Reef convention skip cycle aquariums for the last 20 years and rogue cyclers

brandon429

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Compare and contrast today's forum cycling advice with reef convention tanks let me know what you think

Forum: you can't rush anything in reefing

Macna: five hundred reefs you'd kill to own set up Friday morning, looking sharp all other following days and you buy stuff from them with glee

Forum: you cannot cycle without testing for all three

Macna: man / woman making their mortgage payments based on successful skip cycling somehow get by without API permission. Every day of their reefing life, free from hesitation.


Forums: your cycle is stalled, you must wait.

Macna: already packing up and moving to next convention or back to store with profits and -darn- happy customers


forum response to cycle questions: all over the place. Totally opposing answers, reefers don't know which advice to take
Macna: successfully skip cycling every tank that's ever entered its doors since inception, zero inconsistency.

Forum: add bottle bac and still follow all testing and wait norms or your cycle will stall.
Macna: here's a stack of bottle bac which is instant cycle, it's for sale see our Facebook to know if it works. To the left display, a skip cycle tank with dry rock and fifteen clowns doing just fine. (15 clowns in uncycled tank, dead by tomorrow)


It seems web forums give dated, safe zone, way behind cycling advice? We preach pause, hesitate. We list any number of accidents that stop a cycle (your nitrite hit seven, you're doomed)


How would macna look if we followed web forum cycling advice? It would be tanks with uglies phase yuck all awaiting permission for green to be yellow or for orange to appear


conflicts in claims we cause are fun to analyze. How can macna keep getting lucky over and over, if skip cycling is bad or risky science

we are very disorganized as a hobby regarding cycling biology it seems only macna is qualified to be an advisor on cycling 2020
 
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brandon429

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Yes agreed

They should get only the good stuff in training going forward, as most macna participants are only repeating steps they didn't invent. We should steal the list of steps and post it on wikileaks



***linked, stickied or published cycle teachers, update all your stuff to match macna consistency (somehow it's not luck they keep pulling it off)

If your entire approach to cycling involves hesitation, wait based on inaccurate test kits, constant advice of things that stall or slow completion, threefold param permission, at least tell your readers where the new action can be found- don't squelch science. Let them know the consequences you've painted don't exist in some circles

Also, it's no liberty to dump unquarantined fish into able systems

Cycling is about bacteria it's never been about purposefully invading our tanks with disgusting algae or killing fish by using no disease protocol. A ready tank is a ready tank, use it responsibly.
 
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ca1ore

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Not really an apples to apples comparison. If my goal were to have my reef tank setup for just three days, there'd be plenty of shortcuts I'd be able to take. Also consider that most show tanks are just corals/inverts (not all, but most) - again, less problematic from a cycling perspective for just a few days. Lastly, I don't know how many losses vendors take as a consequence of displaying at shows. I suspect few would admit them anyhow.

I do agree, however, that too many reefers are cycle obsessed. 'Looked at my tank wrong and kicked off a mini cycle' ….. I haven't cycled a tank in 20 years, and when I last did it was still fashionable to use a 'sacrificial' damsel (though often it didn't actually die - tough little buggars).
 
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brandon429

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I wanted someone to post that exact concern: the longevity of skip cycled tanks - spiral down, the doom date (unperceived consequence for noncompliance)

Are the quick bac expiring, culling down back to no cycle since hardfast rules have been skipped--> free ammonia is coming back

How long can a macna tank run before it goes completely sideways, and, if I move my tank to a different room by disassembly / reassembly does that begin the countdown

What if it's moved a little farther, say down the block---where are the hard stops for us vs them
 
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Gareth elliott

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I just miss readily available real live rock lol.

Going to the lfs and they have a a few totes of water with rocks is not the same as rock that was in the ocean. Wish more vendors sold Maricultured manufacturered rock. I think the number of cycle posts have grown exponentially over the last years as fuji rock has been off the market. And people are having to rely on magic life In a bottle to replicate the ocean because ordering 20 lbs of live rock now costs you $30 a pound after shipping. I may be exaggerating slightly.
 
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brandon429

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My live rock access has spoiled me as a reefer it's literally not fair to buy chunks full of real coralline and then skip to front of line, but we do.

