Basic Cycling Q’s

[azureus]

Hey guys. About a week into cycling my 16g. Added API quick start and a pinch of fish food. What do these pictures tell you? Do I need to add ammonia ? Or is the fish food enough? It seems I have a high amount of nitrites but I’m not sure if my amount of nitrates is correlating. Any input is welcome

[Zer0]

Seems like your cycle is progressing along just fine. Once you test 0 for ammonia, then dose/add more fish food and test again in 24 hours. If you see no ammonia/nitrites rise, but you see nitrates rising, then your cycle is complete. 

[azureus]

12 hours ago, Zer0 said:

Seems like your cycle is progressing along just fine. Once you test 0 for ammonia, then dose/add more fish food and test again in 24 hours. If you see no ammonia/nitrites rise, but you see nitrates rising, then your cycle is complete. 

So if it has been like this for a few days, should I add more fish food? My ammonia never really ever read dark green, and I’m not sure if it has to or not? 

[brandon429]

It does not have to. Yours is a cycle of time duration, wait,  not one of peaks and troughs. If you simply wait till day 12 and then do a big water change you’re done and no more testing is needed.

 

source for the claim: find one cycle chart in history where ammonia isn’t under control by day twelve of submersion. On 100% of cycle charts basic ammonia control is ready, and if it varied, some cycle charts would have ammonia control at day  twenty or thirty

 

why do 99% of forum cycles claim to take 20-30 days? Two reasons

 

1. they’re measuring the wrong params using 1970s rules, we don’t test for nitrite any longer as it’s presence - or + does not matter in display reefing and specifically cannot affect ammonia control though you’ve likely read false sales posts saying it can

2. reef peers don’t use digital ammonia tracking or they’d see ammonia control is ready day one after adding cycling bottle bac. Waiting to day twelve is grossly giving extra time 

 

 

your issue for the animals you will soon add is disease risks, not cycle risks 

 

If you want the single best lifespan improvement you can get for your fish you need to study humblefish rules on fallow quarantine and excellent feeding habits, which includes food that does not come from the local pet store/ McDonald's version of fish feeding

 

What's important in your cycle is the degree of surface area you're using, it's absolutely not about trying to move 2ppm of ammonia down to zero or .25 over nite. Duration- based cycles, testless cycles where a common amount of new rock sits in fed + inoculated water for a prescribed period of time, have the exact same bioload carry says any seneye cycle owner in the world. 

 

There are no parameters for you to log, inaccurate test kits don't give you workable logs anyway. You're simply counting up to day twelve, then you're done. Nothing in this world is simpler than cycling a reef tank using day one ready bottle bac. Post a pic of your tank so we can see your surface area in play/ where the bacteria are sticking to 

 

If you took time to search out 100 full running stocked reef tanks with an api ammonia test ran and posted, 98 of them are the color of ammonia your tank shows which is why you're already done as written above: you used one day bottle bac. The wait time isn't for ammonia control its for seating in place time that way water changes can't unseat your bacteria. Your parameters posted above on your reef specifically match what api is expected to show on any five year old reef tank.  Seneye owners know: at NO time does a reef run zero ammonia which is why api doesn't show yellow zero in nearly all running reefs. You are already done, wait to day twelve anyway. 

 

If you want to see a single thread where we cycle about 150 reefs using no test, duration- based cycling, lemme know and I'll post it. We have been cycling tanks like yours and logging the outcome for three straight years in one of my cycling threads. 

[Toomanymatts]

Are you keeping a daily log?  How long has this been going?

[azureus]

13 hours ago, brandon429 said:

It does not have to. Yours is a cycle of time duration, wait,  not one of peaks and troughs. If you simply wait till day 12 and then do a big water change you’re done and no more testing is needed.

