Top ten reasons you should NOT dose a new cycling tank to 2 ppm ammonia

[mdb_talon]

Mark me down as one who does a cycle by adding 2ppm ammonia and use bottled bacteria. Recently i rarely ever even check the ammonia though i just wait a couple weeks and never have an issue. I never do this "very large" water change you suggest must be done. I like to run my tanks with nitrate between 5 and 10....and thats the range it ends up in after the ammonia processes. Sometimes in 10 days or so i add cheato and then do another 2ppm ammonia. Gets the cheato growing and happy and still keeps me where i want to be on nutrient levels.

This works great for me no issues whatsoever. However i fully realize there are countless other ways to start a tank that also work just fine....that is where i have an issue with this type of post. There is no single right way to do most things in the hobby. Discussing alternatives is great, but i dont understand the need to convince people that a common way of doing it(that generally works just fine) is the wrong way to do it.

 

[brandon429]

Do this basic search on Google, see if it’s a required notion vs easily discounted as many do here apparently, in this thread

‘required to add 2 ppm ammonia to a reef tank cycle?’

I get these thousands of pages:

the point of the search is to see that sales angling has a complete hold on the hobby, complete, alternate means of verification exist only in deep nerd rabbit holes. When I read out to page fifty, it’s 2012 and the same thing, years endlessly of stall help needs and new bottles sold, but it’s all false.


that’s a massive market uncovered driving millions of dollars in sales, it’s all false. That’s fun stuff to review - who starts false trends



who props them up

 

[brandon429]

@mdb_talon I think that’s excellent input and I wouldn’t expect you’ll have any trouble in the matter. Dan, Taricha, MNFish1, and Coxey 81 too will not have trouble with it/ naturally skilled test wielders

 

[DopamineKata]

the point of the search is to see that sales angling has a complete hold on the hobby, complete, alternate means of verification exist only in deep nerd rabbit holes. When I read out to page fifty, it’s 2012 and the same thing, years endlessly of stall help needs and new bottles sold, but it’s all false.


that’s a massive market uncovered driving millions of dollars in sales, it’s all false. That’s fun stuff to review - who starts false trends



who props them up

You're upset that people are using a sub $200 method that's proven to work because it *might not* be necessary and you think it's an example of some vast conspiracy?

 

[brandon429]

did you read any of post #1 or just pop in based on that one post above

need to know depth of preparation for the question to match that in response

 

[brandon429]

if you have a cogent, specific aspect of post #1 to remark upon that shows thought on the matter, or personal practice, or a snippet of reading somewhere you gave real thought time to I am interested to hear.

the point of that search is that all those stalls and remedies taken, and avoidance of fish disease preps while fearing incompletion of cycle, isn't correct, its false. all the new bottles of bac they bought, false and fake training got us to that habit permanently seated among cyclers.

and if you disagree, I ask if you own seneye, or have ever tracked cycles posted by others on seneye.

I'm saying it hardly ever works. That's why a total of 6 or 7 cyclers mentioned above get the pass. the rest are in those thousands of pages, being misled, being tricked out of cash.

 

[Dan_P]

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:

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.

Holy Smokes! You have 4 pages of replies since this morning? I am impressed but a little afraid that you can yank the social media chain so easily!!!

A lot of wisdom in this hobby seems like it might contain a dollop of BS. Cycling is one of them. I am not exactly sure why you have zeroed in on cycling but thanks for rattling our collective cages The replies to your post will replace Game of Thrones for me.

