Is anyone with a mindstream or seneye ammonia reader willing to co-fund a cycling experiment with me

Rtaylor

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Might I suggest you establish a more scientific design?
First,
You need a null hypothesis, (what exactly are you trying to prove or disprove)? This needs to be extremely specific and include quantitative measures for success.

second: experimental design
1. All test environments need to be as identical as possible.
-same water source
- same salt mix
- same temperature
- same nutrient import and export (feeding and filtration)
-same water volume
-same additives, etc
- same lighting and light schedule
You need to isolate what you are testing so that it is the only thing that varies in the experiments.

You also need control tanks that match exactly except you don’t add the element you are testing (bottled bacteria). This is the best way to isolate and establish a true causal relationship in your experiment.

You need to deploy statistical methods to determine if any findings are significant and how significant they are. I like your idea, but for people to take it seriously it needs a much more rigorous approach.
 
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brandon429

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why did you put a reef in that
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we are able to make up for the rigidity in the study by simply having for the first time a calibrated seneye and someone willing to run the basic experiments to show things like bottle bac works right out the gate

because we were all taught about reefing from the perspective of a slightly green, slightly yellow api tube.

no strong alignments were needed to confirm that fact that bottle bac works right out of the gate, and 99% of the hobby in a poll would have said it wasn't possible. amazing what anecdotes can discover right?
 

Rtaylor

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we are able to make up for the rigidity in the study by simply having for the first time a calibrated seneye and someone willing to run the basic experiments to show things like bottle bac works right out the gate

because we were all taught about reefing from the perspective of a slightly green, slightly yellow api tube.

no strong alignments were needed to confirm that fact that bottle bac works right out of the gate, and 99% of the hobby in a poll would have said it wasn't possible. amazing what anecdotes can discover right?
So what is your goal? Just to provide people with anecdotal stories and Seneye data to support each story? This methodology will just prove that in each individual tank (all with different filtration, water, lighting, feeding, maintenance, water change schedules, etc.) the ammonia readings were -xyz. Given a large enough sample size you could establish a correlation, but without a control group, it is irresponsible to suggest that there is a causation.

Perhaps Jonny had great results but performed twice weekly water changes and used an oversized skimmer, utilized a refugium, etc. While Jane had terrible results, while feeding a handful of food 12 times a day and used only filter socks for filtration. My point being, the reason you aren't getting really serious reefers interest with this suggestion is that it isn't a scientific approach, therefore, though it may provide interesting data that people could find helpful, it wouldn't change the ability to successfully claim whether fish-in cycles are harmful to fish or not. It just provides more anecdotal evidence albeit with better data than people typically provide.
 
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brandon429

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why did you put a reef in that
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the goal is this:

nobody in reefing could answer how long an unassisted marine cycle takes to complete. Thanks to seneye informal studies, for the first time in reefing or in any printed material, we can say a bucket of rocks and water will self cycle within 60 days as that's been determined now in Dr Reef's thread using seneye. that's groundbreaking, and didn't take all the formal alignments to get there.

same for Jon's discovery and updates for bottle bac ability. that's been found too on Dr Reefs bottle bac thread, but he confirms it and shows nice patterning.
we get to relate the total surface area presentation and resulting nh3 controls using Jon's thread, that was neat to see how limited surface area in his qt translated to controlling nh3 in the hundredths ppm, vs normal reefs full of sand and rocks that always control it down to thousandths.

-only seneye lets us know that no reef tanks have stalled cycles. Before seneye, and loose experiments with it, just about everyone Ive ever met in reefing agrees reef tanks manage their nh3 endpoints in wide variation. they don't, this was a new seneye discovery even using the looser means of setting up the systems and inferences

- ill edit in more discoveries in a sec brb / at work

we don't have to have the usual controls to make big gains using seneye
 
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Rtaylor

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I get what you are saying. But, it isn't a scientific process is all I'm getting at. You can provide great information, but without rigorous scientific design and statistical analysis including evaluation of the impacts of other elements of system design (filtration, bio-load, temp, etc.), you can only make general conclusions without a defined margin of error. You can say the data suggests that in this situation....a,b,c.... you could expect these results.

Will your experiment show whether temperature influences the denitrification cycle? That is the type of question that a thorough statistical analysis would include if the temperature of the various test systems were not consistent? Perhaps, the results will be as described in temp range 76-79, but significantly different in temp range 80-82, or 72-75 for example. I'm not saying it isn't interesting or useful information, just cautioning you on the strength of your conclusions. Correlation does not equal causation.
 
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brandon429

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why did you put a reef in that
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The day someone writes updated cycling information article/book/blog entry that directly references seneye studies or even the hach lab nh3 monitors, I hear those are even better, is the day our hobby will greatly advance. they need to incorporate the new changes to the hobby with live rock transfer skip cycling, bottle bac skip cycling, does nitrite matter ever, at any time, and what's the minimum amount of live rock needed to run a common reef bioload-- things like that are yet to be determined. that puts us in a fun phase for the hobby imo
new cycling science articles should be -required- to input a section on mis testing issues and how that doesn't change the basic ruleset/timing by nature even when encountered.

I'd also appreciate a section on how mis testing affected the last 20 years of reefing microbiology compared to digital means barely available today...how it affected market purchases such as bottle bac for stuck cycles etc.

all that is left out of the current rule set for cycles.

For sure in a controlled study the potential to make these findings gain legitimacy is amplified agreed fully. I hope those are done and written about it will be groundbreaking info/updates

we will be able to discern snippets of those truths with seneye web patterns at a very fast rate of discovery, faster than they can print new rules to allow for--fun times in this hobby!
 
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CoralClasher

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Update experiment 1. Ten gallon QT started with all new water on 2/12/21, no bottle bacteria, the plastic biological filter was soaked in DT sump for 30 days. Fish was added day one.
Today is day 7. Ammonia has slowly climbed to 0.021. I just did my first water change of 4 gallons and ammonia dropped to 0.015. I have not seen the ammonia drop by it’s self just a slow climb. The fish is camera shy but is eating and acting fine.
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Well I’m back at it again. 3 fish in the ten gallon QT with copper and Dr. Tim’s one and only. I used ten gallons from the top of my DT and a hand full of macros. Ammonia did climb but has now dropped. All fish have looked fine and acting normal.
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brandon429

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why did you put a reef in that
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100% enjoy reading this documentation, timeline, fish! Im jealous
 

CoralClasher

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I really thought this round of fish was going to be too much for the ten gallon QT. I’m running out of room for fish. So I won’t have many more updates for you unless something strange happens in the DT.
 
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brandon429

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why did you put a reef in that
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Excellent we assume the patterns continue based on surface area changes until further updates on changes, excellence thank you so much Jon
 

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