Cycling w/o fish, shrimp, or ammonia?

[lkoechle]

Has any cycled with just the bacteria?

 

I dont know where the nearest ace is to buy ammonia (I do, its just not convenient) but the LFS (because they know everything!) just claimed you can cycle with dry rock just with the bacteria.  

That doesnt make sense to me unless the ammonia is coming from you dead bacteria.  

 

I am going to buy ammonia this weekend (put ammonia with suctafant already from misreading the label and had to start all over today grrrr...), but am wondering if there is any use to putting in bacteria before then or am I just killing my bacteria?

[brandon429]

 

that's right, dead bacteria are a huge source of natural feed for nitrifiers

 

any strain of aerobic bacteria will bloom underwater/fresh or salt, and then their various metabolic allowances determine how long they thrive in the non native environ

 

when they die, they deaminate/come apart/amino acids-> eventual ammonia as a trace nutrient for the system in question

 

 

they are right, it w just take longer compared to the driven and measured dr tims method. a wet bucket of red bricks will pass a small ammonia digestion test if you just fill up a home depot bucket with saltwater, keep it topped and circulated and opened (not sealed) and wait several mos underwater adding not a thing. reefers want their cycles fast, so by adding ammonia you'll speed it up greatly. reefkeepers cannot stop a cycle once hydration occurs (not counting meds that may be antibiotic) they only alter the timing to being able to pass an ammonia oxidation verification test.

those bottle bac sit in the dark a year with no extra feed, awaiting being dumped into a large hydration network of other bacteria whose life/death cycles are direct feed for the nitrifiers. all kinds of proteins waft into the opened top aquarium or wet bucket...they are trace amounts that degrade into trace ammonia so the process is very slow

 

 

 in the 80s we cycled guppy tanks using nothing. any decent lfs would tell you as a 10 yr old kid:

 

Get a tank, add the epoxy rocks and fake plants and corner bubbler and fill it up with tap water. come back in 30 days Ill sell you some swordtails and gups

 

the chlorine dissipated, the bac and the ammonia got in, and the tiny scum layer after just 30 days submersion was enough to prevent the tank from turning to white stink in 48 hours, which is what happens the first time we bought the fish and the tank together without telling them there was no 30 day delay to stocking-even if we used stress coat on the chlorine water there was no bac mat in place

 

We never used bottle bac or ammonia ever, totally a nineties trend. We simply filled and waited.

[CronicReefer]

There is a new product I saw called FaStart. It is for establishing new marine aquariums without ammonia/food source. Most of my LFS carry this product.

http://brightwellaquatics.com/products/fastart_m_t.php

[brandon429]

hey that is neat, without that ingredients list at the end it would have left me wondering how they get bac to live indefinitely in the closed bottle

 

its only bac feed, not bac so they require the mb7 for the bac source. alternatively, one can just dose that Brightwell soln into the tank after its set up and the normal complement of bac from nature and simple cross contamination as we set up the tank w take over and enjoy the feeding... even if the mb7 wasn't used.

 

id be curious to have a cycling race to see if this system mb7/brightwell additive can beat a dr times AC/bottle bac 2 week cycle which passes an ammonia digestion test *even if all the water is changed out*  (indicating surface nitrification, not suspension nitrification from things we dosed into the water)

[lkoechle]

1 hour ago, brandon429 said:

hey that is neat, without that ingredients list at the end it would have left me wondering how they get bac to live indefinitely in the closed bottle

 

its only bac feed, not bac so they require the mb7 for the bac source. alternatively, one can just dose that Brightwell soln into the tank after its set up and the normal complement of bac from nature and simple cross contamination as we set up the tank w take over and enjoy the feeding... even if the mb7 wasn't used.

 

id be curious to have a cycling race to see if this system mb7/brightwell additive can beat a dr times AC/bottle bac 2 week cycle which passes an ammonia digestion test *even if all the water is changed out*  (indicating surface nitrification, not suspension nitrification from things we dosed into the water)

Sounds like a good excuse for two picos

[Ejslane14]

Can use fritz turbo start for a cycle to avoid using fish or ammonia