why fishless cycle?

[Murphs_Reef]

7 minutes ago, aclman88 said:

You should really focus more of your time on building a successful reef tank and learning how to properly care for one before you start telling others how to do so. Experience is by far the best teacher. I did tons of research before I started, but I still had to constantly learn and adapt while I was building and maintaining my tank over the course of a couple years. 

Isn't that the truth. I been researching and working on my skills for what's now just ticked over to 8 years. I'm still a newbie when compared to some of these guys... And make mistakes that are obvious errors to some reef keepers! Offering advice I always caveat with a "in my experience"...

[InAtTheDeepEnd]

I'm gonna stop responding to this poster's various topics now because it feels like an exercise in futility getting op to comprehend and I'm not experienced enough myself yet anyway 😵‍💫🥴(total noob actually 🤭😜)

[filefishfinatic]

4 minutes ago, InAtTheDeepEnd said:

I'm gonna stop responding to this poster's various topics now because it feels like an exercise in futility getting op to comprehend and I'm not experienced enough myself yet anyway 😵‍💫🥴(total noob actually 🤭😜)

i am keeping a very fat healthy starfish and sponges and tubeworms 

[AMoonlitGoat]

The fact is that in newly established tanks there is not a strong enough bacterial population to process ammonia down to nitrates fast enough for it to not have any effects on our animals we keep whether we can see the effects or not. Bottled bac doesn’t work instantly it takes time. Live rock works in many cases but like others have said there will be die off which cause ammonia spikes. I can understand your impatience (currently dry cycling a tank now) but we have proven ways to check if a tank is ready for fish, we don’t need to guess or risk the health of these animals anymore. Cycling is just the first hurdle that requires patience in this hobby. I can tell you that in my experience the best way to be successful is to have a strong foundation and to do things the right way the first time. Only bad things happen fast here.

[filefishfinatic]

what happens if you dont get an ammonia spike though? i never saw any sign of a ammonia spike in my tank 

[Tired]

52 minutes ago, filefishfinatic said:

i am keeping a very fat healthy starfish and sponges and tubeworms 

Starfish take months, if not a year, to starve to death. If it's still alive and doing well in a year, you're successfully keeping it. Sponges and tubeworms also take awhile to starve, and are not in fact hard to keep. My LFS has bins where they let newly brought in live rock die off, and guess what? Sponges and tubeworms galore, because they were brought from the ocean. Also loads of ammonia. If you put a fish in there, it'd die. 

 

Two months is a very new tank. You haven't been keeping anything for long enough to claim success. 

 

It's very possible to cycle a tank quickly with live rock. That doesn't mean you should fish-in cycle. Best-case scenario, congrats, you've looked at fish slightly earlier. Worst-case, you cause the fish pain, stress, and potentially kill them. 

 

You cannot predict whether or not a tank will have an ammonia spike during cycling. If you have enough bacteria, it might not have a spike. But you can't predict that, so shouldn't bet on not having it. 

[InAtTheDeepEnd]

Op can you actually show pics of water tests showing you don't have any ammonia...? 

[Tired]

Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if they don't. Live rock is great stuff. It's just not a guarantee. 

 

Besides, the tank needs a few weeks to sort its equilibrium out anyway, even if it's technically cycled. 

[AMoonlitGoat]

12 minutes ago, filefishfinatic said:

what happens if you dont get an ammonia spike though? i never saw any sign of a ammonia spike in my tank 

Just because you didn’t see it doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. It’s possible your tank is fine with what you did but you took a huge risk at the expense of your animals health. I certainly wouldn’t feel good about advocating for others to gamble with their pets lives when there are ways we can know for sure they will be safe and happy.

[filefishfinatic]

9 minutes ago, AMoonlitGoat said:

Just because you didn’t see it doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. It’s possible your tank is fine with what you did but you took a huge risk at the expense of your animals health. I certainly wouldn’t feel good about advocating for others to gamble with their pets lives when there are ways we can know for sure they will be safe and happy.

why is the result repeatable though? ive never cycled except for my 1st tank and that was basically just not getting fish because the one i wanted wasnt in stock 

[Tired]

You can flip a coin 6 times and get heads every time, but that doesn't mean you should bet the life of anything on a coin flip. 

 

Also, we should not encourage people new to the hobby to be charging into things at the highest possible speed. Cycling takes time. Even if it didn't take time, waiting for the tank to begin to take steps towards balancing itself (which is more than just nitrifying bacteria) before adding fish is a good idea. 

