Updated cycling science trends in 2023

[brandon429]

Regarding the unfactoring of nitrite in reef tank displays and in reef tank cycles


many readers are wondering right now why I'm typing that.

here's why

go to our search feature. Input in the name field: Randy Holmes-Farley (he's the top reef chemist in the world)

input into the search field "nitrite"

read his collective postings. that's why we're unfactoring nitrite in 2020 and beyond. he told us to stop doing so in 2006 actually lol, we're just slow to listen on the boards.

here's the exact search I just ran:



pick any/all of those threads and read how we don't need to know nitrite anymore in reef tank troubleshoots.



Nitrite in the reef tank article

https://reefkeeping.com/issues/2005-06/rhf/index.php

= we're never going to factor it here.

 

[Suus801]

Regarding the unfactoring of nitrite in reef tank displays and in reef tank cycles


many readers are wondering right now why I'm typing that.

here's why

go to our search feature. Input in the name field: Randy Holmes-Farley (he's the top reef chemist in the world)

input into the search field "nitrite"

read his collective postings. that's why we're unfactoring nitrite in 2020 and beyond. he told us to stop doing so in 2006 actually lol, we're just slow to listen on the boards.

here's the exact search I just ran:



pick any/all of those threads and read how we don't need to know nitrite anymore in reef tank troubleshoots.



Nitrite in the reef tank article

https://reefkeeping.com/issues/2005-06/rhf/index.php

= we're never going to factor it here.

thanks Brandon excellent advice will keep you posted

 

[xabo]

Question.....is it normal to read high phosphates(0.66 via Hanna ULR) after the initial cycle?

 

[brandon429]

truly we never factor phosphate in any work thread I've ever done, I've never ran the test for my own reef, we just haven't seen it as impactful for anything. I realize that goes against the common grain nowadays (what in this thread doesn’t) but it's a non issue for my cycle friends and rip clean friends, those are the two types of jobs I spend the most time doing

 

[xabo]

Thanks..........

 

[brandon429]

@Suus801 is there any chance we could get you to take your salinity tester, must not rely on their word, and verify the holding water salinity from any tank the LFS uses to sell fish

To make this thread unique, we need some inspection field samples to see what the public encounters in fish access


This is also an honesty spot check for the LFS low salinity holding of reef fish is cheat like a hidden ace card in a game.


If readers could audit their lfs with their own salinity meter, and please let us know as a pattern set what salinity pet stores are using, that's very updated science to pattern out: it directly impacts how we prepare to add fish to your display

Any lfs housing reef fish at low salinity is cheating to bypass impacts of selling bulk fish with no disease preps. A pet store holding clowns at reef salinity is confident and you can better assess fish for purchase in a store like that




Why we should not drip acclimate fish

Deceased Clowns

Good morning, in need of some help. I have a 32g Biocube w/live rock, various crabs, snails, peppermint shrimp and a emerald crab. All inverts are doing fine. Around a month ago I did a complete water change. The only fish living the Biocube had died, I want to assume of "old age". Yesterday, I...

www.reef2reef.com

 

[exnisstech]

I have lfs that keeps their sg 1.015 - 1.017. I no longer buy fish there. They say it prevents disease but in my humble opinion it suppresses disease and then it rears it ugly head once the fish are acclimated to 1.025

 

[brandon429]

Thank you so very much for the 1st input of pattern, I think it's rather widespread. after ten reports we'll call it the majority of lfs's ha nice. really though I don't keep marine fish it's not a factor I'd ever encounter in a pet store. I'm always driving them to produce cleaner premixed water for me and to keep coral frag prices negotiable / I believe I will give my Austin store an audit on my old red sea swingarm salinity meter just to know what a clownfish buyer would get, it apparently works well because it's the only thing that sets my reef salinity. I would expect a gallon reef tank to die if it's salinity constants aren't within spec using the old swingarm meter, I always rinse it in distilled water after every use and it's been constant through the years. *they have a refractometer there too they use, I'll have them bench that against my swingarm meter and factor that in the report. I'll run some inspection as well, thank you for the input

 

[brandon429]

Updated cycling science has identified, without any doubt, that cycles are blamed for any fish symptoms in any new setup; even if the symptoms aren't ones the disease forum identifies as ammonia burning (extreme gill rates and reddened gills and hovering for air in obvious distress)

when fish flash against a rock or the shimmy in place down low, and tank happens to be at week 4, that's always blamed on cycling I'm 100% certain / I see the threads daily and they're online going back 25 years

We were going to go on forever, in this hobby, buying Prime and extra bottle bac permanently for cycle conditions that simply do not occur, that analysis is updated cycling science.

