Nitrogen Cycle Help... Approaching End what do i do between that and time i get fish.....

[Foggy Pirate]

Hey Everyone! Second post here in Reef2Reef and a new member! My name is Jeff
I just finished setting up my first Fluval evo 13.5 tank, everything stock except protein skimmer and a 240 wave maker. Iv did a fish less cycle with ammonia and as I believe its nearing the end im unaware of what to do between now and when i can get some fish. A lot of the online stores are out of stock. I’m not in any rusH and dont mind being patient, i just dont want the bacteria to die and have lost the cycle and bacteria due to nothing living in it. I have a little time, my NO2 is still at 0.2. I just want to know do i have to get some snails as iv read snails will create small amounts of ammonia. Should i phantom feed, and if so what should i phantom feed. And all around any advice as the cycle finishes up, without putting fish in right away. I am getting some alge or diatoms growing I believe. Ill link a picture, if that’s enough for snails I’d love to put some snails from the local fish store in. But again first tank and want all your advices. I think once the cycle is finished i have a few filter questions that ill post in the correct thread and once those are addressed ill be ready to add some live stock. Also once i know its done ill do my first water change and do that once a week. And as the water needs it.
I just cleaned the glass and moved the sand a little so its fairly cloudy, but the bottom right glass i didnt clean so y’all can get a sense of whats growing in there and if its viable for snails at this point. The tank has been cycling since i put the microbactor in on January 4th. Ammonia has reached 0 and NO2 is falling and yesterday was at 0.2.

 

[brandon429]

Place in one light pinch of feed and the current cycle will hold years in place without future feeding, longer than you’d ever wait


also: if you didn’t feed, same happens. It’s already been fed



source: threads that track post-cycle rock fallow tests out to three years so far.

these systems are open topped in homes and nobody has ever starved a set in cycle in a display tank, it’s been a persistent rumor for decades however.


the reason my blinds and ac intake need constant cleaning are the reasons your tank gets feed and carbon free, by the hour in tiny airmail parcels

DJCity kept live rock topped off and never fed for three years in his 15 gallon nano thread. It’s the longest fallow study I’ve seen, as soon as he tested for oxidation by adding ammonia the rocks had it gone overnite, that’s anyone’s fully cycled criteria.

If you want to offer a pinch of feed that’s such strong food it will take months to break down into various forms / a single pinch / and all bacteria will be grossly over fed.

 

[Foggy Pirate]

ahh that’s very interesting. If that’s the case i wont even bother putting any food in at all. However i would like to see if it can run the cycle in 24 hours.... how exactly should i dose the ammonia to see how long it takes. I have Brightwell MicroBacter Quikcycl Ammonia.

 

[Dan_P]

The ammonia and nitrite oxidizing bacteria don’t up and die when ammonia and nitrite disappear, but you can keep them growing and multiplying by adding ammonium chloride. Adding a pinch of food as @brandon429 says is another way to generate ammonia to feed the bacteria, but throwing food in to rot to generate ammonia seems like a round about way of feeding your nitrifying bacteria. Just a thought.

 

[brandon429]

Whether you need to reverify ammonia ranges depending on what method of cycling you use. Going from cycling charts you are already done


and we track many threads where hard zero isn’t ever earned after cycle completes for ammonia. some do, google shows not all do so that’s a confound in reverifying your ammonia after the initial known drop, within the dates from the labels on completion time.


if you are determined to re verify, change water and post the ammonia reading on known zero water as a blank, then dose back some ammonia until it moves up, give api 48 hours to report a movement back to the baseline color and thats a re verifying.

whether or not you can continually add ammonia to a cycled reef over and over and still get zero nitrites / zero ammonia / cannot be guaranteed by your tester, but starting with a clean blank is a legit way to re proof. Test error potential must factor in today’s cycling analyses and full water change plus blank accounts for it

Personally I wouldn’t waste time re verifying and winding up with nitrate water but you can if you like

this aspect of cycling hasn’t been found to vary in my cycling threads, we would not verify simply due to the hundreds of cycles like yours already logged. It can just sit there until you’re ready, or add a zoanthid and a snail etc

or a zip of ammonium chloride if you like, it’s a cycled reef the free nh3 will be gone in two hours anyway, whether or not your tester shows it depends on how you value google search returns on misreads. We found a full running sps reef worth about ten grand running reported 3 ppm 1.5 years after the cycle recently, and the owner was about to jump ship over the reading. Such a reading was false, the reef ran great all fish open, all lps open, and just because a reef is running the same tests during cycling does not automatically make the test more accurate. Not all are bad, but the bad tests always seem to easily rewrite known cycle times in an instant depending on the reader.

what’s consistent is the deposition times they make cycle charts from, what varies are the reported ammonia levels pre or post tan conversion, they vary in accuracy among reefers

ive never seen a cycle starve and I’ve never seen a tank with your conditions be not cycled.