 

If you can't wait a month or two to be 100% sure that a tank is safe for fish, this is not the hobby for you. Maybe you should get into plants. You can buy as many houseplants as you have space for, no cycling required, and experiment with them to your heart's content. 

[Clown79]

32 minutes ago, Tired said:

You can flip a coin 6 times and get heads every time, but that doesn't mean you should bet the life of anything on a coin flip. 

 

Also, we should not encourage people new to the hobby to be charging into things at the highest possible speed. Cycling takes time. Even if it didn't take time, waiting for the tank to begin to take steps towards balancing itself (which is more than just nitrifying bacteria) before adding fish is a good idea. 

 

If you can't wait a month or two to be 100% sure that a tank is safe for fish, this is not the hobby for you. Maybe you should get into plants. You can buy as many houseplants as you have space for, no cycling required, and experiment with them to your heart's content. 

Patience is everything in this hobby. 

 

Even when I started tanks with liverock, fish were never added until 1 month after.

 

Even with tank transfers, I still waited.

 

Its an ecosystem, everything effects eachother.

 

I feel its better safe than sorry.

 

If a hobbyist can't wait a month for a cycle how can they deal with waiting 6 - 9 weeks if you bring in a parasite and need to go fallow or how about months where you encounter gha outbreaks or worse dino's?

 

The 1 piece of advice that is the greatest advice anyone can give is go slow and learn patience because in this hobby, patience is key.

 

[filefishfinatic]

38 minutes ago, Tired said:

You can flip a coin 6 times and get heads every time, but that doesn't mean you should bet the life of anything on a coin flip. 

 

Also, we should not encourage people new to the hobby to be charging into things at the highest possible speed. Cycling takes time. Even if it didn't take time, waiting for the tank to begin to take steps towards balancing itself (which is more than just nitrifying bacteria) before adding fish is a good idea. 

 

If you can't wait a month or two to be 100% sure that a tank is safe for fish, this is not the hobby for you. Maybe you should get into plants. You can buy as many houseplants as you have space for, no cycling required, and experiment with them to your heart's content. 

if it looks like a balanced tank and it acts like a balanced tank and it sounds like a balanced tank its probably a balanced tank. you seem to be trying to just provoke a reaction from me and trying to make blunt excuses which arent necessarily true. i stick to things conservatively, i have seen lots of sucsessful tanks with a bioload similar to mine. i know lasse's tank has 47 fish in 80 gallons alot of them 3"+ 

[filefishfinatic]

i think in this hobby you can go at whatever speed you want, i know lasse's tank had sps colonies 1 month in along with a decent amount of fish. while some peopel wait like 1 year to get a fish. whenever i see tanks that were set up faster, they tend to be more grown in and healthy. i rarley see tanks unless they are very mature that were dry cycled and very low bioload with ultra high tech liughts and perfect dosing working out as good as other tanks. 

[Tired]

You do seem to have gotten a reasonably stable tank. That doesn't mean that this method will always work safely, or that people should be encouraged to fish-in cycle. We just got the hobby OUT of people fish-in cycling with hardy fish and hurting the poor things in the bargain. You should not gamble with the lives and health of animals, just so you can have fish to look at a bit sooner. It's unethical. 

 

Do not go at whatever speed you want. You're seeing confirmation bias. The people who went too fast, crashed, burned, killed things, and quit the hobby in disgust, aren't present and doing cool social media things for you to look at. This is like looking at a lottery winner and going "wow, lotteries are great! I'll spend all my rent money on lottery tickets, so I can get loads of money!" without looking at all the people who didn't win. 

 

The problem with dry stocked tanks being immature is the lack of live rock, not the lack of stocking. The reason a live rock tank is mature faster is because you've imported maturity, which dry rock doesn't do. So of course dry rock tanks take longer to mature. It's not the stocking. In fact, overstocking an immature dry rock tank is a great way to kill fish.

Dosing nutrients works perfectly fine. Yes, starving the tank is bad, but that doesn't mean that the solution is overstocking and cramming fish in despite advice otherwise. That just means that you shouldn't starve the tank. 

 

If your ten-foot-wide veggie garden needs more fertilizer, the solution is not to put four cows in it. 

 

You overstocked a 20gal in two months, you have not been doing things conservatively. 

 

A person overstocking their tank does not mean that's good, or that you should do the same. 

