We are all 100% familiar with the sales adage that a cycle is only proven when you can move 2ppm ammonia to zero multiple times before a cycle can be deemed reliable
9.9/10 cycling umpires online stand firm with this information in unison to anyone posting doubt about cycle completion, what happens if we break ranks and-- don't?
Can a cycle still be proofed as ready even without the massive ammonia dose event we're trained (by bottle bac sellers) to do?
Here's ten reasons I'll state that the practice is terrible information and has the primary outcome of tricking the masses into buying multiple bottles of bacteria for the same aquarium to remedy a completely false stall:
1. Here is one of several linkable examples I have where liquid ammonia was not dosed to 2 ppm and a full reef was created from a dry start rock set, and you can track that reef to total maturity then upgraded parts into a larger reef destined to become equally as nice. We open with a direct example of not dosing to 2 ppm ammonia yet still being able to cycle a dry start reef to carry a common starting bioload. A simple pinch of fish food+ wait time following a common cycling chart and no initial dosing of ammonia to 2ppm produced:
*even if we never test that setup for any degree of cycling params, ammonia nitrite and nitrate, any set of rocks set stewing in a mix of saltwater and fish food will upcycle without bottle bac in 30 days, see any cycling chart ever written.
2. Cycling a reef tank breaks down into four common approaches and three of the options have a predetermined maximum wait time to establishment, a timeframe for the number of days we'd wait which has nothing to do with a starting dose of 2 ppm liquid ammonia. (uncured rocks cure out relative to the growths they bring in, wait time varies per set and per location of keeping)
See any cycling chart for the pertinent # of days to controlling ammonia in fed or boosted setups, try and find seneye cycles that don't back up that information. Four common reef cycling approaches are:
A-dry start setups; they get either bottle bac or no bottle bac
B-live rock skip cycle setups that begin a new tank with rocks completely full of bacteria and require zero wait times since moving rocks from old water to new water doesn't kill bacteria (every reef convention aquarium display you've ever seen)
C-blended cycles where both live and dry rocks are kept together in the same flow path
D-uncured ocean rocks shipped to a home where adding ammonia is the last thing we'd ever do-copious water changes are sometimes needed to prevent ammonia spiking and causing a loss cascade much less dosing 2 ppm right at the start.
***why don't sales cycling ads break down the four types of cycles to see if you even need to proof your cycle at all? Sales ads are trying to sell you things or set you up to buy things, it doesn't benefit them to outline that 50% of cycles we see online don't need ammonia added as they're guaranteed to show up with a full set of bacteria already in place. If a cycling umpire isn't matching your specific approach to timing already well-studied, and readable in an actual link not from their tank, you are getting parroted into doubt and will eventually perceive a stall and invest more money in cycling bacteria-where you don't need any extra
3. The masses use API and not seneye. 2 ppm cycling wouldn't have the deleterious effects on the hobby it has if we all used digital nh3 trackers to assess controls. Do this search on google: stalled reef tank cycle.
that's 450,000 pages of what test kit? seneye?
here is a direct link of a comparison between seneye and API cycling on an initial ammonia dose following normal amounts. How long did API take to register the drop vs seneye>
4. 2ppm ammonia, especially dosed more than once, is the sole reason you're being advised to do 100% water changes to start clean after your cycle completes.
this is easy for nano reefers, we don't care how much raw blast you want to input, it can be changed out for new and your cycle will be fine (see below, stalled cycles are false sales ad claims)
if you're cycling a 260 gallon dry start reef, you need means that don't require a ~200 gallon water change at the end. Use the method from tenet #1 to avoid the big water change, forego the ripoff advice to dose massive amounts of algae food into your new aquarium to alleviate trained doubt.
5. The types of bottle bacteria we employ want carbon and other nutrients (fish food, #1 above) that ammonia alone doesn't provide, that's the type of energy these clades have developed to employ for biomass expansion and to set up shop as biofilter constituents. Source for claim: Dr. Reef's 110 page bottle bac analysis thread, common online research papers/ anyone feel free to link some here. *when folks don't add food, and blast the raw ammonia, carbon and nutrients still get in anyway albeit much slower than by direct feeding. Take a strip of packing tape/clean and go stick it to the top of your blinds mount on a window, or the top of your living room fan blade. peel the tape back off and look at the tape angled into a flashlight beam in a dark room-there's your natural sourced carbon and assorted gnat wings/goodies.
When people forego bottle bac (tenet #1) and add only fish food, the proteins in that food are broken down by common bacteria in liquids within a home to yield the ammonia portion (nitrogen) the filter bacteria need. The point is, given enough wait time, you can't mess up a cycle by day 30 wait and any common bottle bac cycle is ready by day 10 although your cheap test kits may not show it (#3 above seneye vs api cycle link)
6. Purveyors of 2ppm cycling literally do not have one single example of a seneye failed cycle where 2 ppm dosing was skipped. not one, from a calibrated and benched seneye unit. There aren't any posts in pattern we can find on the entire internet that skipping 2ppm ammonia verification tricked someone into starting too early, and their fish died in a cloudy smelly haze of gray water (how crashed tanks look in crashed tank threads) from a cycle that just plain wasn't ready yet.
