a suspected completion date, or you can just ride out the current mix to day thirty and change water, you’ll be done regardless of what any kit says.
if you want to make use of purchases/bottle bac that allows a faster start than 30 days then the calibrated ammonia test from page one is the only way we know to make the ammonia kits work, to show the up/down motion. The brands of fritz, biospira and dr Tims are known to be ready in a few days after dosing, that fast they’re stuck to all surfaces per Dr. Reefs bottle bac comparison thread. This brand here you are using works, but it’s slowest
If you waited till day twenty total and changed water, I’m certain you can begin and that your test kits are likely to indicate a stall, as a misreport. So if we were taking your new reef to MACNA using that exact combo, we‘d pre cycle rocks for twenty days, to be ready on start date, some nitrate will prove your bottle was active vs killed mix, and we wouldn’t use the tests further we’d use twenty days duration as the closure. Plus big water change.
That’s how we make a dry start reef ready on time for MACNA, we could start twenty days early then we just move wet rocks up there and back home without using the tests other than initial glance at nitrate to prove activity.
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