 

I'm not trying to provoke a reaction, I'm making statements. You clearly don't have much practice with patience yet, which is why I've remarked on that. It's understandable- you're 14. Your brain isn't finished developing. The part of the brain that handles logic and reason doesn't fully develop until at least 21. Not to say that you aren't capable of reason, but you aren't yet done growing in all your sense and patience. So I know it's hard. I've been 14, too. I made impulsive choices with my aquariums, and animals died because of it. And I feel terrible. I wish I had been told not to do that. I wish I had read more, and listened.

 

You're in an era where you can easily find someone doing just about anything you want support to do, and you'll even find people who haven't killed things yet. That doesn't mean it's good. There are a lot of people keeping perfectly healthy dogs chained up in their back yards, never off the chain or played with, but that doesn't mean it's a good quality of life. Look at what's worked for other people, and stop trying to invent new things. You can invent new things when you have more experience. 

[filefishfinatic]

1 minute ago, Tired said:

You do seem to have gotten a reasonably stable tank. That doesn't mean that this method will always work safely, or that people should be encouraged to fish-in cycle. We just got the hobby OUT of people fish-in cycling with hardy fish and hurting the poor things in the bargain. You should not gamble with the lives and health of animals, just so you can have fish to look at a bit sooner. It's unethical. 

 

Do not go at whatever speed you want. You're seeing confirmation bias. The people who went too fast, crashed, burned, killed things, and quit the hobby in disgust, aren't present and doing cool social media things for you to look at. This is like looking at a lottery winner and going "wow, lotteries are great! I'll spend all my rent money on lottery tickets, so I can get loads of money!" without looking at all the people who didn't win. 

 

The problem with dry stocked tanks being immature is the lack of live rock, not the lack of stocking. Dosing nutrients works perfectly fine. Yes, starving the tank is bad, but that doesn't mean that the solution is overstocking and cramming fish in despite advice otherwise. That just means that you shouldn't starve the tank. 

 

If your ten-foot-wide veggie garden needs more fertilizer, the solution is not to put four cows in it. 

 

You overstocked a 20gal in two months, you have not been doing things conservatively. 

 

A person overstocking their tank does not mean that's good, or that you should do the same. 

 

I'm not trying to provoke a reaction, I'm making statements. You clearly don't have much practice with patience yet, which is why I've remarked on that. It's understandable- you're 14. Your brain isn't finished developing. The part of the brain that handles logic and reason doesn't fully develop until at least 21. Not to say that you aren't capable of reason, but you aren't yet done growing in all your sense and patience. So I know it's hard. I've been 14, too. I made impulsive choices with my aquariums, and animals died because of it. And I feel terrible. I wish I had been told not to do that. I wish I had read more, and listened.

 

You're in an era where you can easily find someone doing just about anything you want support to do, and you'll even find people who haven't killed things yet. That doesn't mean it's good. There are a lot of people keeping perfectly healthy dogs chained up in their back yards, never off the chain or played with, but that doesn't mean it's a good quality of life. Look at what's worked for other people, and stop trying to invent new things. You can invent new things when you have more experience. 

i listen to the poeple who do it the way i want to do it and copy them and it works for me. simple. 

[Tired]

It's been two months. If this works for a year, you can begin to say it's worked for you. 

 

Also, just because a method works for you, doesn't mean it will work all the time. 

 

Also, you shouldn't encourage newbies to rush into things. 

 

And finally, let me put it this way. I make a post that asks "can I keep this one-foot-long grouper in my 30 gallon tank with these damsels". Twenty people tell me "no, it'll eat the damsels and die horribly". One person says "yes, you can do that, and I'll sell you the grouper". Should I listen to the one person, just because they're saying what I want to hear? 

 

If I ask "can I fly if I jump off the roof", and 200 people say "no, you'll die", and two people say "yeah, it'll work, look at this video of me flying that you have no way to prove isn't faked", do I listen to the two people and jump off the roof? 

[WormLicker]

6 minutes ago, Tired said:

I ask "can I fly if I jump off the roof", and 200 people say "no, you'll die", and two people say "yeah, it'll work, look at this video of me flying that you have no way to prove isn't faked", do I listen to the two people and jump off the roof? 

This is ironically a very very good example.

Because you WILL fly, but.. maybe not for a very long time. And maybe one person's idea of "flying" isn't the same as those other 200 people.

Lol.