 

source for the claim: find one cycle chart in history where ammonia isn’t under control by day twelve of submersion. On 100% of cycle charts basic ammonia control is ready, and if it varied, some cycle charts would have ammonia control at day  twenty or thirty

 

why do 99% of forum cycles claim to take 20-30 days? Two reasons

 

1. they’re measuring the wrong params using 1970s rules, we don’t test for nitrite any longer as it’s presence - or + does not matter in display reefing and specifically cannot affect ammonia control though you’ve likely read false sales posts saying it can

2. reef peers don’t use digital ammonia tracking or they’d see ammonia control is ready day one after adding cycling bottle bac. Waiting to day twelve is grossly giving extra time 

 

 

your issue for the animals you will soon add is disease risks, not cycle risks 

 

If you want the single best lifespan improvement you can get for your fish you need to study humblefish rules on fallow quarantine and excellent feeding habits, which includes food that does not come from the local pet store/ McDonald's version of fish feeding

 

What's important in your cycle is the degree of surface area you're using, it's absolutely not about trying to move 2ppm of ammonia down to zero or .25 over nite. Duration- based cycles, testless cycles where a common amount of new rock sits in fed + inoculated water for a prescribed period of time, have the exact same bioload carry says any seneye cycle owner in the world. 

 

There are no parameters for you to log, inaccurate test kits don't give you workable logs anyway. You're simply counting up to day twelve, then you're done. Nothing in this world is simpler than cycling a reef tank using day one ready bottle bac. Post a pic of your tank so we can see your surface area in play/ where the bacteria are sticking to 

 

If you took time to search out 100 full running stocked reef tanks with an api ammonia test ran and posted, 98 of them are the color of ammonia your tank shows which is why you're already done as written above: you used one day bottle bac. The wait time isn't for ammonia control its for seating in place time that way water changes can't unseat your bacteria. Your parameters posted above on your reef specifically match what api is expected to show on any five year old reef tank.  Seneye owners know: at NO time does a reef run zero ammonia which is why api doesn't show yellow zero in nearly all running reefs. You are already done, wait to day twelve anyway. 

 

If you want to see a single thread where we cycle about 150 reefs using no test, duration- based cycling, lemme know and I'll post it. We have been cycling tanks like yours and logging the outcome for three straight years in one of my cycling threads. 

Thanks for your informative response. Yes you’re right, I’ve been falsely led to believe that you NEED to add ammonia, that’s the only reason I added fish food. I will attach a picture of my tank here soon. 
 

I honestly was expecting the ammonia to drop all the way to zero and show a bright yellow. Is this really what a seasoned 5 year tank API test looks like? That’s good to hear. 
 

As for the water change, is that just to bring nitrates down? 

[azureus]

12 hours ago, Toomanymatts said:

Are you keeping a daily log?  How long has this been going?

I haven’t really been keeping a daily “log”

per-se. just mostly testing every other. This is day 10 today. Pictures soon 

[brandon429]

there are about 4 ways to cycle reefs

 

for the method 1/4 that uses bottle bac, there are two sub-ways:

 

1. add the bottle bac, add liquid ammonia which every reef peer will state it MUST be added to 2 ppm or you aren't feeding the bac enough (and this is incorrect). But they do anyway, per groupthink as instructed by bottle bac salesmen, and straight ammonia does not supply carbon...its required, and carbon gets in these tanks by trace means even if we add none (see on top of a living room fan blade that hasn't spun all season) so the reefers use way too much ammonia + cheap test kits that take 10-30 days to show a drop in ammonia that seneye ($190 meter) would show overnite...carbon which is required for these strains still gets in well enough to handle the working nature of bottle bac such that any fish + bottle bac added to a new start reef on day 1, works out fine. Go ahead and search any fish in day one cycles you can locate, they're all fine, fish acting normal. The panic people write online about 'burning' the fish (which act normal, feed, swim, not burnt at all) comes from the false training that ammonia should be zero/yellow. It rarely gets to that level after the initial blast and ammonia is never zero in a running reef, its .001-.009 ish max ppm Nh3 and api registers that as .25-.5 nearly always. Some tanks as outliers get the hard yellow after cycling, I estimate about 1% of overall not a joke. They all show what you show above I can easily pull some post cycle reefs showing that measure off recent jobs we did. 

