Should we rethink and refine means and methods for cycling tanks?

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There's also threads about the seneye giving false ammonia readings.

And I agree the ability to add inhabitants that can mitigate the ugly stage is a great thing! The problem is you don't know what is in the bottle of bacteria. I'm sitting here reading the bottle of remission from aquavitro. It doesn't say what strains of bacteria it adds, just that it is bacterial strains developed in aquaculture. It also doesn't say how much bacteria you're adding or is in the bottle. The bacteria additives has become like the supplement world for people, everything is a "proprietary blend" and you never know how much of any ingredient you're adding.
Agreed. I did share my feelings on my findings with seneye. I found enough inaccuracies with it to not trust it.
I simply use it as a tool to Guage and monitor certain things if anything.
I will say the majority of reports I've read do show the threshold of seneye ammonia inaccuracies to be within safe ammonia range and haven't had an issue with seneye on that level.
I've been talking about it for awhile now but I will most likely throw a strip as well as pick up another kit to cross refference seneye back to. I like 3 controls in this experiment moving forward.
 

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After even some more thought... if possible, spend the $150 that you would have spent on the SenEye and buy a live rock kit from the Gulf, if you can. I totally understand that this is not a possibility for people in other parts of the world. You don't need much... 20 lbs will seed everything well. Spend some more money that you would otherwise spend on dry rock, Vibrant, bottled bacteria, other algaecides, salt for more water changes during the ugly phases, Chemiclean, GFO and some NoPox and buy a few more pounds.

For people in the other parts of the world, find an established tank and take a half-cup of their substrate and a tiny piece of LR from behind the rocks and let it work for a while in your tank. I don't know if IPSF will ship to the EU and other countries, but they make nice biodiversity packs too.
 
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Good question @Pntbll687 ...does anyone think it matters in the long run about using what's likely a 'monoculture' bottle of bacteria vs using multiple bottles (I'll leave off dead shrimp since we're talking faster methods). I used multiple bottles once before finding out that that's going to delay the process due to competition, added an extra few days/week as I remember. But then again, competition is good right? In the end I decided it likely doesn't matter as 6 months from the start whatever strain is dominant in nature is probably going to be dominant in tank regardless of what started with.

Any data on that anywhere?
 

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It won't matter eventually since the bacteria from the intestines/guts of a fish or invert can populate many more strains that come in the bottle. So can stuff that comes in on frag plugs or other things that you introduce from tanks. I don't think that bacteria compete like people think that they do... they all can coexist as long as there is food and space. Eventually, you will get a lot of different kinds... just not so much in a cycle with just bottle based strains.

The microfauna is another issue... have to introduce those somehow.
 

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no I disagree it'll delay, it'll guarantee a cycle.


and agreed I've seen on brightwell's site where conflicting strains are mentioned


but its not really impactful in the field...in a lab on sterile plates, maybe.

they'll give the safest info to handle the bulk advice.


the only true testless mode of cycling I know is adding two types of cycling bac from different brands at the start in a dry start system, plus ground up flake feed.

that's a guaranteed skip cycle approach because no sap is unlucky enough to buy two dead bottles of bacteria, buying even one puts you in the 1% club and the other serves as backup.

in any fish food + bottle bac arrangement its basically an instant cycle. it will carry two clowns and a goby, for example, and pass seneye evaluation. the tank's dilution carries a massive portion of workload, those fish aren't much trial, and carbon fed bottle bac are quick into action per Dr. Reef's bottle bac thread.

its testless because no testing is needed, this method can't fail.

I believe bottle bac works so well, anyone can just add the normal one bottle and still be fine. the double barrel approach lol is for the ultra-concerned.
 
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I understand and actually trust no test start ups intellectually. But I think I am just genetically pre-disposed to testing (even if it's just a strip) before adding fish and if have a bottle of ammonia (which I always do) I'm checking my 1-2 ppm in a day unless I have no choice due to emergency. Then again, I'm not setting up tanks for conferences so the risk/reward just isn't there for me.
 
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Lasse

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Because I´m rather bad on colours - I use Hanna Checker ULR marine nitrite and/or MasterTronic with Faunamarins NO2/NO3 test (the same as Tropic Marine Pro NO2/NO3)

I have never looked into how many times fish pee in a day
For marine fish is the number zero - they drink but not pee of osmotic reasons. It is not the fish thats determine how much it excrete - it is the food it gets - type and amount. dry food produce nearly 5-7 more N compared with frozen natural food. Around 70% of the ingested foods N will be excreted by the gills in around 2 hours from the feeding time. If a dry food content 40 % protein around 16 % is pure N. If you feed 1 g of this to a medium size fish - it will excrete around 0.05 g pure N - around 0.06 g NH4. Frozen brine shrimps - around the 0.01 g NH4/g food. Figures between thumb and index finger.