The emergence of skip cycle bottle bac means authors must rewrite their dry rock cycle advice too, dates of completion. How cycle completion is agreed upon etc

Forums will always be the slow dated anchor and macna will be leading edge...all I know is in the middle is boring and nobody does that at any convention

Aquashella Dallas had skip cycle dry systems
 
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Gareth elliott

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image.jpg

making my own these days lol.

i wont fill my aquarium with the water because only an sg of 1.020 but the life it makes, seems to still thrive after i put inside at 78f and 1.026 sg. Lower milkcrates on rope pick them up few months later lol.
 

SDK

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I don't think it's about longevity of skip cycled tanks vs the longer road. It's about how much extra work and/or pain you want to deal with during the transition.

I always go a full 4 to 6 weeks with nothing more than cleanup crew, and closer to 12 weeks before adding coral.

Why? Because then I can get through the first few cycles of maturation with more control over nutrient input and lighting. It makes the whole process much easier.

It's absolutely possible to pour bac in a tank and load it up in less then 48 hours. Is it the best course of action? Not for me, but others are free to do as they please.
 
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brandon429

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Well said. To me that's the new direction for cycling, not a limitation of bacteria assumed but an order of ops assumed for a larger scope or plan for the tank

Consequences for rushing would include algae hassles or fish disease but not loss or limitation of bacteria, that seems reasonable

Why do today's teaching articles on cycling omit a large portion of truth and occurrence, and why are the authors ok with that I wonder

On web forums we all circulate the same reference materials it seems. By never rotating stickies, by not sourcing new cycling articles, first reads persist long after expiry. Forums actually cause the delay of info. Working against that inherent slowness by making work threads is a great use of time for hobbyists and writers. Work threads = many tanks together in one thread proving or disproving something, outcome pattern is the jury

Macna getting together to break the written cycle rules counts as a work thread
 
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SDK

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Well said. To me that's the new direction for cycling, not a limitation of bacteria assumed but an order of ops assumed for a larger scope or plan for the tank

Consequences for rushing would include algae hassles or fish disease but not loss or limitation of bacteria, that seems reasonable

That's pretty much it. When the diatoms and GHA hit, I want zero or limited food going in, and no organisms requiring high light levels in the tank. I also never use dry rock, so getting the bacterial populations ramped up is actually the easy part in my opinion...
 
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brandon429

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To every poster in the new forum currently getting told your cycle has stalled, though you’ve input 3 different brands of one-day cycling bottle bac and wet live sand a month ago, you are being tricked by forum guessing.

You paid $ for specialized items, only to wait the same time frames as if you didn’t, and in the meantime a new reef convention is forming and they’ll all be ready for lasting tanks day one.


Reef convention tanks are no more apt to stall or fail a cycle than me relocating my reef to another room.
People tell you that your cycle is stalled as a reason to make you wait a month, after buying speed cycle items and putting money into retail, this guessing holds back cycling science. The enduring rule online is rushing is bad, no matter what, they make up pathways for how it doesn’t work, and that’s what’s being circulated. (No fish disease protocol is bad, speed cycles are set just fine)

naysayers do -not- make cycle work threads to investigate, they just type consequence and negation. Consequence/myriad ways we stall cycles is the going theme in all forums, but *try finding a seneye user to post stalled cycled data*

*You can’t, its only api color subjectivity/cross reading/Prime skew making all the calls.

Cycles never stall when people move homes, move rooms, upgrade tanks, and set up at MACNA.


A bump, for falsehoods promulgated in the new keepers forum.

Nitrite has never stalled a cycle in a reef tank, not once, that’s why the only examples showing it are api tests after using prime and a -video- saying it will happen. The same video says no filter bac are found in water, but aquabiomics has measured them in the water.
Which parts of the video are accurate and can be used to discern consequence or a valid start date

It’s possible to cycle every tank and never stall, example work threads (using aquariums) are out there. We make more complete cycles each week that are added to the list.

You can’t stall an aquarium cycle using normal variances from bottle bac instructions. Make forum stickies that show real start dates for 2020
 
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brandon429

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This is a work thread below, an application study. It’s the opposite of a video stating that something occurs.



-Does bio spira contain 100% of all evolved bacteria the tank will ever see? Of course not, because if you control ammonia the rest fills in over time, and changes with home variables as it ages, but ammonia control is your specific allowed start date. How you manage disease protocols and algae are independent to start dates and ammonia control.

-do the bacteria that handle BOTH nitrite and nitrate form at the same time? No. Does that actually matter above, if ammonia has a base control in place? What’s Ike’s consequence going to be, and when?


