Red Sea Reef Mature Pro Fish less Cycle Question

[CMO]

So i'm at day 22 in my cycle with the red sea reef mature pro kit but still have some nitrite in the system (.18 ppm). Ammonia is 0. The instructions said I should have introduced fish back on day 14 but I did not due to the presence of nitrite. I'm worried now that without fish in the system my bacteria will start dying since the last red sea additive with bacteria food was over a week back. Do I need to phantom feed the tank? Or add fish now?

Thanks

 

[brandon429]

no bacteria will die, you did good not introducing fish too soon
post a full tank shot of your tank

 

[brandon429]

there's a rule in microbiology that affects us: once you hydrate your tank, it will cycle, the key is within what time frame

cycles don't stop or stall based on our withholdings or mild overdosings. once your tank hits 30 days underwater, and you've added any form of ammonia and bottle bacteria at all, even if it was a bit under spec, you can do a whole water change on day 31 and your tank will have a base cycle layer down to handle an easy starter bioload.


fish should only be used in a reef system after passing quarantine and tank fallow periods, research that and never use fish any other way in my opinion. The bacteria were already well set by what you have added, and the 20 days, you cannot kill them even if you stopped adding a single thing and just waited till day 31 to take action


dose some ammonia in there real quick, and another shot of bottle bac, you're home free. at day 30, do a whole tank water change if possible (starts your system without algae fuel) and add a few easy starter frags. as you wait 76 days for fallow, after some light stocking, you'll be really set for fish then.

You are 90% cycled regardless of any variation in testing or dosing you've done so far, solely off the submersion time.

you literally do not have to concern about nitrite, or nitrate, or ammonia if you've added any base ammonia and bottle bac so far. just give it a quick mini shot of ammonia and a round of bac, then wait ten days, then change it all out and refill w clean water and be cycled. this is the known timeframe for the cycle you've described so far using all dry materials. any wet pack sand sped it up even further.

there is a type of cycle where the measures matter in exacting timeframes, the two week speed cycle. if anyone has 30 days, you can eyeball it and come out the exact same ability as detailed param testing.

 

[CMO]

Okay. Thank you. You can see a full tank shot on my build thread as of yesterday in signature link below. I'm just now seeing beginning signs of diatom blooms.

 

[brandon429]

I see that's a big tank/not a nano

that final wastewater change wont be too easy, which is still not a huge deal it just means not to spike ammonia bigtime which may take a while to oxidize each stage if that initial bioloading is overdone.

in smaller tanks we really like that final wastewater change out, before setting up shop. it eliminates SO many confounding variables that always seemed to indicate a stalled cycle when there was none:
-removes any built up Prime water prep additive which is false point of sale on nitrite kits
-removes the variation in ammonia adding people have done which ranges massively per today's ammonia test kits which range from accuracy. Cyclers will input 20x the normal amnt of ammonia a tank will ever see in a month's time, in increments, and then at day 31 when its all supposed to be done their nitrite and ammonia metabolites are all jacked. what wastewater shows isn't the same thing as what a reset water column shows, and you can retest those at 1 ppm ammonia to prove a cycle is done without re jacking up nitrite and nitrate.

in your tank Id simply bring it back to 1 ppm ammonia by small addition and zip it with bottle bac again. if that 1 ppm shows any movement down at all over the next few days you know this cycle is done but id still wait 30 and to see it take ammonia to near or absolute zero after that time. it doesn't have to be zero (test kit variance accepting) it just needs to be able to move down from 1 or 2 ppm/.

id choose 1 ppm since you can't change wastewater here. only the ammonia param matters for you in the stage you are in, nitrite testing will never be needed again on this tank. nitrate is a given; its only needed to know for algae tuning we never need to see it in a cycle. its a given after ammonia is known and submersion time, though test kits and test tanks may or may not show it depending on arrangements.

once your ammonia is verified able to move down from any low setting, wait for that ammonia to hit as close to zero as your tests show and you are just done cycling for sure. its nice that only one param needs to be tracked, makes it so much easier.