[PeterU]

22 minutes ago, filefishfinatic said:

i listen to the poeple who do it the way i want to do it and copy them and it works for me. simple. 

Then why are you bothering people here? You ask a question then argue when the answer isn't what you want.

[suhaib10]

I have just recently gotten back into the hobby after a 2 year hiatus and am currently setting up my Pico. I consider myself new to the hobby although have only kept saltwater for around 3 years but do have 10+ years keeping freshwater. So maybe I might not know what I'm talking about but many times I've seen people new to the hobby mistake live rock sold at stores as real live rock from the ocean. Usually most of the times it's either aquacultured in the ocean or just regular dry rock that's been running in a reef system for a few months and has some bacteria and biological creatures present. But one thing I have learnt from local reefers who have been in the hobby for almost 50 years is that actual live rock formed and harvested from the ocean (which is almost impossible to get these days) definitely provided much better stability and that according to them was due to the biodiversity found in them. This would cause initial ammonia spikes but if you could manage to let most critters survive through it through constant sometimes multiple times a day water changes they would never have issues for years with the tanks. But they did agree with current live rock even if they were able to finish initial quickly it would still take a year or two before their tank stabilized. 

 

Also not all bottled bacteria are the same many of those species can't reproduce in a tank so you will need to dose it until your bacteria populations in your tank grow. Also have you actually done tests on your tank for ammonia and the others ? What were the readings? Because many times I've heard people say oh yeah my tank is cycled and stable since nothing in their tank is dying and fish are swimming fine. 

Like everyone else here who are way more knowledgeable just wanted to share a bit of what I've learnt. 

That and probably jealous since my tank is finally cycled but still haven't added anything since I've barely seen any algae growing and would like some for cuc.

[mcarroll]

Why Investments Matter

(aka The Ants & the Grasshopper)

 

It was mentioned (again) how it's prohibitively expensive to get live rock.

 

It would be OK with me personally if the relatively high investment requirements of our hobby (money, time, etc) actually kept more people from buying tanks...  (It doesn't...we're being hypothetical.)

 

...at least until those folks were ready (in all those ways) to at least try to do it correctly vs feeling like they needed to try with tricks and shortcuts.

 

Skipping these investments of time and money just because something can hypothetically be done faster (instant cycle) or cheaper (dead rock) benefits the hobbyist in only the most superficial ways.  At the same time, in combination, the lack of these investments are a detriment to any new reefer's overall experience.  (Making problems more likely, etc.)

 

The situation for the newb is even worse if they are deluded (due to lack of proper investment) into thinking that reefing is "easy" since they don't have to worry about things like ammonia spikes or pests or a budget.  

 

If that happens, they are unlikely to be ready for much of anything.  (Looking at the frequency and content of algae and disease threads across social media, that seem pretty much to be the case for a large number of folks.)

 

Dead rock and instant cycling methods (ironically including fishless) are unfortunately the most common ways to start a tank these days.  

 

The shortcut rules the day....apparently.

 

Anyway...newbs and experienced folks alike almost always want to skip ahead, take a shortcut, or otherwise make things get done faster.

 

And we're almost always short-changing our experience (going hungry like Mr Grasshopper) in the process.

 

Hence the common expressions to "slow down and smell the roses"....or "it's the journey, not the destination". 

 

...or as those sentiments have been translated especially for us reefers: Nothing Good Happens Fast In A Reef Tank

 

Now for the second part....

 

The Fishless Cycling Question

 

After seeing that image, I hope it's hard to imagine fishless cycling at all.  Cycle! With fish! 😂

 

Unfortunately we seem to look at "fishless cycling" like it's some kind of panacea against newbs killing their fish.  

 

It is not.

 

At most it is a placebo – newbs still manage to kill a lot of fish even when using fishless cycling.  (And holy moly do newbs have lots of OTHER problems that are exclusive to creating and chasing that ammonia spike...what a pain!)

 

When you get right down to it, fishless cycling is just another way to skip basic/essential steps in my view.   (And it's ironic at the very least that saving time isn't even one of the supposed benefits of fishless cycling.)

 

The fact being avoided in the discussion of cycling methods is that folks who kill animals during tank cycling did it wrong.

 

I don't really care which method you want to talk about, there is nothing inherent to cycling that invariably leads to dead fish.  Cycling with fish can be done right (or wrong) just like cycling without them can be done right (or wrong).