Ike, your tank works like the ones at MACNA. You broke through

In Ike’s thread we can track:
Is a rush cycle tank going to uncycle
Is it wrecked with algae
Do the different strains of bac that evolve over time matter to the practical start
If nitrite testing matters
Which param really does matter (ammonia)

Where’s the doom predicted on 100% of web forums. His anemone use was upsetting to the natural order lol but aqua shella Dallas had a skip cycle anemone tank with a $12K specimen, not on a downhill decline any more than Ike’s tank seems to be.

Skip cycling using live rocks is easy, this above was all dry. He used the cheapest non refrigerated bacteria one can buy. This isn’t isolated, every tank assembled using this method has a high degree of consistency, why aren’t forum keepers stating this

The primary way forums circulate misinformation is by failing to make, accept or acknowledge work examples. They’ll grab a video off the web, post it and have nothing on the line for the call. If you get ten people repeating nitrite can stall your cycle (typical peaks and troughs we see in cycling) then it takes no time at all for that to become the hard fast forum material, even if it’s totally untested and even if work examples to the contrary are provided.

A stalled cycle means you can’t proceed with bioloading. Did Ike just get totally lucky one time
 
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Paul B

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I think most of the cycling advice is for new reefers. If you have been at it for awhile its a completely different game imo.

To me if you are really good at cycling you are doing something wrong unless you own a store.

You should cycle it once, and go on about your life as the tank should run forever.
I don't remember cycling my tank more than once, and that was in 1971. It's still cycled as far as I know.

I may have started a few tanks for other people and a few stores but why are people continually cycling tanks?
 
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brandon429

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It’s the advent of all dry systems + titration testing from 1982 causing the madness. Ike’s tank above is all dry start, no madness.

He will only have to keep things wet to keep his bacteria alive.

In the new keepers forum, advisors just cannot let go of the consequence factor, we can go read examples. So many ways are listed that stalls cycles, the implied consequence is someone cannot move forward.

They can certainly move forward, especially If they paid forty bucks for specialized bottle bac added at the start (fritz refrigerated)

99% of all new bottle bac cycles are being conducted over caribsea live sand which was redundant bac and surface area right from the start. They can move forward with a basic initial bioload but how we measure a cycle closed and implied consequence will have to be streamlined before they can move forward.

It’s important for them to see that MACNA observes no implied consequence because there isn’t any, and we have a practical work link above showing so.


Any sticky that advises how to proceed with a cycle should be required to analyze, factor and consider examples that directly go against what they type. Rotate forum stickies on cycling.

A sticky is an implied formal reference for a board. Why shouldn't Ike's thread be a sticky? It's scary noncompliant is why, just not to any soul at macna. It's got three hundred brothers at macna and every other convention. Forums are holding up cycle science.
 
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X-37B

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To me if you are really good at cycling you are doing something wrong unless you own a store.

You should cycle it once, and go on about your life as the tank should run forever.
I don't remember cycling my tank more than once, and that was in 1971. It's still cycled as far as I know.

I may have started a few tanks for other people and a few stores but why are people continually cycling tanks?
Agreed cycle it once. I see most everyone using dry rock in my area. They add bottled bacteria and have all sorts of "dry rock" related issues by going to fast.
Not sure what you ment by "continually cycling". Cycle once and be done with it!
I cycled my nano with live rock and some turbo start.
No real cycle to speak of except the usual diatoms and green algae. Same with my 120. Turbo start 30lbs caribsea and the reamining 30lbs live rock from the nano. 6.5 months in and doing well.
20200109_191257.jpg

For me quality live rock will always be at least 50% of my scape.
 

Gogi

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@brandon429 in case of a skip cycle with corals on day one, how would you recommend knowing when the tank is safe for other invertebrates and fish. Assuming free ammonia should not be measurable as it harms corals, what other metric should be look at if any at all. And if none, what timeframe are we looking at?
 
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brandon429

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Gogi thank you for posting we have done lots and lots of practical application work on this concept the last two years, proof below

For cured rock transfers



the answer to your question is based on whether we are dealing with cured rocks moved to your tank from another tank or if it’s dry rock being dosed with bottle bac, which kind of rocks do you have
 

Gogi

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@brandon429 Oh yes, of course that's important. I forgot to mention. I'm asking for dry rock with bottled bacteria. With a minuscule amount of what I believe you call grade B live rock. Not sure that even counts.
 
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