Maintaining cycle in fishless Coral/CUC QT

[XLOR8T]

How do you keep a fishless coral QT cycled. Can inverts keep a tank cycled? It’s almost cycled but I want to make sure I don’t lose the bacteria culture. I have 9 snails in there right now and ghost feeding got me enough ammonia to do a quick cycle with a boost from Dr Tim’s one and only. I need a long term plan since it will almost always have corals in it for long term qt.

Do corals and inverts suffer from ammonia? Short term since I will test regularly and can always add bacteria.

Thanks

 

[brandon429]

All you have to do to keep a given surface area alive with nitrifers alive is give it hydration, water

We do not control full life and death of biofilm-bound bacteria on hydrated surfaces by withholding feed-it won’t matter, feed always gets in. It’s already there in the matrix, it’s a glue trap by design.

Any presence of life such as a single snail is more than enough, since hydration is all that’s required. I’ve collected some fallow testing work that shows up to 20+ months fully unfed condition still passing oxidation testing.

If you want to keep feeding it’s fine

If you stop feeding and only clean water circulates for two months, it will still be able to handle the same fish bioloading it once did, provided no surface area was reduced. That’s a testable claim it’d be neat to see testing you do on that if any
Ammonia has myriad natural pathways into the tank, we don't have to add it, but can add it redundantly as we always do in reefing if we want to.

 

[XLOR8T]

All you have to do to keep a given surface area alive with nitrifers alive is give it hydration, water

We do not control full life and death of biofilm-bound bacteria on hydrated surfaces by withholding feed-it won’t matter, feed always gets in. It’s already there in the matrix, it’s a glue trap by design.

Any presence of life such as a single snail is more than enough, since hydration is all that’s required. I’ve collected some fallow testing work that shows up to 20+ months fully unfed condition still passing oxidation testing.

Thank you! I think I will keep permanent snails in there.

 

[PatW]

various places sell liquid ammonia for cycling fish tanks. I add a very small amount on a regular basis to my qt tank to keep the bacteria populations up.

 

[beaslbob]

Why not just keep a male molly in the qt?

 

[XLOR8T]

Why not just keep a male molly in the qt?

I want it to be fallow to keep ich out of my display tank. So Invert and corals only. Otherwise I’d put a wrasse in there to eat up the pests too if they appear.

 

[brandon429]

remember, they don't die if we add nothing

you guys must've not been keeping tanks in the 80s heh

beasl you were, don't pretend like we had any microbe tricks back then we were all stabbing in the dark heh

cuz if we did, before cycling tricks and ghost feeding and bottle bac, we did it old school everywhere:

add plastic plants and epoxy gravel and corner bubbler w carbon, fill w water

add fish before 30 days, cloudy doom within 48 hours

add fish after 30 days, ready to go.
if you waited 35 days, still ready. 45, ready. 200+ same, its all about hydration.


you added water and waited, we've just forgotten and all the fancy gear makes us think a reef follows different microbiology

it literally feels weird not to add something


you've got a potential fallow proof test let it cruise a month, then add ammonium chloride up to 1 ppm max less if poss, something that registers on ammonia, and check back in 24 hours to see if it moved down, zero not required. any movement down is proof of what we already did in the 80s

itll pass

even if you waited 200 months. by then a million gnats and heterotrophic contamination bacteria off a sneeze in the vicinity and two pounds of wafted skin cells all broken down to feed about the same bac as you left with in 2018/prediction.

post back

 

[XLOR8T]

remember, they don't die if we add nothing

you guys must've not been keeping tanks in the 80s heh

beasl you were, don't pretend like we had any microbe tricks back then we were all stabbing in the dark heh

cuz if we did, before cycling tricks and ghost feeding and bottle bac, we did it old school everywhere:

add plastic plants and epoxy gravel and corner bubbler w carbon, fill w water

add fish before 30 days, cloudy doom within 48 hours

add fish after 30 days, ready to go.

you added water and waited, we've just forgotten and all the fancy gear makes us think a reef follows different microbiology

it literally feels weird not to add something


you've got a potential fallow proof test let it cruise a month, then add ammonium chloride up to 1 ppm max less if poss, something that registers on ammonia, and check back in 24 hours to see if it moved down, zero not required. any movement down is proof of what we already did in the 80s

itll pass

even if you waited 200 months. by then a million gnats and heterotrophic contamination bacteria off a sneeze in the vicinity and two pounds of wafted skin cells all broken down to feed about the same bac as you left with in 2018/prediction.

post back

Thanks will do!