 

[Freenow54]

I followed to the letter an article about fishless cycling. Used live rock but these days live is not live wild. It is manufactured rock cured somehow. I only added one bottle of bacteria as instructions stated. The rest was PURE ammonia. Took 2 months. Did have some strange readings. That eventually disappeared, and cycled beautifully ( lights off approach ). Just saying it worked for me

 

[brandon429]

I like to sample the passions of the masses this way, it gives me a temp on the hobby standing and the receptivity to change if any. that link I provided for friends from nano-reef.com I thought stood out that change can expand from one forum to another though. the reefer who felt they might be stalled were being reassured fairly well, very different from the google search returns above that's for sure.

reefcentral has a new forum location now/in process of searching it to see what they have going. If Timfish is running feedback it'll be doing well over there.

and for kicks, I'm going to try and sign in anew to see if they carried that 'ole block over from when I tried to write this very. same. post. in 2013 heh. not likely, but worth a check. curious if BrianD's wrath spans the ages.


here's rc's new forum addy

- Reef Central Online Community

note: reef2reef bears no wrath. they're such good big brothers among forums.

 

[GARRIGA]

Checked my current build.

Added Bio-Spira on 9/17 along with ammonium chloride.

Ammonia cycled on 9/21
Nitrite cycled on 10/5

Nitrates cycled on 10/17 from 180 ppm to 10 ppm using NoPox and MB7 and still Fishless. Reason for high nitrates was the 8 applications of ammonium chloride that started 80 drops and culminated at 120 drops on 10/12. Tank is a 20G with 1/4 dedicated to filtration and rocks. Probably has 15–16 volume of water.

On 11/13 nitrates were 5 ppm and phosphates under 0.25 ppm.

Four days from start to cycle ammonia
Eighteen days to cycle nitrites but I was increasing my dosage of ammonium therefore this likely finished much sooner.
Fifty eight days for full cycle and nitrates and phosphates where reefing could begin. Perhaps not sticks. Would need better tester to confirm but I can keep softies and most LPS.

There’s my web link. My own experience. Was posted on the web therefore should qualify me as more than clueless. Hopefully. Not holding my breath on it.

 

[brandon429]

that's a no go on updated cycling science for reef cental heh, I'm heartbroken. I bet that list of bans is held in laser-etched crystal like the beetles album sitting on the moon currently.

I scanned all of reefcentral and found no standout posts for our matter. moving on

 

[brandon429]

Tamberav practices solid cycling and uber solid disease control advise wherever he posts

look at his surface area catch here, the only one/all the rest are bac-stall trained

seeded new tank, 3 months with no nitrates or nitrites and high total ammonia?

hey all, i have been going through this forum religiously and have searched and searched for a solution and could not find one, so posting here for help. background : have had two clowns in an 8 gal aquarium for 6 years, no issues. 8gal aquarium is repurposed and is doing fine, all cycled, params...

www.nano-reef.com

search around nano-reef.com you'll find 10 or 20 currently running cycle help posts that directly interface with our workups here. I think that's neat, they're deailng in constantly new challenges and good for them/active board. they directly share linking ability back to reef2reef as well, nano-reef.com is a friendly interboard location.

 

[polyppal]

its all non commitment statements on other people's setups as far as I can see. You own a reef tank, that is apparent.

Yup. Where’s your build thread Brandon?

Can’t seem to find anything you’ve personally demonstrated that reflects your experience beyond the article on the popularity of nanos in your signature. Where’s your reef tank that reflects your credentials regarding the methods you tout/reject?

 

[Eagle_Steve]

I just want to ask one thing and I will step back into the shadows, as I am enjoying this actually being a debate and staying clean so far.

Can everyone please keep this clean and all that good stuff?

Again, enjoying the debate and now back to the shadows for me.

 

[HomebroodExotics]

Yup. Where’s your build thread Brandon?

Can’t seem to find anything you’ve personally demonstrated that reflects your experience beyond the article on the popularity of nanos in your signature. Where’s your reef tank that reflects your credentials regarding the methods you tout/reject?

This is what I would like to see too. An actual demonstration of the skills and things you know from reading thousands of threads. Lets see it instead of cramming it down our throats every day with just anecdotes.

 

[brandon429]

I'm a lowly pico reefer, that's no fun to large tank owners. you wouldnt want to see it Zatch.

additionally, why doesn't the five thousand reefs I've either remotely transferred, cycled, uninvaded or been requested to consult with @'s matter? does remote piloting count in your thought material/discovery mode

am I allowed to relay discoveries from those ventures, and you believe them?