(side note, I have seen acclimation stress initial loss-I floated my shipping bag opened for 2 hours before adding into tank, sumps built with mold proof silicone losses/hardware errors. Seneye is what you'd use to discern patterned ammonia issues, good luck finding any)
you are being sold a practice over, and over, and over, painted with doubt and fear and need for verification yet no examples exist for the consequences of noncompliance. Any cycle attempt you can find on the internet worked fine; their fish are swimming and eating well (until velvet kicks in by month 8)
if we are operating on a continuum of some cycles working, and some failing, there will be easy death losses we can link here for patterning. There aren't. its a false notion.
7. Alternate methods of cycle proofing exist, that don't use any parameter testing at all, sellers and influencers don't take time to elucidate this option because it's free and doesn't involve risk that concerns you into a purchase. Can you find youtube videos on this approach? Macna talks? Visual benthic cuing of a cycle = when you wait long enough for modes A & C above to transmit growths of diatoms, algae, cyano or dinos onto formerly all-white surfaces. The casting of those growths around the tank came after your basic filtration abilities were established. Get a seneye, run an option A or C cycle until the sand is covered in red spots, and load test the setup on seneye and post your results. it will always pass basic oxidation controls that manage any common starting bioload. You can actually tell some systems are cycled by merely seeing a picture of the tank. Here's two specific recent times we did that; watch the cyclers now add bioloading and see how it fares:
and
(notice the # of days at work, the prediction of events before we get pics, all A and C cycles follow this timing)
*look at post #64 and the follow up pics
8. I'm out of ideas lol, a title of ten reasons not to get tricked sounds better than seven reasons.
so as we debate these claims I'm going to need to see actual failed cycles linked, true fails, please. we need to see some dead fish in pattern and some seneyes pegged to 8ppm nh4 in order to find the patterns we need, to believe the hype.
9.9/10 cycling umpires online stand firm with this information in unison to anyone posting doubt about cycle completion, what happens if we break ranks and-- don't?
Can a cycle still be proofed as ready even without the massive ammonia dose event we're trained (by bottle bac sellers) to do?
Here's ten reasons I'll state that the practice is terrible information and has the primary outcome of tricking the masses into buying multiple bottles of bacteria for the same aquarium to remedy a completely false stall:
1. Here is one of several linkable examples I have where liquid ammonia was not dosed to 2 ppm and a full reef was created from a dry start rock set, and you can track that reef to total maturity then upgraded parts into a larger reef destined to become equally as nice. We open with a direct example of not dosing to 2 ppm ammonia yet still being able to cycle a dry start reef to carry a common starting bioload. A simple pinch of fish food+ wait time following a common cycling chart and no initial dosing of ammonia to 2ppm produced:
Build Thread - My SPS Waterbox Peninsula Mini 15
Hi all. Long time member (I think I joined right around when R2R started or took off years ago) but got out of the hobby for about 6 years and now I am back! I don't see many build threads for the PM 15 (mostly the 25) so thought I'd share my journey here. This post will be a bit behind...
www.reef2reef.com
*even if we never test that setup for any degree of cycling params, ammonia nitrite and nitrate, any set of rocks set stewing in a mix of saltwater and fish food will upcycle without bottle bac in 30 days, see any cycling chart ever written.
2. Cycling a reef tank breaks down into four common approaches and three of the options have a predetermined maximum wait time to establishment, a timeframe for the number of days we'd wait which has nothing to do with a starting dose of 2 ppm liquid ammonia. (uncured rocks cure out relative to the growths they bring in, wait time varies per set and per location of keeping)
See any cycling chart for the pertinent # of days to controlling ammonia in fed or boosted setups, try and find seneye cycles that don't back up that information. Four common reef cycling approaches are:
A-dry start setups; they get either bottle bac or no bottle bac
B-live rock skip cycle setups that begin a new tank with rocks completely full of bacteria and require zero wait times since moving rocks from old water to new water doesn't kill bacteria (every reef convention aquarium display you've ever seen)
C-blended cycles where both live and dry rocks are kept together in the same flow path
D-uncured ocean rocks shipped to a home where adding ammonia is the last thing we'd ever do-copious water changes are sometimes needed to prevent ammonia spiking and causing a loss cascade much less dosing 2 ppm right at the start.
***why don't sales cycling ads break down the four types of cycles to see if you even need to proof your cycle at all? Sales ads are trying to sell you things or set you up to buy things, it doesn't benefit them to outline that 50% of cycles we see online don't need ammonia added as they're guaranteed to show up with a full set of bacteria already in place. If a cycling umpire isn't matching your specific approach to timing already well-studied, and readable in an actual link not from their tank, you are getting parroted into doubt and will eventually perceive a stall and invest more money in cycling bacteria-where you don't need any extra
3. The masses use API and not seneye. 2 ppm cycling wouldn't have the deleterious effects on the hobby it has if we all used digital nh3 trackers to assess controls. Do this search on google: stalled reef tank cycle.
that's 450,000 pages of what test kit? seneye?