 

[CMO]

Got it. What would you recommend as an ammonia source to bring it up to 1ppm?

 

[brandon429]

that should be part of this cycling kit

if there has been no food source for the bac added, then its a +30 cycle.

but you posted some nitrite readings which must come from some form of ammonia, if its not a test confound. I don't use that particular cycling kit, but doesn't it have one part that is bottle bac and one part that is ammonium chloride? one of them should be a feed source for the bacteria portion

here's an alternate brand of it
https://www.bulkreefsupply.com/ammo...VvWSkDWoS_lTEICwV6wtQjkXxVzyBt8YaAmgpEALw_wcB

 

[Rick Krejci]

The bacteria will be fine. Once Nitrite goes away, just add the fish slowly. In fact nitrite isn't very toxic to fish at all in all but very high concentrations.

The red sea reef mature system assumes cured live rock, not starting from dead rock, that's why it's taking longer for you. I did the same thing with a dry rock start and it really didn't help at all, just gave some bacterial blooms and cyano. I eventually abandoned it and went with the Dr. Tims bacteria and ammonium chloride, but you are probably beyond that.

The Bacto-start is essentially nitrogen and phosphorous and the NOPOx is carbon dosing, which feeds non-rock bacteria to take care of Nitrates (and some phosphates). To me, the "mature system" with carbon dosing before your rocks are populated with any denitrifying bacteria is putting the cart before the horse when starting with dry rock.

I'd just stop with the Red Sea stuff, wait for the nitrites to go down and add fish slowly. Just takes time.

 

[CMO]

that should be part of this cycling kit

if there has been no food source for the bac added, then its a +30 cycle.

but you posted some nitrite readings which must come from some form of ammonia, if its not a test confound. I don't use that particular cycling kit, but doesn't it have one part that is bottle bac and one part that is ammonium chloride? one of them should be a feed source for the bacteria portion

here's an alternate brand of it
https://www.bulkreefsupply.com/ammo...VvWSkDWoS_lTEICwV6wtQjkXxVzyBt8YaAmgpEALw_wcB

Yeah I finished the bacteria and food source back around day 14 though. Have only been dosing NoPoX since about day 14 when the instructions called for the last dose of "bacto start" which is the food source.

And I'm using the Hannah ULR test kit for nitrite which i'd assume is one of the more accurate test kits. My nitrite is dropping very slow - went from about .20ppm to .18ppm over 7 days.

 

[brandon429]

the nitrite indicated at least some form of feed. in my opinion you could still be on track for day 30 easily just get the real ammonia and some dedicated cycling bottle bac which im sure a portion is already in your kit surely, 1 ppm, ready to roll.

there's a key verifier in your timing though

being able to digest 1 ppm ammonia, or show movement, just after a dose of bottle bac isn't the same reading as being able to do it without having dosed bottle bac recently

see why? its the submersion time. if a system can reduce 1 ppm ammonia having no bacteria in suspension, but purely off surfaces, then that's the kind of cycle you want as no amnt of water changes can undo them (a third reason we like to reset waste waters where accessible)

but if your system can only reduce ammonia when dosed coincidentally w bottled bac, the surfaces aren't ready yet and the closer we get to 30 days and beyond, the more its biofilm related readings, the good kind. cycling is fun stuff. i noticed your skimmer has some organics in it, in the cup, if that's stuff pulled from your tank you are good to go.


alt way of verifying water loading even though I still haven't googled that particular cycling kit. organics/proteins/fats n slicks are all nature needed. so far i still call this one 30 days good to go, but do digest test it for the 1 ppm we can use that info in our big cycling thread here:
https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/the-microbiology-of-reef-tank-cycling.214618/


we didn't list any practical ways to stall a cycle there. they're all following either the boosted cycle timeline or the nonboosted one. the rare ones are doing 12 day speed cycles which are legit too, that's still surface cycling its just driven really fast and that's about as fast as possible and its through verified accurate 1-2 ppm constants and heavy bottle bac

 

[CMO]

Makes sense. Appreciate all the info!