I learned quite a bit by selecting all posts from you/find all threads, its a neat hat trick to get details without coming off snooty, or to come off snooty on purpose.

Eagle that's an excellent coaching input and guide. no need to wreck any thread, and I don't think legit challenges to my claims are bad or unwarranted. I'd like to see about 20 more actual links though, but we know linking is a lop sided venture.

 

[polyppal]

I just want to ask one thing and I will step back into the shadows, as I am enjoying this actually being a debate and staying clean so far.

Can everyone please keep this clean and all that good stuff?

Again, enjoying the debate and now back to the shadows for me.

lol perfect R&M gif for the situation

 

[HomebroodExotics]

I'm a lowly pico reefer, that's no fun to large tank owners. you wouldnt want to see it Zatch.

additionally, why doesn't the five thousand reefs I've either remotely transferred, cycled, uninvaded or been requested to consult with @'s matter? does remote piloting count in your thought material/discovery mode

I learned quite a bit by selecting all posts from you/find all threads, its a neat hat trick to get details without coming off snooty, or to come off snooty on purpose.

Eagle that's an excellent coaching input and guide. no need to wreck any thread, and I don't think legit challenges to my claims are bad or unwarranted. I'd like to see about 20 more actual links though, but we know linking is a lop sided venture.

Everyone here doesn't listen to you because you pick and chose which posts to present to us. I have personally seen you ignore obvious issues because it didn't align with your beliefs. Unless you want to put up and show some demonstrations of what you are trying to tell us, I have no clue what fight you are even fighting anymore because it's always a bunch of incoherent rambling. Also speaking like you are the authority of reef2reef is just weird when you literally own a fish bowl. I appreciate your passion but its being lost in the chaos.

 

[brandon429]

For any new readers, I'm sure there are beefy statements here I have not seen, good solid burns having literally nothing to do with 2 ppm verification cycling, and providing not one iota of reading material or discovery on the matter.

inserts troll meme/visualize one as if I successfully added it and it does a cool motion dance

This is the power of the ignore button, it makes reef2reef unique among forums in that you get the choice to be stung by noncontributors by clicking 'show ignored content'--or not. its a heckuva button. keeps blood pressure down better than Lisinopril.

Occasionally I spot check 'em to see if a readable link is present, it hardly ever is though.

can someone do some outbound searching from other forums, find us some content material to review? quiz meh

 

[polyppal]

I'm a lowly pico reefer, that's no fun to large tank owners. you wouldnt want to see it Zatch.

additionally, why doesn't the five thousand reefs I've either remotely transferred, cycled, uninvaded or been requested to consult with @'s matter? does remote piloting count in your thought material/discovery mode

I learned quite a bit by selecting all posts from you/find all threads, its a neat hat trick to get details without coming off snooty, or to come off snooty on purpose.

Eagle that's an excellent coaching input and guide. no need to wreck any thread, and I don't think legit challenges to my claims are bad or unwarranted. I'd like to see about 20 more actual links though, but we know linking is a lop sided venture.

• Ok so wait, you espouse yourself as the be-all-end-all of cycling, and you don't currently/have ever had a system that reflects these theories?
• Let alone the conjectures you make about big bad bacterias conspiracy and all that?
• You think your self imposed 'remote piloting' other peoples systems from your keyboard makes you an expert when you don't even have first hand experience?
• Yet you try to dismiss those of us who have used your 'disproven' methods for many years with direct personal success?
• What's to say that you are responsible for helping 'unstick' thousands of cycles that nature wasn't in the process of already doing before your input (you know with... time aka the way its always been done)?

Hopefully anyone looking for advice has the sense to look to people with actual documented success and experience...

If anyone wants to know, I'm a HALO expert. No, ive never played Halo - and I don't have an Xbox... but ive talked to THOUSANDS of people who have! And ive seen a lot of the commercials. And I google it occasionally. "Am I not allowed to relay from those ventures and you believe them?" So anyways, if you need definitive input on HALO, I'm your guy!