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MaxTremors

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Nice post. That is the going way forums think about filtration biology, that is the best summary of how forums see filters in action agreed, in any survey respondents would agree w that

To show my position tell me what you think of this set of posts by MSteven1

Just for starters look at these details:

He creates a functioning filter and proves it by specifically adding zero feed, zero bottle bac

His sole two factors in creating the filter were water and time

If this isn't a perfect caption of the hidden truths in filtration not given to forums, truly if it's not total context for the discussion let me know and I'll find a better example:



We didn't have to provide anything beyond water for bacterial mass to bloom itself and grow. Bottle bac sellers tricked us into forgetting this rule so we centralize our offerings (purchases from them) as the sole method of helping bacteria


They don't want us to know how filtration really works, it lessens clicks on their products and surrounding supports


Withholding feed never strips away or starves a biofilter. We can see positive mass earned there with only water, having feed offered by hand isn't required. It's impossible to starve out a biofilter in a non sealed system.

They self feed forever if kept wet
A couple things to consider.

First, we know definitively that marine species of algae can reach thousands of miles inland from the wind. Sea birds get algae and cyano bacteria spores in their feathers, which then dry in flight and are then air born and carried by the wind, so it can also be assumed that all sorts of marine bacteria including nitrifying bacteria are airborne thousands of miles inland


-scroll down for the relevant citation

Second, in an unsealed system, and especially an open top/rimless system, in a human home, the amount of organic dust, human skin, and dust mites that that would decompose and provide a source of ammonia is not zero. Even in the cleanest homes, an open topped aquarium is essentially an uncleaned surface (ie if you had an open-topped aquarium and an equal sized surface side by side and you left each for a year, the amount of dust on the non-aquarium surface would be significant, certainly enough to keep a bacterial population alive in an aquarium.

Third, in the example you linked (and we’ll ignore the problem with taking a single, unrepeated, uncontrolled, completely anecdotal example and using it as definitive proof of a theory), if bacteria are always at their full capacity, and they spontaneously appear in aquariums, why did it take sixty days to be able to process a small amount of Ammonia? We know definitively that these bacteria reproduce very quickly, so if their existence and reproduction isn’t dependent on a food source, shouldn’t the bacteria have fully colonized the aquarium within a few days? And if the bacteria was at full capacity for the tank, it they don’t require a food source to reproduce, shouldn’t the tank have been able to process more than 1ml of ammonia in 24hours (and even at 48 hours it was still non-zero)? I would suggest that there was a small amount of bacteria that was surviving on the small amount of dust/organic material that had gotten into the tank, and upon adding 1ml of ammonia, they quickly reproduced to be able to consume the Ammonia (and also the test 24hours after showed a non-zero amount of ammonia).

Fourth, isn’t it inconsistent to claim that so many people who use API ammonia tests and are showing small amounts of ammonia in their tanks a few days after adding bottled back are getting false positives, but in this case an API ammonia test also showing the lowest amount of Ammonia per the tests resolution also be called into question? Or is it that the ‘false positives’ maybe aren’t always false? I guess my point is that constantly claiming that API is inaccurate and the using an API test as proof of your theory is problematic. I want to be very clear that I’m not claiming dishonesty, but perhaps it shows some bias in that it you’re willing to accept API results when they reinforce your preconceived theory, and disregard them as false positives when they don’t.

Lastly, As great a resource information as R2R is, and as much as we can learn from each other and use that information to develop theories, using uncontrolled anecdotal accounts from users is not definitive proof of a theory.
 

brandon429

why did you put a reef in that
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(and we’ll ignore the problem with taking a single, unrepeated, uncontrolled, completely anecdotal example and using it as definitive proof of a theory),


I stopped reading here because it wasnt single, its one of ten :)

plus unassisted cycling was all I ever did in the 80's, its how i cut aquarium teeth. needing bottle bac and constant retail doser dependency is the new training which I work to undo...


and btw this discussion is excellent and moves the hobby forward.

Next up, try and link for us one single example of any reef tank arrangement that could not control its ammonia. You can pick any new cycling post ever made, and especially any currently running reef to show for an example. The inference above (though you did not use reef tank examples for a reef tank discussion) is that we can create by haphazard some form of arrangement that won't work as a biofilter...perhaps someone takes fallow too long, the bac go dormant, and the fish reintroduced die.


I would like to see one specific aquarium example of your inference, and when you link one I predict it will not be a seneye post it'll be red sea or api, no tan conversion panics and totally symptomless fish with open corals, clear water. I think not one example exists for the null outcome, and that we've been hyped by bottle bac sellers for twenty years or more on the risk.

if you can link a clearly-shown aquarium example of ammonia noncontrol due to bacterial loss then we'll have a start. and it can't be a uronema mass fish wipeout, resulting decay overcomes known practical abilities

we're talking bacterial starvation or lack of sustenance or even lack of direct addition of filter bac as the etiology/loss cause

let's see the post. we can link it here when found:
 

brandon429

why did you put a reef in that
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anecdote patterns became legitimized in reefing as soon as scholars failed to inform us that pico reefing was optional the entire time.


the only thread you can find on the entire internet for moving reef tanks home to home successfully (actually using five years of logged tank works, its not from the perspective of an author moving his or her own tank, an actual work thread still running of hundreds of reefs for tracking) was provided 110% by anecdote patterning and zero peer reviews other than the happy tank owning peers.

same for peroxide use


anecdotes that are useful now vastly outpace formal discoveries for procedural options it seems.

this especially goes for cycling.
 