I just don't want people to think that this is an actual argument between us or anything
I´m kidding :D
I'll never have to read another post about people using fish to cycle their tanks.
You can read this article and understand why it wise to use a fish if it is done the proper way

Sincerely Lasse
 
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After even some more thought... if possible, spend the $150 that you would have spent on the SenEye and buy a live rock kit from the Gulf, if you can. I totally understand that this is not a possibility for people in other parts of the world. You don't need much... 20 lbs will seed everything well. Spend some more money that you would otherwise spend on dry rock, Vibrant, bottled bacteria, other algaecides, salt for more water changes during the ugly phases, Chemiclean, GFO and some NoPox and buy a few more pounds.

For people in the other parts of the world, find an established tank and take a half-cup of their substrate and a tiny piece of LR from behind the rocks and let it work for a while in your tank. I don't know if IPSF will ship to the EU and other countries, but they make nice biodiversity packs too.
I love my gulf live rock man. Not sure why folks are so afraid to use it. All it takes is a simple cure and quick tour through boot camp to remove unwanted hitchikers. I honestly didn't know bottle bac and dry rock was a method getting back into the hobby after long layoff.
I do like the seneye to track certain params but agree its totally not needed. In fact I never have used most of the other things you listed.
Skimmer, gulf rock and water have been my main backbone and seems to be working well enough.
 

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Randy pointed something out to me in different thread.
I guess @Lasse idea of cycle definition may be different.
He state exactly the same as I - when NO2 decline to low figures - its done. Someone else said when NO2 start to decline.

Sincerely lasse
 
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Because I´m rather bad on colours - I use Hanna Checker ULR marine nitrite and/or MasterTronic with Faunamarins NO2/NO3 test (the same as Tropic Marine Pro NO2/NO3)


For marine fish is the number zero - they drink but not pee of osmotic reasons. It is not the fish thats determine how much it excrete - it is the food it gets - type and amount. dry food produce nearly 5-7 more N compared with frozen natural food. Around 70% of the ingested foods N will be excreted by the gills in around 2 hours from the feeding time. If a dry food content 40 % protein around 16 % is pure N. If you feed 1 g of this to a medium size fish - it will excrete around 0.05 g pure N - around 0.06 g NH4. Frozen brine shrimps - around the 0.01 g NH4/g food. Figures between thumb and index finger.


I´m kidding :D

You can read this article and understand why it wise to use a fish if it is done the proper way

Sincerely Lasse
Thanks a ton for that info on amounts. Now to throw it into excel and play with some figures lol.
 
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He state exactly the same as I - when NO2 decline to low figures - its done. Someone else said when NO2 start to decline.

Sincerely lasse
I apologize again I believe that was me. I heard top out and decline but your right l did misquote that.
 

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I´ll think your right but I think the resistance against proper nitrification cycle are formulated by persons that advocate for more or less sterile QT tanks with a soup of chemicals. The fish that die in these soups can´t die of the chemicals or upbuild of ammonia - because their whole view of the world crashes then

sincerely Lasse

Now you are doing the same thing as Brandon and lumping separable, unrelated assumptions together. What happens in the QT tank is completely unrelated to what happens in the display tank unless you screw up and let something through. I was not necessarily agreeing with Brandon, just pointing out where he may be coming from lumping two separate thought processes together. Maybe I wasn't explicit enough. If someone goes by one paradigm for cycling that also means that they go by some associated paradigm for disease mitigation. This is reminiscent of political party loyalty insanity. Why cant you take what you agree with from a paradigm of thought and filter out what you don't? No one "system" is perfect and not everyone goes by one system religiously.

I dont think anyone here is against a proper nitrification cycle, its just a debate about the best way to get there, which is a pointless debate IMO. QT tanks are another topic all together.

There is however two avenues I can think of where a cycling method can be related to fish disease, that is the old method of using a "throw away" fish to cycle a tank and that fish introduces parasites. Hopefully no one is still doing that. And also like I said, starting with live rock and not waiting a fallow period to add fish or coral.
 
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It won't matter eventually since the bacteria from the intestines/guts of a fish or invert can populate many more strains that come in the bottle. So can stuff that comes in on frag plugs or other things that you introduce from tanks. I don't think that bacteria compete like people think that they do... they all can coexist as long as there is food and space. Eventually, you will get a lot of different kinds... just not so much in a cycle with just bottle based strains.

The microfauna is another issue... have to introduce those somehow.
Actually I believe the opposite is true. It's rare in nature to have to multiple species exist in the same ecological niche competing for the same resources. However, there could be differences in light/dark or other environmental factors that would allow multiple strains.
 

