Turbo start- LFS insistent on having me use fish to cycle

[Peter Jason]

Im setting up two tank. I have a 20 gallon QT and a 75 gallon reef. I added a bottle of turbo start to QT about a month ago. I brought my water in for testing, Im not cycled yet but in the process. I've been adding straight ammonia (the approved fish kind-dr. tims?). Anyways, they said the produce only really work if you had a fish within a few days of adding Turbo.

So, I bough a new bottle for QT, and the bottle literally says, "Add animals after acclimating." I prefer to use turbo start and add pure ammonia to the tanks, and let the two tanks cycle naturally. I do no like the idea of using a fish to cycle, for it just seems cruel to me

 

[motortrendz]

I agree with you. no point in stressing a fish out or most likely killing them to speed the cycle. I actually used the zeovit 14 day cycle 2 times and its worked perfectly.

 

[brandon429]

Any tank that had bb added a month ago is already cycled anyway, no fish needed now. If testing doesn’t reveal the cycle is done, that’s typical, expected, and still doesn’t change the status. The test would have to be done correctly in order to show completion

We kicked up a thread called microbiology of cycling halfway down on page one here, it shows examples of tanks being tested in the way that shows cycling completion by day thirty

 

[Peter Jason]

What does bb mean?

 

[brandon429]

Beneficial bacteria or bottled bacteria. It takes them under two days for the active strains to colonize the surface area in the tank studies from dr reef shows, and the less active strains are still set within a week of introduction to a tank


The testers won’t read accurately until given enough time to balance out lots of extra metabolites that are dosed well beyond what a real starting bioload of clean up crew plus a few corals would generate. This is why everyones cycle seems to vary, but they don’t vary after 30 days time underwater all google cycling charts show. By using testers that vary wildly, ie not seneye, everyone is actually dosing highly different amounts of ammonia, thinking they’re tuned initially to the right amount.

But if you do a full water change on a thirty day system, then retest only for ammonia, they always pass. Don’t be testing wastewater is the key

At no time does variation in amounts of ammonia or nitrite within reason during ramp up to thirty days affect the end cycle timeline, the charts show how long it takes. Thirty days until ammonia always complies with nitrite, and that’s done by day twenty on most charts. That’s why we only need to know # of submersion days to state your nitrite, those charts can be solved with one variable known for submersion time. Whatever the water reads in the interim doesn’t matter at all, it’s not suppressing the bac as people so easily state.

The microbiology of cycling thread is down below this one and contains twenty or so demos of no test tank cycling

 

[GatorScott]

I’ve had zero issues with dr tims one and only bacteria and his ammonia chloride. Cycled a bunch of tanks this way with out hiccup. I’d recommend using that instead.

 

[W1ngz]

You're more than likely cycled. This thread leaves me with 2 big questions though.

-Why are you bringing the water for testing instead of doing it yourself? You're hurting yourself by not developing those skills now, before you have living things in there.

-Why does your LFS insist on using live animals? Knowledge has increased 1000 fold since that was the common practice. It makes me question what other best practices, knowledge and tech they aren't up to date on.

 

[Homewrecker]

You're more than likely cycled. This thread leaves me with 2 big questions though.

-Why are you bringing the water for testing instead of doing it yourself? You're hurting yourself by not developing those skills now, before you have living things in there.

-Why does your LFS insist on using live animals? Knowledge has increased 1000 fold since that was the common practice. It makes me question what other best practices, knowledge and tech they aren't up to date on.

Answer to question 2: Because they likely live in the 90’s of reef tanks still. I bet they tell customers how hard sps are to keep and have brown sticks in their tanks lol

 

[Reef-junky]

Answer to question 2: Because they likely live in the 90’s of reef tanks still. I bet they tell customers how hard sps are to keep and have brown sticks in their tanks lol

Sad thing is more often then not this is the norm for LFS. Which is why they are going out of business left and right.

 

[brandon429]

the lfs is correct, he can use a fish. Thousands are doing it, skipping the wait portion. They use the bottle bac along with fish.

That doesn’t mean using fish is anywhere near in line with today’s disease prevention protocols, it’s not. But they’re not suffering from free ammonia, that’s death within the hour if it happens without binders in the water. Currently it’s the view of the masses fish were harmed with fish in cycling, not the case. There is no middle ground with ammonia, ‘some’ doesn’t stay free while a majority is bound. It either compounds and kills quickly, and also registers a test-free visual cue like clouding or smelling and death, or it’s bound and your testers can’t read it correctly.

Fish are harmed by insta disease vectoring, they’re not being gill burned.

The untrue notion of sustained .25 ammonia/ stuck cycle is the same thing. At no time time beyond thirty days underwater with boosters does any reef tank maintain .25 free ammonia due to lack of bacteria. Just bc a million testers said it does doesn’t make it so. Not one owner of a seneye will ever report that in an unmedicated tank. It’s solely a domain of titration testing, to be fully wrong.

 

[Marco S]

the lfs is correct, he can use a fish. Thousands are doing it, skipping the wait portion. They use the bottle bac along with fish.

That doesn’t mean using fish is anywhere near in line with today’s disease prevention protocols, it’s not. But they’re not suffering from free ammonia, that’s death within the hour if it happens without binders in the water. Currently it’s the view of the masses fish were harmed with fish in cycling, not the case. There is no middle ground with ammonia, ‘some’ doesn’t stay free while a majority is bound. It either compounds and kills quickly, and also registers a test-free visual cue like clouding or smelling and death, or it’s bound and your testers can’t read it correctly.

Fish are harmed by insta disease vectoring, they’re not being gill burned.

The untrue notion of sustained .25 ammonia/ stuck cycle is the same thing. At no time time beyond thirty days underwater with boosters does any reef tank maintain .25 free ammonia due to lack of bacteria. Just bc a million testers said it does doesn’t make it so. Not one owner of a seneye will ever report that in an unmedicated tank. It’s solely a domain of titration testing, to be fully wrong.

Although most of what he says is above my head...I agree with @brandon429 and have used fish in every cycle I have used Bio-Spira and or Fritz Turbo Start in and have never noticed any measurable amount of Ammonia and the Nitrite never rises enough to be harmful. The whole point of using BB is to add fish right off the bat and the instructions tell you to add fish the same day. Not sure why you would add BB to wait the entire 30+ days without fish, but to each there own...

Edit: Also, if you are going to QT all your fish, hopefully you will be sanitizing your QT tank between batches of fish. Are you really going to wait the entire 30+ days before adding fish to your QT each time?

 

[brandon429]

Thought of one additional detail: quarantine setups are notoriously low on surface area by design, so that disease has fewer places to hide/complex with waste

As long as extra surface area is being employed in an external filter or something then qt cycling is like full display cycling. If it's shorted big-time on surface area that indeed can skew timelines