 

Further, it is not a predetermined fact that the animals you add to a tank will cause a harmful ammonia spike at all!  There are several factors at work – ALL OF WHICH are more or less under our control – when it comes to the quantity and toxicity of ammonia that you and your tank will have to deal with.  Stocking level (which dictates feeding rate) being the #1 control you have.

 

Armed with the right information, ammonia spikes are a totally avoidable cycling possibility, and they are not hard to ameliorate when they happen.  

 

Aquarium ammonia CAN BE a complicated topic, but it's also one that's been studied a lot and which is fairly well understood, at least academically speaking.  (I have a whole textbook just on the excretion of nitrogen by fish!!!) One problem is that almost none of the results of those ammonia studies trickle into our hobby. 

 

Of course there are many other issues that plague the success of newbs...it's not all cycling issues.  If only that was all!  LOL

 

P.S.  Seems like it would be better/more accurate if "fishless cycling" were called the "toxic ammonia spike on purpose method" instead.  Less of the sparkly, rose-colored glasses effect AND way more accurate.  Like, "Volvo:  We're boxy, but we're good!"

 

 

(Hope this was a worthy read...sorry if it was too long. Drop me a line here or in PM with your thoughts.)

[brandon429]

Team I have some input here but first two questions, the info won’t seem as crazy with these two considerations :)

 

1. has anyone here ever seen a seneye machine reading nh3 before on any system, any setup. Are we aware that seneye reads in the thousandths ppm nh3, across thousands of machines with online logs that show all cycled reef tanks run at this range: .001~.008 max range. There are zero reported systems on seneye post cycle that run in the tenths ppm, pls feel free to verify this by asking any seneye owners you know or trust online to reveal their max ranges 

 

 

2. Above it was mentioned the failed cycle, the dead fish from adding stuff too soon in a bottle bac cycle: link one example, from any date, any forum 

 

 

fun challenge is, show here one failed bottle bac cycle you can find, just one, the rumor says there’s many that happened let’s see one.

[brandon429]

These two hunts set the stage of comparison to what an uncycled tank would read, a rushed bottle bac cycle- dead obviously and gray smelly water, something that harms fish like nh3 at 1.0 ppm or even .1 nh3 = twice over the expected death max levels of .05 ppm we can see online in university clownfish studies on ammonia toxicity, some studies put the max safety at .02 ppm nh3 in saltwater systems

 

 

so mid level hundredths ppm is the max end of safety for fish, approaches them being harmed and acting that way (darting about, breathing heavy etc) but anything in the thousandths ppm is safe regardless of how long the tank has been set up. That means if any of those bottle bac are dead/nonfunctional the new system can’t carry fish, nh3 spikes above hundredths, the fish act bad and or die and water isn’t clear because no waste is being handled by feed and fish

And it conversely means if the bottle bac and system dilution were functional for the intended fish load, typically two clownfish and a few snails, and the nh3 is kept in the thousandths or even very low hundredths, that’s not harming fish at all even if the tank is new. Remember, we can’t burn sensitive marine creatures and them act normal, if they’re harmed they show it always. Acting normal is a way of gauging nh3 burn when no seneye is present as a referee

 

in veterinary science, ever seen a pig or horse or cat or dog be ok and act normal with no kidney function? Nh3 is the most stinging metabolic burn in nature. Behavior is a fine gauge, finer than api that’s for sure 🙂

 

as you search for the single example of a failed cycle with dead fish, among two million cycles logged online as fish+bottle bac cycles, how many of those tanks had totally normal fish you can see? 100% of them? 99%? 
 

 

if we can’t find a single example of a failed bottle bac cycle, how about just  one link showing fish hovering on death? 
 

 

you can see where I’m heading: bottle bac cycles work and we can’t find any pattern of them not working, heck I can’t find a single example. The one I saw on reef2reef last month getting close was a bottle bac fella who took his pet store clownfish in a tiny bag of water opened up, but drip acclimated for hours. Half the crowd was stating foul on acclimation the other half a bad bottle bac cycle 

 

 

so pick a different example, something this bad should have ten examples out of two million  

[Murphs_Reef]

7 minutes ago, brandon429 said:

These two hunts set the stage of comparison to what an uncycled tank would read, a rushed bottle bac cycle- dead obviously and gray smelly water, something that harms fish like nh3 at 1.0 ppm or even .1 nh3 = twice over the expected death max levels of .05 ppm we can see online in university clownfish studies on ammonia toxicity 