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Thanks a ton for that info on amounts. Now to throw it into excel and play with some figures lol.
Note my figures was between the thumb and index finger - but they show in which county you will end up.

Now you are doing the same thing as Brandon and lumping separable, unrelated assumptions together. What happens in the QT tank is completely unrelated to what happens in the display tank unless you screw up and let something through. I was not necessarily agreeing with Brandon, just pointing out where he may be coming from lumping two separate thought processes together. Maybe I wasn't explicit enough. If someone goes by one paradigm for cycling that also means that they go by some associated paradigm for disease mitigation. This is reminiscent of political party loyalty insanity. Why cant you take what you agree with from a paradigm of thought and filter out what you don't? No one "system" is perfect and not everyone goes by one system religiously.

I dont think anyone here is against a proper nitrification cycle, its just a debate about the best way to get there, which is a pointless debate IMO. QT tanks are another topic all together.

There is however two avenues I can think of where a cycling method can be related to fish disease, that is the old method of using a "throw away" fish to cycle a tank and that fish introduces parasites. Hopefully no one is still doing that. And also like I said, starting with live rock and not waiting a fallow period to add fish or coral.
Sorry if the missile was missdirected - it was not aimed on you - but I have seen tons of started QT tanks with water and PVC - a bottle of nitrification bacteria and to be safe - a bottle of prime - yes it is cycled - time for fish, drugs and rock and roll. If it show NH3 or NH4 - the measurement is wrong cause prime do that..........And nitrite - no idea - I do not measure that and if I did - bad test. Fish die - a very fast disease that no one could handle.......

It's rare in nature to have to multiple species exist in the same ecological niche competing for the same resources
True and especially true for autotrophic nitrification bacteria and normal heterotrophic bacteria. They competing for space, inorganic nutrients and oxygen. However they use different carbon sources. Nitrification bacteria use inorganic carbon like HCO3/CO3 and heterotrophic use organic carbon - often DOC - Dissolved Organic carbon - sugar, vinegar, vodka and so on. In a normal saltwater aquarium the autotrophs can dominate on surfaces because DOC are a limited carbon source in most aquarium. This change if an organic carbon method is in use. And this because of the much higher reproduction rate among the heterotrophs - 10 - 20 times faster doubling time.

Sincerely Lasse
 
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brandon429

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the process in accepting that direct disease planning is directly part of the cycling process will be painful to some ClownW

its based on trending, what we're doing here is trying to protect people's fish, don't miss the forest for the trees.

the most pressing discussion or study any new cycler will undertake won't be a miles long read in a cycling thread, they'll add the bottle, be ready, and can be long into disease prep by this stage.

what we want to do is re-aim about 99% of the current concern level for cycling, into the fish disease forum, and new tanks setup up their stuff oppositely than the entrants did there. try your best to define best practices for disease, before stocking, it doesn't matter how uncomfortable that may be for you to consider Clown its whats coming down the line.

we amass literally hundreds of new cycles every 3 months showing patterns that are worth inspecting. am relaying those patterns here so far. in between insults on this thread we've fixed up three cycles. watch for the coming pics.
 
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quarantine tank cyclers are becoming regular posters in false stall threads

its directly in line with pattern requests to include the differences in nitrite factoring between high and low salinity settings, per the chemistry forum good call MnFish

in display tank cycling, still don't need to know it. those are consistent salinity settings, which directly impacts the neutrality or toxicity of nitrite as presented to the animals.
 
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I have a question for the crowd


how many days to completion will this arrangement take to become cycled and reliably carry bioloading as fish:

set of marco rocks filled up in tank

new water, heated with circulation

bottle of fritz, half a bottle of Dr. Tims, a few pinches of fish food.


in every home on the planet, how many days does that take to ethically carry bioload?
 

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LOL where? I am pretty active on these forums and cant remember the last time I saw it.
Recently I avoid most of the cycle treads but I have seen it too many times. I also was thinking from day 1 when started that is the last thing I wanna do. :)
 

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in every home on the planet, how many days does that take to ethically carry bioload?
If you increase it from 0 in bioload in relationship to the growth of the biofilm (or adding new biofilm) , it takes 0 days

Sincerely Lasse
 

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I have a question for the crowd


how many days to completion will this arrangement take to become cycled and reliably carry bioloading as fish:

set of marco rocks filled up in tank

new water, heated with circulation

bottle of fritz, half a bottle of Dr. Tims, a few pinches of fish food.


in every home on the planet, how many days does that take to ethically carry bioload?
The answer is on the battle. If I recall Dr. Tim’s was 4 days on it.
 
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