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MaxTremors

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(and we’ll ignore the problem with taking a single, unrepeated, uncontrolled, completely anecdotal example and using it as definitive proof of a theory),


I stopped reading here because it wasnt single, its one of ten :)

plus unassisted cycling was all I ever did in the 80's, its how i cut aquarium teeth. needing bottle bac and constant retail doser dependency is the new training which I work to undo...


and btw this discussion is excellent and moves the hobby forward.

Next up, try and link for us one single example of any reef tank arrangement that could not control its ammonia. You can pick any new cycling post ever made, and especially any currently running reef to show for an example. The inference above (though you did not use reef tank examples for a reef tank discussion) is that we can create by haphazard some form of arrangement that won't work as a biofilter...perhaps someone takes fallow too long, the bac go dormant, and the fish reintroduced die.


I would like to see one specific aquarium example of your inference, and when you link one I predict it will not be a seneye post it'll be red sea or api, no tan conversion panics and totally symptomless fish with open corals, clear water. I think not one example exists for the null outcome, and that we've been hyped by bottle bac sellers for twenty years or more on the risk.

if you can link a clearly-shown aquarium example of ammonia noncontrol due to bacterial loss then we'll have a start. and it can't be a uronema mass fish wipeout, resulting decay overcomes known practical abilities

we're talking bacterial starvation or lack of sustenance or even lack of direct addition of filter bac as the etiology/loss cause

let's see the post. we can link it here when found:
I think you’re misunderstanding my point. I’m not suggesting that unsealed aquariums, once bacteria is introduced (regardless of how), somehow lose their bacteria and become unable to convert ammonia (I think it’s possible, but incredibly unlikely to happen in an unsealed tank). What I’m saying is:

1.That the bacteria do not just magically appear (they must be introduced somehow, whether through bottled bac, live rock, fish, live sand, airborne spores, etc.).

2. That they cannot live indefinitely without a food source (they have to have a source of nutrients to produce ATP once their stores have been depleted).

3. That in a sealed environment they could be eventually starved out, and that in cases where someone has gone fallow, that depending on how long they’ve been fallow that the biological filtration can be weakened but that the bacteria that have survived (whether they’ve just endured or they’ve subsisted on ammonia created by decaying household dust and microfauna in the tank) reproduce fast enough to be able to handle the biological load of the fish introduced after the fallow period.

4. That not all API readings of small amounts of Ammonia in established tanks that have gone fallow and then reintroduced fish or when a significant amount of fish are introduced to an existing system are ‘false positives’, I think there is likely a small amount of ammonia in some of the cases but that the bacteria reproduces quickly enough that it doesn’t really affect anything.

I’m pretty much in agreement with you about tanks being cycled much more quickly than is often stated, and that bottled bac is useless once a tank is established (at least in terms of nitrification), where I differ is that I don’t believe that nitrifying bacteria somehow defy commonly accepted natural processes (that they spontaneously appear out of nowhere and that they can live indefinitely without a food source).

I actually really appreciate and admire the work you’ve put into trying to fully understand the biological processes that we call ‘cycling’. I think you’ve helped a lot of people to better understand the process of cycling a tank and when it is and isn’t safe to add fish, but I think you’re off-base when it comes to those two parts of the equation.
 

brandon429

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very good points and agreed I see we do agree pretty well. all that Im thinking comes mainly from post patterns so variances can still pop up any time/hopefully be tracked out when occurring

this is my take on the four good points:

1. agreed fully. Dr Tim once commented in a post earlier in that bottle bac thread that cycling bac are likely getting in via original prep water/line scum slough/since its not boiled or sterilized water we're sourcing. agreed fully w that point

2. agreed fully, our context add-in would be that all open topped systems provide that input by the minute / standard contaminations, occasional gnats, human skin cell dander carbon on and on. we dont have to buy, or add that feed is what I consider a renewed finding in the hobby reminiscent of old times where not everyone viewed water bac in water as so finicky

3. 1000% agreed. Dr Reef and I conducted that experiment on his dime at his house, he set up a test vase packed in siporax media, water, and a huge dose of common cycling bottle bac zero feed. the lid was a tight fit, with only literally one pinhole for input. left for 15 mos on the mantle

I fully predicted it would still pass oxidation testing, and it did not. that 99.9% seal was effective for true starvation, that's the first documented limitation of water bac in water I've seen and it took that unique arrangement to produce it.

4. only slight disagree there, since we can't even know their reagent shaking/preps/time to report the levels/prior dosing of Prime and nine other possible adulterants. this is why its fun to pin everything on seneye proofing, they're tighter-indicated levels not subject to such variance. in fact they meet unique calibrations that we never see in api posts: sample any 100 seneye owners who are tuned and calibrated and all of them report a running display in the thousandths ppm, I know of no outliers among the trimmed units.

but ask that of api, and 99% will report .25 or .5 subjectively. that makes api a complete suspect among 100% of ammonia non control posts. seneye comprises zero pct of ammonia noncontrol threads, plus seneye matches the presentation of the tank/symptomatology if any and the clear water/open corals. api posts hardly ever do that

I dont think I'd believe anyone's uncalibrated stated api reading unless it was from Taricha, Dan P or Randy or Dr. Reef/ chemists

*jury still out on whether seneye is any good/ Im merely spotting its consistent match to actual tank presentation in a world where nearly all stated readings contradict the visual status of the reef/ false ammonia control posts
 

KevPool

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Welcome to R2R
ryan reynolds deadpool GIF
 
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