 

the strains of bacteria that are in bottle bac aren't the real nitrifiers that eventually take residence in a year or two...they're the initial strain workhorses that allow us to add fish so we aren't waiting a year for maturation and they still oxidize ammonia exactly as we need. 

 

your selected version of bottle bac cycling is #2 its the one I prefer actually because no big water change is needed at the end/ owners of large tanks do better on your type of easier less pressured cycle:

 

add bottle bac and fish food, which is massive carbon stores and very boosting to the type of bacteria in bottle bac...the protein in the fish food breaks down into amino acids then eventual ammonia as resident bacteria digest the powder/flakes/pellets, and the issue is now flipped: huge carbon stores, trace ammonia stores Iwhich is why you don't see opaque green like #1's always get) and all you do is wait the time a cycling chart shows ammonia naturalization to occur and you're done. Your way can be 100% testless, never using any kit to set the start date. 

[brandon429]

if you want to rabbit-hole yourself into insanity study this thread and read all it's sub links. You'll never stumble over a cycle again as long as you reef 🙂

 

https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/how-to-unstick-any-seemingly-stuck-cycle.742202/

 

highlights you will see in pattern as you study which can save you a thirty one page read for six hours:

 

-no cycle that was ever set in a reef tank ever stalled or failed to complete on time. Mis-testing rules all the panic we read in cycling. Water bacteria sold to us in water, then added to water, do just fine and we already know the compliance dates. that's the point of the entire thread summed in two sentences.

 

 

-for 31 straight pages I ignore people's api panic posts, assign them an EXACT start date as soon as they describe the setup, and we get to see for 3 years running if anyone's fish died or acted burnt on the start date assigned. 99.9% were posting to me after day ten of adding bottle bac; so their start date had already passed it wasn't any real work to make the start dates consistent. 

-you are seeing directly on post#2 a comparison between api and seneye, whereas seneye was ready on day one and api barely got ready on day 12 and was your color green above. a proven time delay. 

-you are seeing that disease modeling is 100% of the loss among new tanks its never lack of ammonia control. 

-you are seeing me constantly tell any cycler to never dose their ammonia to 2 ppm its a terrible method that will confuse the masses into buying more bottle bac to replace seemingly dead bottle bac. The advise to dose to 2 ppm originates from: bottle bac sellers. I wonder why that rule came about 🙂 🙂

 

you are seeing 100% happy fish and 0% test based cycling, in violation of all known rules. are we getting lucky for 3 years, or does better cycling science with exact start dates for every tank exist, with no stalls and no repeat purchases needed? 

 

B

[azureus]

1 hour ago, brandon429 said:

if you want to rabbit-hole yourself into insanity study this thread and read all it's sub links. You'll never stumble over a cycle again as long as you reef 🙂

 

https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/how-to-unstick-any-seemingly-stuck-cycle.742202/

 

highlights you will see in pattern as you study which can save you a thirty one page read for six hours:

 

-no cycle that was ever set in a reef tank ever stalled or failed to complete on time. Mis-testing rules all the panic we read in cycling. Water bacteria sold to us in water, then added to water, do just fine and we already know the compliance dates. that's the point of the entire thread summed in two sentences.

 

 

-for 31 straight pages I ignore people's api panic posts, assign them an EXACT start date as soon as they describe the setup, and we get to see for 3 years running if anyone's fish died or acted burnt on the start date assigned. 99.9% were posting to me after day ten of adding bottle bac; so their start date had already passed it wasn't any real work to make the start dates consistent. 

-you are seeing directly on post#2 a comparison between api and seneye, whereas seneye was ready on day one and api barely got ready on day 12 and was your color green above. a proven time delay. 

-you are seeing that disease modeling is 100% of the loss among new tanks its never lack of ammonia control. 