 

 

so mid level hundredths ppm is the max end of safety for fish, approaches them being harmed and acting that way (darting about, breathing heavy etc) but anything in the thousandths ppm is safe regardless of how long the tank has been set up. That means if any of those bottle bac are dead/nonfunctional the new system can’t carry fish, nh3 spikes above hundredths, the fish act bad and or die and water isn’t clear because no waste is being handled by feed and fish

And it conversely means if the bottle bac and system dilution were functional for the intended fish load, typically two clownfish and a few snails, and the nh3 is kept in the thousandths or even very low hundredths, that’s not harming fish at all even if the tank is new. Remember, we can’t burn sensitive marine creatures and them act normal, if they’re harmed they show it always. Acting normal is a way of gauging nh3 burn when no seneye is present as a referee

 

as you search for the single example of a failed cycle with dead fish, among two million cycles logged online as fish+bottle bac cycles, how many of those tanks had totally normal fish you can see? 100% of them? 99%? 
 

 

if we can’t find a single example of a failed bottle bac cycle, how about just  one link showing fish hovering on death? 
 

 

you can see where I’m heading: bottle bac cycles work and we can’t find any pattern of them not working, heck I can’t find a single example. The one I saw on reef2reef last month getting close was a bottle bac fella who took his pet store clownfish in a tiny bag of water opened up, but drip acclimated for hours. Half the crowd was stating foul on acclimation the other half a bad bottle bac cycle 

 

 

so pick a different example, something this bad should have ten examples out of two million  

This bottle bac cycle failed.. it started as my tank and ended up full of plastic toys from my daughter's collection.. I blame the bottle bac... I'm so glad I have a main tank of my own 🤣

 

 

Serious though i put delicate inverts in then 2 clowns pretty quick.  All happy all alive today.. 

Did use dry rock.. with some live rock from my big tank... Worked out fine and discounted the API ammonia false reading. No fish worries, feeding heavy straight away.. ok lots of GHA but that will pass.... 

 

[brandon429]

Hey that system looks great! How fun to get to reef with her for sure and show her how fun the hobby is

 

 

you were much, much nicer than most bottle bac cycles, that was a good month of prep time lead in, clearly works excellent 

 

fish alive, animals alive, cycle complete

 

*clearly among these two million bottle bac + fish cycles all on day one, no wait, the running indicator of a fail isn't seneye or fish behavior, its a total ammonia reading off red sea or API (about a fourth of those posted fails/test only fails input Prime at the start of the tank and didn't report that/causes misreads false ammonia). That's what these example hunts arrange for us: a cheap test kit that usually indicates a fail, among happy fish always, contrasted to an expensive kit (seneye) that has zero failed cycles online, and registers what matches fish behavior

 

ergo

 

the risk from fish + bottle bac cycling isnt burning the fish, its instant disease import 

 

we have been fearing the wrong consequence this whole time...

 

now for the third hunt: find one seneye cycle using fish + bottle bac that failed, wasn't able to keep nh3 instantly in the thousandths ppm

 

 I haven't ever seen one 🙂

 

I've never seen a single bottle bac cycle fail, or burn fish, because they all work.  for sure there are some dead bottles out there, for sure, but so few that I'm thinking we arent going to get a single example of a hard fail. Where bottle bac mix may have been lacking in some cases, the massive dilution and small test load plus whatever viable cells were in the bottle always caught up before bad behavior of obvious pain set in, we can't find any posts of mad/bad behaving fish that I've seen, they all look totally normal to any cycled reef. 

On reef2reef a couple years ago a guy with a new tank setup, Dr Tims bacteria, and a new sump was losing each clownfish added within a day, ammonia at the classic-reported .25

 

we tussled on that thread for 8 pages about TAN conversion, the fact .25 is found in the majority of api reads we can search/see the pics and they just wouldn't believe it--ammonia burn was the diagnosis. Then on page nine he tells us his entire sump was hand sealed with the bad silicone, mold silicone, from home depot. thats why we need patterns of losses vs 2 examples

 

where the real loss shows is within 8-10 mos after the quick cycle, where velvet and brook show up. We can also find plenty of these disease challenges among slowly cycled tanks, this is a neat piece of the pie when we look at fish + bottle bac cycles in a new way vs the groupthink way

 

fish being burnt meanly isn't happening, disease vectoring that rivals club 54 in 1972 is what's killing fish long after the quickcycle.