Pet stores were never going to tell us of this trend, it lowers sales rates. they're too busy tricking us with acclimation factors that cause everyone to bag acclimate (harm) or skip acclimation and dump into .025 water (harm)

Old cycling science was comfortable never discussing acclimation, disease prep, or the certainty of a reef tank cycle to be done by day ten considering today's boosted copy method everyone is doing (bottle bac or live rock transfers) the only way to progress cycling is to reference the timing that calibrated digital ammonia meters show, that's updated cycling science in 2023 and beyond.


If we are reading the advice of anyone's cycling input, and the timing they state is not found in copious seneye posts (such as the common claim from cycling umpires that ammonia might not be handled by week three after using fritz, posts of that are in the chemistry forum right now live time) we can know they're relaying old cycling science. There are more than ten thousand calibrated seneye readings uploaded to the internet, anyone reading find us a mere 10 of them showing no ammonia control by week 3 in a reef tank among normal rocks after using any bottle bac and I'll paypal the first proofer thirty bucks for posting the ten proofs they found via searches and interviews.

only having to find ten stalled cycle patterns on seneye out of ten thousand posts is a very very low/easy bar to reach for old cycling science, and if it can't be reached...

To put a bounty on the patterns that exist for cycling proofs, so that cycle umps can be accountable for information they transmit, is for sure updated cycling science. I want to evolve past the old ways which are sales fleeces.

 

[brandon429]

Irony in advanced cycling science: making use of our legit fast ammonia carry sets your tank up for fish disease having nothing to do with your filter system whatsoever. Read Max93's order of ops thread, fish go in last, not first, even though we just prepped your tank for very strong fish carry

Has anyone done coral/inverts only and no fish at first?

Fish seem to be the main cause of disruption in a display tank, given the current circumstances in the hobby with pests (ich, velvet, parasites, etc.). I have been in this hobby for 18 years, and the amount of pests that are showing up lately is much more (could also be the fact that we have...

www.reef2reef.com

*if you stock your entire reef tank with corals and CUC and macro/the additions you want first, before fish, you can then fallow that entire system all at once and then add pre-quarantined fish. if you stock fish first, one's you pay $$ for pre-quarantine, you're fallowing each subentrant into the main display requiring a separate active holding tank and if this is skipped, paying for prepped fish was wasted money and effort.

 

[Suus801]

@Suus801 is there any chance we could get you to take your salinity tester, must not rely on their word, and verify the holding water salinity from any tank the LFS uses to sell fish

To make this thread unique, we need some inspection field samples to see what the public encounters in fish access


This is also an honesty spot check for the LFS low salinity holding of reef fish is cheat like a hidden ace card in a game.


If readers could audit their lfs with their own salinity meter, and please let us know as a pattern set what salinity pet stores are using, that's very updated science to pattern out: it directly impacts how we prepare to add fish to your display

Any lfs housing reef fish at low salinity is cheating to bypass impacts of selling bulk fish with no disease preps. A pet store holding clowns at reef salinity is confident and you can better assess fish for purchase in a store like that

Update**

did a big water change ( as much as we could get out without disturbing the sand approx 80/90%)
Did a test after and ammonia was 0, nitrite 0.25,
Nitrate 5. Went to the LFS and brought the sample in… after testing it with Red Sea (ok we use api so could be different) they detected ammonia at 0.25, and nitrite of 5… lol

tanks are run at 1.023 for fish only and 1.025 for corals and fish. They said we need to wait another couple of weeks before adding fish.. I didn’t mention we did a big water change so the ammonia reading is bull*** as it was at zero or 0.25 before we did the massive water change.

anyway there is another LFS, we love quite rural so the shops aren’t easy to come by, we will go across the border to England and get some clowns there tomorrow. Will keep you up to date!

 

[brandon429]

ok let us know what salinity they hold them at very nice. thank you!

 

[brandon429]

Sellers at the reef convention use updated cycling science, buyers use old cycling science by design


here are the contrasts between new v old cycling science as it relates to all the people you see in any macna convention, or aquashella, or reefstock, going back decades:


sellers: absolutely never fail to make the convention with full complete reef systems ready to sell you stuff from

they had a start date the convention started, they made it all the time, no stalls. there is not one time in history a seller ran a red sea ammonia kit, or api, and got .2 or .25 and then packed up and headed home, head hung in defeat from a stalled cycle. that's for the buyers to fear and respond to, with purchases. Sellers use testless cycle control to setup full reefs, then skip cycle them back home so that unsold life isn't wasted.

sellers aren't risking their bounce mushrooms and darth maul zoas and queen angelfish to a weak or unpredictable cycle, they're not lucky, they're calculated. Buyers are never calculated because we as peers do not train them up that way.