here is a direct link of a comparison between seneye and API cycling on an initial ammonia dose following normal amounts. How long did API take to register the drop vs seneye>
New Cycle - Seneye vs API
Hello All, Have just started to cycle a new DD ReefPro 900. Am using Fritzzyme Fishless food and Turbo Start and am 2 days in. I have dosed twice with Fishless food on the back of the seneye readings which are as follows: But the API result seems to be showing a different story. I`ve seen a...
www.reef2reef.com
4. 2ppm ammonia, especially dosed more than once, is the sole reason you're being advised to do 100% water changes to start clean after your cycle completes.
this is easy for nano reefers, we don't care how much raw blast you want to input, it can be changed out for new and your cycle will be fine (see below, stalled cycles are false sales ad claims)
100% Water Change
So in my previous thread, I had an ammonia issue that was out of hand. As suggested, I did a 100% WC and now i’m wondering when I should start adding fish back. If anyone has suggestions, let me know!
www.reef2reef.com
if you're cycling a 260 gallon dry start reef, you need means that don't require a ~200 gallon water change at the end. Use the method from tenet #1 to avoid the big water change, forego the ripoff advice to dose massive amounts of algae food into your new aquarium to alleviate trained doubt.
5. The types of bottle bacteria we employ want carbon and other nutrients (fish food, #1 above) that ammonia alone doesn't provide, that's the type of energy these clades have developed to employ for biomass expansion and to set up shop as biofilter constituents. Source for claim: Dr. Reef's 110 page bottle bac analysis thread, common online research papers/ anyone feel free to link some here. *when folks don't add food, and blast the raw ammonia, carbon and nutrients still get in anyway albeit much slower than by direct feeding. Take a strip of packing tape/clean and go stick it to the top of your blinds mount on a window, or the top of your living room fan blade. peel the tape back off and look at the tape angled into a flashlight beam in a dark room-there's your natural sourced carbon and assorted gnat wings/goodies.
When people forego bottle bac (tenet #1) and add only fish food, the proteins in that food are broken down by common bacteria in liquids within a home to yield the ammonia portion (nitrogen) the filter bacteria need. The point is, given enough wait time, you can't mess up a cycle by day 30 wait and any common bottle bac cycle is ready by day 10 although your cheap test kits may not show it (#3 above seneye vs api cycle link)
6. Purveyors of 2ppm cycling literally do not have one single example of a seneye failed cycle where 2 ppm dosing was skipped. not one, from a calibrated and benched seneye unit. There aren't any posts in pattern we can find on the entire internet that skipping 2ppm ammonia verification tricked someone into starting too early, and their fish died in a cloudy smelly haze of gray water (how crashed tanks look in crashed tank threads) from a cycle that just plain wasn't ready yet.
(side note, I have seen acclimation stress initial loss-I floated my shipping bag opened for 2 hours before adding into tank, sumps built with mold proof silicone losses/hardware errors. Seneye is what you'd use to discern patterned ammonia issues, good luck finding any)
you are being sold a practice over, and over, and over, painted with doubt and fear and need for verification yet no examples exist for the consequences of noncompliance. Any cycle attempt you can find on the internet worked fine; their fish are swimming and eating well (until velvet kicks in by month 8)
if we are operating on a continuum of some cycles working, and some failing, there will be easy death losses we can link here for patterning. There aren't. its a false notion.
7. Alternate methods of cycle proofing exist, that don't use any parameter testing at all, sellers and influencers don't take time to elucidate this option because it's free and doesn't involve risk that concerns you into a purchase. Can you find youtube videos on this approach? Macna talks? Visual benthic cuing of a cycle = when you wait long enough for modes A & C above to transmit growths of diatoms, algae, cyano or dinos onto formerly all-white surfaces. The casting of those growths around the tank came after your basic filtration abilities were established. Get a seneye, run an option A or C cycle until the sand is covered in red spots, and load test the setup on seneye and post your results. it will always pass basic oxidation controls that manage any common starting bioload. You can actually tell some systems are cycled by merely seeing a picture of the tank. Here's two specific recent times we did that; watch the cyclers now add bioloading and see how it fares:
Cycling help
Hi guys. I am new to this forum. My name is Steven and i am from just outside Glasgow. I am not new to aquariums by any means what so ever but i am new to Marine setups. I have just converted my existing tank to a marine setup. The total volume including sump is 308 Litres. I am a bit weird in...
www.reef2reef.com
and
(notice the # of days at work, the prediction of events before we get pics, all A and C cycles follow this timing)
*look at post #64 and the follow up pics
Cycling a new tank- am I doing this correctly?????
MN your rip clean study threads are really good and for the types of controls you enacted and charted, work threads would be unhelpful. you were measuring using lab precision testing ability the impact of various cleaning routines on saltwater rocks/surfaces, if we crowdsourced that info it...
www.reef2reef.com
8. I'm out of ideas lol, a title of ten reasons not to get tricked sounds better than seven reasons.
so as we debate these claims I'm going to need to see actual failed cycles linked, true fails, please. we need to see some dead fish in pattern and some seneyes pegged to 8ppm nh4 in order to find the patterns we need, to believe the hype.