 

[CMO]

Actually one last question. I just ordered the Dr Tims Ammonium Chloride to test my existing bacteria. Is there a normal time frame that it should take to process the 1ppm of ammonia back to 0? 1 day, 1 week?

 

[brandon429]

an active reef tank with solid purple live rock covered in sponges and worms and the typical dsb can eat up 4-6 ppm in 24 hours to plain zero, tested on salifert and the occasional 1/20000 api ammonia kits :)

if yours cannot take 1 ppm ammonia and munch it down to zero or darn close, any type of movement, within 24 hours then during your 20 days we've lacked either on the bottle bac or the feed/ammonia portion. I predict it should be able to move some, Id be surprised at that much surface area after 30 days that cannot move it one bit.

if it rapidly closes it out to zero within 24 or better down from just 1 ppm which exceeds all reasonable starting bioloading, after 30 days, that's a done cycle. as mentioned above for nitrite, any weird readings on wastewater wont matter after 30 days if ammonia behaves.

see what you think of that fallow period stuff. as i read it, its the only way to go especially on a large tank. it means that you're stocking everything but fish up front...as soon as you get a balance you can stand to look at for 76 days, then you wait (fallow) that long before adding a single anything other than change water and feed.

fish come in only from quarantine completion, and any frag you ever add, every snail, for the life of the tank, is ran through a fallow phase. its serious business, this disease prevention game regarding fish. glad you didn't use an early one.

in all cycling charts online, nitrite follows what ammonia does at day 30-40 given no aberrant spikes, test misreads (which occur) etc. that's one reason we kick out nitrite readings, and the fact at this chloride level it just doesn't matter. we started with known levels of ammonia that mathematically already determine the known nitrite levels with or without testing confirmation and they're not poisonous at the used levels.

 

[CMO]

Thanks!!

 

[Rick Krejci]

I actually went a different route on fish. My strategy was to start with fish before inverts and corals, building up to what I consider a heavy fish population that I wanted in the long term. I actually had a disease (Ich or Velvet), which I was able to treat with Chloroquine Phosphate in the display without killing off the bacteria, and it did kill off whatever little algae (and cyano and dinos) that had started. Chaeto did survive to my surprise. Never an ammonia spike.

After a month or so with no more disease, I started adding inverts (snails, urchins) and also bought some uncured live rock from KP aquatics...good stuff. I cured the new rock a few weeks in my qt, changing the water often to keep ammonia levels low and then added it to the tank for biodiversity. And then I strictly concentrated on stability. I aimed for keeping nutrients in balance with the Cheato fuge so that Nitrates and Phosphates stay non-zero but still low. Didn't really need to dose much Alk/Calc/Mag since there were no corals. Ramped the lights to my coral target levels to make sure I could keep everything in balance before adding corals.

Now, 5 months later, I'm finally at a good place and just bought some LPS and a Clam. In a few weeks, I'll start in on the SPS.

I know it's a little different approach, but so far it's worked well for me.

 

[CMO]

I actually went a different route on fish. My strategy was to start with fish before inverts and corals, building up to what I consider a heavy fish population that I wanted in the long term. I actually had a disease (Ich or Velvet), which I was able to treat with Chloroquine Phosphate in the display without killing off the bacteria, and it did kill off whatever little algae (and cyano and dinos) that had started. Chaeto did survive to my surprise. Never an ammonia spike.

After a month or so with no more disease, I started adding inverts (snails, urchins) and also bought some uncured live rock from KP aquatics...good stuff. I cured the new rock a few weeks in my qt, changing the water often to keep ammonia levels low and then added it to the tank for biodiversity. And then I strictly concentrated on stability. I aimed for keeping nutrients in balance with the Cheato fuge so that Nitrates and Phosphates stay non-zero but still low. Didn't really need to dose much Alk/Calc/Mag since there were no corals. Ramped the lights to my coral target levels to make sure I could keep everything in balance before adding corals.

Now, 5 months later, I'm finally at a good place and just bought some LPS and a Clam. In a few weeks, I'll start in on the SPS.

I know it's a little different approach, but so far it's worked well for me.

Exactly my plan as well.