Buyers get:

you must trust your non digital test kit

even at week 6 of your wait (see multiple searchable threads here for this) if your non digital test kit says any ppm of ammonia, it's correct, and you must buy more bottle bac, then wait longer.


these are stark conflicts we as peers promote to people on the internet... it's night vs day different science. we trend towards old cycling science as the fundamental training for all reef aquarists: we should stop doing that. it's keeping an unfair market advantage in favor of the sellers and it's creating a bunch of flinchy new reef aquarists.

don't be the buyer. Treat your cycling reef like a seller and command it to comply by a specific date you can be certain of, then run those disease controls.

 

[Suus801]

ok let us know what salinity they hold them at very nice. thank you!

I am not argumentative enough to do this, sorry!

 

[brandon429]

but its only asking them if you can run your salinity tester on their fish water/easy request

then you can take that reading, compare it to what they're reading on their kit, and tell them you're calibrating your own tester. and you're also noting what salinity your tester said their water was

 

[Suus801]

Update 2 clowns are in 24 hours, started feeding today and looking fine. Did another test nitrite now down to between 0.25 and 0 expecting it to zero out over the next few days.
Ammonia stayed at zero, though granted the clowns I got are small, it does support the theory that the tank is cycled and waiting any longer would have only frustrated.

thanks Brandon!

 

[brandon429]

did you verify the salinity not to report here, but as a basic care method for the fish before adding them into your reef salinity/made sure they weren't held at .017?

the vast majority of unverified salinity fish intros go well, osmotic shock can be handled by strong individuals. we pre verify salinity here so that someone doesn't eventually show up with .25 ammonia, some shocked clowns and instantly blame the cycle. even a quick jump up in salinity is tolerated by most fish, hence the "I do not acclimate" threads.

 

[brandon429]

An enduring falsehood in reef tank circles is now neutralized by our work threads and studied/uploaded by seneye owners

The concept of replacing missing bacteria in reefing to handle a given bioload.

We have all seen this post before in our studies online from forums:

you must remove your sandbed (or bioballs or bio bricks or filter media et al) in sections, so that each portion of lost bacteria has time to build back up alternatively on rocks (theory that # of bacteria determine cycle stability=old cycling science and a means to trick you into buying things)


The truth is, live rocks and all surfaces in your display maintain their bacterial colonies independent to other surfaces

*water shear and other natural population controls do not permit any more bacteria on your live rock vs what it had when you removed surrounding surface area*

if those extra surfaces are removed, or sterilized (the 52 page sand rinse thread never using bottle bac as replacement) you are either left with enough surface area afforded by live rock, or you aren't and the tank dies.

but the tank never dies in our threads... how do we luck into that over and over (is it luck?)

we can see clearly in the sand rinse thread that instantly removing sand, all filtration, all filter material and leaving the same fish loading in place does not recycle and it doesn't mini cycle

that's because live rock has enough surface area and live bacteria for anyone here, they never needed the extra, they installed it out of fear or by copy of another person's setup and assumed those extra bacteria were required.


all reef tanks run well over the # of needed bacterial cells required for ammonia handling, that's the simple fact. If you are buying something to shore up a cycle you are nearly guaranteed to be getting ripped off, whether that's a liquid supplement or a form of additional surface area beyond the live rocks you've already paid for.


Adding more bacteria to existing surface area lowers surface area, it does not increase it

increasing surface area to wastewater presentation is how you increase filter efficiency in aquarium science, it's not about adding more bacteria.


Look at this letter:


X



let's say that's the structure wastewater full of ammonia sees when it crashes into a live rock surface in our reef tank

see how in 3d presentation to reef water there are open channels X pattern, multiple contact surfaces where bacteria would present to water coursing through those channels?

well, if we keep adding bacteria without increasing the size of X, those channels fill in with goo, dirt, other bacteria (mulm) this is what bacterial communities do: they lower surface area with every stacked new layer -this reduces your filter efficiency, it does not improve it. you've now added more oxygen command and more acid waste production to a system already doing fine-

thats the trick bottle bac sellers don't tell us. packing in more bacteria has no where to go, it stays in suspension or it lowers your tank's overall ability to command ammonia but not so much as to kill the tank quickly.

if we keep packing in more and more bacteria on X, and the things bacteria attract, we change the X multiple surface area presentation into a O= which is now less surface area/less contact area/less ammonia conversion efficiency. more bacteria filled in and lowered the surface area into a O presentation.

clogged up filters, clogged up rocks via additions are not better filters they're lesser filters.

