Tim's One and Only instructions are definitely wrong

[brandon429]

All you need to do is a large water change, this removes any unspoken variables in play for some tanks, such as way more ammonia input than stated

it puts known safe water back on top of working slicks, making the tank ready.

no arrangement of your current cycle is antibiotic, so simply exchanging any suspect water table for new works because the working bioslicks are filling surface area with working and well-fed bacteria.

Even if you don’t change water: nobody reading this thread has ever seen a failed cycle we can be linked to read, so yours can’t be the first. Your animals won’t die because everyone reading has only seen examples of fully working cycles in all threads they’ve seen


we *read* about failed cycles all day long, agreed, we just never see a tank of floating dead fish. Somehow, all bottle bac cycle threads show fish carry ability on day one, you are on day 21+ of wait. Cycle, done. Change water if in true concern, and I’m 100% sure your tank is ready and no non-digital test kits factor into the start date for your planned cycle.

Dr. reefs huge bottle bac thread charts the implantation date for Dr. Tims bottle bac. That known date factored heavily in assigning your cycle as ready.

 

[taricha]

If the ammonia is too high, the cycle may proceed correctly, but be hard to verify. Can you really tell on a test if ammonia dropped from 5ppm to 4ppm? probably not. Those colors are too strong and dark on the ammonia kit.
Check Nitrites instead. If NO2 is being produced from zero - success, you'll detect NO2 production (up from zero) before you can see ammonia decrease (down from a high value).