Pre-cycle water change (W/ fish) ?

Nanolifeuk

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Hi all just a quick one
currently coming to end of week 1, no sign of cycling yet (two clownfish) - planning on doing a water change at 2 weeks, should I still do this change if there is no sign of cycle beginning? Or should I wait until ammonia and nitrites have both risen and fallen before even doing the change? Thanks !
 

brandon429

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your cycle is done or they'd be dead. which kind of bottle bac did you use

as you can see they've been eating, swimming normally or that'd be mentioned...this means the waste is being processed and though this is a shocking concept to forum cycle umpires its not shocking at a reef convention where I saw an all dry rock setup housing 15 clownfish + bottle bac the same day the convention started. bottle bac is this good nowadays and if your bottle bac was dead from bad shipping, those clownfish would not have made 48 hours.

you can do water changes, cycles that are done have bacteria adhered to all surfaces and in Dr Reefs bottle bac thread, covering the strain you used, he did full water changes to prove the system was ready (it still handles waste after the full change, bc all surfaces are coated in bac)

this thread represents science from the new cycling update rules. We dont have to know your params to know if you're cycled, the fact you kept marine life alive and fed for a week means you're cycled from a bottle or by using already live rock, there is no mid or half cycle. There's only fully cycled, can carry fish and they act/feed normally, or there's not cycled, and your whole tank is dead in 48 hours.


We have already tracked bottle bac's ability to reduce harmful ammonia using seneye meters...all the strains work just fine.
 

brandon429

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post pics of your tank and the type of bottle bac used

if your pics show totally clean water alone, that's another proof of skip cycle here as any system without filtration bacteria in place will go cloudy and smelly within two days. I bet your pics look great, or you'd mention pre crash details.

Whatever bac you dosed with to carry the initial load is already adhered to surfaces in a weeks time...this was well-tested on Dr. Reef's bottle bac thread. ps, I know all this sounds crazy lol but lets see if your full tank pics line up with initial predictions as a start

You arent going to get the common cycling params here, what you dosed is designed to prevent ammonia rising so dont expect to see that happen (unless you use api, then expect total panic any time now)

remember this: unless you are using seneye nh3 monitoring, a cheap ammonia and nitrite tester is going to do you more harm than good here by causing cycle panic. Merely watch your system for signs of cloudiness to assess the cycle. Expect fish disease before too long, but that won't be cycle related it happens when we start fish in new systems with no disease controls in place.
 
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Nanolifeuk

Nanolifeuk

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post pics of your tank and the type of bottle bac used

if your pics show totally clean water alone, that's another proof of skip cycle here as any system without filtration bacteria in place will go cloudy and smelly within two days. I bet your pics look great, or you'd mention pre crash details.

Whatever bac you dosed with to carry the initial load is already adhered to surfaces in a weeks time...this was well-tested on Dr. Reef's bottle bac thread. ps, I know all this sounds crazy lol but lets see if your full tank pics line up with initial predictions as a start

You arent going to get the common cycling params here, what you dosed is designed to prevent ammonia rising so dont expect to see that happen (unless you use api, then expect total panic any time now)

remember this: unless you are using seneye nh3 monitoring, a cheap ammonia and nitrite tester is going to do you more harm than good here by causing cycle panic. Merely watch your system for signs of cloudiness to assess the cycle. Expect fish disease before too long, but that won't be cycle related it happens when we start fish in new systems with no disease controls in place.
Thanks for such a detailed reply man! That’s exactly what I needed - makes sense too, most of the looking up on cycling I’ve done has been for fishless, so I was in the dark abit with this.

i was originally going for dr Tim’s fishless cycle w/ bottled ammonia - however when I got to my lfs to buy the one and only I was informed I can just dump a bottle of atm colony in and have fish straight away ... which appealed to me slightly more.

so I’ve been recording ammonia each day to watch for a spike ( was planning on testing for nitrite and nitrate after this increase)-
should I give up on that and just test routinely?

p.s tank is crystal clear.

thanks for your help!
 

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brandon429

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Excellent follow up there that reef looks like all the other fishless cycles

it’s amazing your kit for ammonia doesn’t show .5 ppm causing total alarm for everyone, they usually read high and all the above would still hold: clear water days after feeding and bioload added can only be attained in the cycled condition. Those same two clowns put into a non cycled bucket of water and dry rocks would pollute the tank likely overnite and it would gray out and kill em. Solid skip cycle above here


you can just handle this tank as if it’s eight months old, the cycle is that locked in.
 

brandon429

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Also agreed no more ammonia and nitrite testing is needed they’re under control via the dosers used / nitrite is now neutral in cycling we don’t factor it any longer, it cannot rise to lethal levels in any reef cycle. Ammonia is a concern only if the bottle bac wasn’t alive but it sure was, they’re right about that option.
 

brandon429

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Hey want to see something fun lol


if you have a profile on any other reef site, post the same question there :) and link that thread here so we can watch it.


it would be fun to sample all the variations on cycling we all hold. If you don’t have any other sites you post at that’s fine but if you did it’d be fun to see responses. I think 80% will post back that your fish are currently being cooked alive, nobody in forums agrees fish in cycling doesn’t burn fish. In other words 99% of cycle inputs don’t believe bottle bac works well enough such that fish in cycles aren’t burning fish. The reason we know it doesn’t burn them here at reef to reef is because folks on seneye/ digital exact ammonia kits have tracked out this brand and others and we have the threads handy. So few other sites have users with seneye they’re still on 1998 ammonia dynamics back when most kits showed free ammonia in most reef settings even when ammonia was in a safe range
 
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Nanolifeuk

Nanolifeuk

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you can just handle this tank as if it’s eight months old, the cycle is that locked in.
Happy as can be with that mate

Im only on reef2reef however scouring around the internet for answers had led me to the controversy on bottled bacs- having kept tropical fish for ages (albeit a bit easier than saltwater) I didn’t think twice about using them lol. I’ve just been very careful on the amount of food going in.

In terms of the water change, I shall look forward to getting the floor wet next weekend
 
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