The reason our rip cleans survive is it seems like we're drastically harming bacteria by removing sand, but the truth is we're improving their bacteria by uncapping it from waste detritus and overgrowth on the rocks where the real plane of contact exists; those systems always look better after a rip clean and all seneyes report strong ammonia control, not a loss gap requiring more bacteria put back. This is updated cycling science, saves cost, improves tank efficiency


**nobody who has been dumping in copious bottle bac is adding anything extra to working filters, they're bulking up their water with floating bacteria. surface shear is strong regulator of live rock surfaces and the most efficient you can be is cleaned off rocks, not piled or plugged up, with fast water flow traversing a bunch of X layout surface area. Low thin veneer of bacteria, high fast water flow over open X channels is the key hidden trick to max filter efficiency in reef tanks.



cleaning off your rocks, exporting vs importing, boosts your filtration efficiency free of charge and better than for-cost additions... it's called backflushing

backflushing changes O presentations into X presentations, it restores current surface area by increasing water shear bigtime.

backflushing is what zoo exhibits use to keep whale aquariums running efficiently, they remove bulk clogging waste from filter pads by export not by addition. rip cleaning is backflushing a reef out, not just its filters. the net benefit is increased ammonia conversion rates even though we didn't add any bacteria, we took some away. the sum total irony presented in updated cycling science is that removing bacteria from your reef works better than adding bacteria to it for cost.

 

[brandon429]

Here is the most unique cycle on the site, likely for all of 2023

Nano Build - First 8.5G cube tank, ocean water, learning curve.

Hi Everyone! I am totally new to this forum, and totally new to marine tanks! I have some experience in freshwater tanks and now it is a time to check if I can use my knowledge and have some fun with salt water. The aim is to not spend a fortune, learn as much on my own and other mistakes and...

www.reef2reef.com

how do you cycle a reef using only ocean water and still meet testless cycling ability, see within his build.

(we don't feed those cycles, or add ammonia, we do known contact time known by an ammonia line on a cycling chart and we get to work sooner if benthic visual cues set in=updated cycling science)

that's the best most enviable reef tank water anyone on this site is using, its pure liquid gold, it's like liquid live rock in most ways in fact.

that's the most living breathing respiring photosynthesizing raft-containing bottle bac beating live water cycle on the board. I don't recall seeing water that good in my reefing online tenure. we are usually mixing up salt with ro di/pales in comparison to that. bottle bac couldn't touch that quality with a ten foot pole for charge.

and he's got six trillion gallons handy free of charge/hey nice setup

the cycle is now not a concern


the real question remains: how to prepare for fish disease controls using ocean water. I have no idea. I'm asking Jay H as we speak, I believe the method involves Mike keeping a batch of water in constant fallow so that disease components die out and aren't added with each water change.

**keeping that water as active while it sits in fallow holding for 45 days is a new challenge, the cycle timing is the easiest one on the board. *it's possible cold water doesn't even have disease issues for our tropical fish, checking on that. I've posted to Jay's quarantine thread asking/will relay back the disease controls involved in ocean water nano reefs.

 

[brandon429]

Seeking pictures and video of verified ammonia toxicity in fish

Team In order to help new tank cyclers plagued by api and Red Sea ammonia test kit misreads I really need to collect video and pictures of the outward symptoms associated with true ammonia toxicity This forum has those proofs due to use of low surface area quarantine setups and there are...

www.reef2reef.com

I cannot find examples repeating in all of reefing for ammonia noncontrol. I can only find repeating examples of control of ammonia, easily, in any common arrangement reefers want to assemble.

I asked above for people in the disease forum, routine quarantiners, to report back with any ammonia injury videos or pictures...they hold fish in bare bones setups/no rocks and sand/that really do risk ammonia control issues when they run extended quarantine to get fish ready for tank introduction


we can't find any so far. No single examples, much less five or six, to form a pattern where real risk played out fully.


Jay, who runs a zoo, gives the feedback I was most after.

Let's see how long that thread has to run before we get examples of cycle inability.

*a new claim emerging in reefing chemistry circles is that inherent pH control among all reef tanks aligns to prevent dangerous nh3 expression, that the ammonia really is backed up as seen by red sea and API, but the way all reef tanks align for pH control is preventing the toxicity.

aquarists don't copy methods that lend consistent pH or we wouldn't need precision testing and dosing systems and offgassing designs to align pH tank to tank

you can't just set up a tank anywhere and get consistent pH control

but you can set up a tank anywhere and get a biofilter in a predetermined number of days, every time. that's new cycling science in my opinion, the inherent nature of our copies from one another to always lend ammonia control.

all seneye meters support the claim that ammonia control is precisely what's occurring tank to tank, not pH control.