-you are seeing me constantly tell any cycler to never dose their ammonia to 2 ppm its a terrible method that will confuse the masses into buying more bottle bac to replace seemingly dead bottle bac. The advise to dose to 2 ppm originates from: bottle bac sellers. I wonder why that rule came about 🙂 🙂

 

you are seeing 100% happy fish and 0% test based cycling, in violation of all known rules. are we getting lucky for 3 years, or does better cycling science with exact start dates for every tank exist, with no stalls and no repeat purchases needed? 

 

B

As promised pictures are attached. Im sure it’s obvious but I’m a beginner at reefing, given all the dumb questions. 
 

Lots of algae blooms on the sand and rock which I heard Is a sign of cycle completion, which I’m not sure if that’s true. 
 

Let me know what you guys think about surface area etc 

[brandon429]

 you indeed have visual benthic cues that tank is cycled and already off and running we see

 

additionally whoever sold you that bottle bac ripped you off, as the live rock was already cured and full of bac when you brought it home wet. They may not have known, after all old cycling science does not differentiate between dry rock that gets a massive blast of ammonia + bottle bac to supply where there is none, and live rock that is simply ready the second you put it into your tank with no additional help or additions. That’s real live rock, you have a skip cycle setup, the bottle bac added has no where to attach it will simply swirl around and be exported over time with water changes or it will floc out and settle on the sand harmlessly and uselessly. 
 

updated cycling science is awesome and a money saver, of that I’m sure.

 

it is impossible for a tank with diatoms and algae in the system to be unable to control ammonia, we can indeed verify your cycle is done based off one single pic of the tank = updated cycling science where live rock goes  

 

Since the dawn of reef tank conventions (1980s onward) the sellers have been using that type of rock and skip cycle setup to prepare hundreds of reefs on time, no stalls, to be fully stocked and running all on an *exact* start date that way they can sell cycle unstalling gear to the buyers.

 

[brandon429]

if that rock was dry when you put it in, all things were dry, it'll be the first time in ten thousand observed cycles I've seen algae and diatoms and pitted sections of what looks like sponges in the crevices in the middle pic form within seven days. Normally for those growths live rock has been underwater a year or more, in someone else's tank before yours. 

[azureus]

1 hour ago, brandon429 said:

if that rock was dry when you put it in, all things were dry, it'll be the first time in ten thousand observed cycles I've seen algae and diatoms and pitted sections of what looks like sponges in the crevices in the middle pic form within seven days. Normally for those growths live rock has been underwater a year or more, in someone else's tank before yours. 

Good to know about algae. The rock was from the store with a little puddle of water on the bottom. I’m not sure if that clarifies as dry or not. The reef sand however had lots of water in it but I’m not sure if that’s the same thing. Both products advertised a “faster cycle” 

 

So boiled down, a tank with live rock and bottle bac is fish ready day one ? No matter what? 

[brandon429]

no bottle bac is needed, all rocks from a pet store that are wet to any degree have living bacteria and are ready for use. when you transport them home, nothing dies, and they simply continue on being live. 

 

when we order uncured rock from the ocean and have it shipped to us, bypassing the wait time from a common pet store (the curing phase time) it gets to our homes full of extra marine life that most small reefs won't support, so, that type of straight from the ocean live rock has too many animals and they usually die off making ammonia legit spike for a while. No bottle bac is used there either, bottle bac is only for dry rock setups. The uncured rocks have a full complement of ocean bacteria but they're overwhelmed by the dieoff in most cases. we simply wait for those to quit leaking ammonia via decay loss before adding them into a home reef. neither option will use bottle bac.

 

since your live rock came from a pet store it was cured already, and has all the markers above of being fine live rock that you can already carry corals with. at no time was bottle bac needed but I would not fault any LFS employee for not knowing this; you have to source out the deepest web cycle nerds online to find this hoyty-toyty stuff lol

[brandon429]

Additionally, bottle bac itself is ready day one in every case I've seen involving Dr Tims bac, biospira fritz which are 99% of all bottle bac. Quick start is well tested too it's fine and works same day the label shows. 

 

Cleaning bottled bacteria like mb7 may not be as fast; i haven't seen seneye data on it yet but those top four covered will carry fish on day one any search of a fish- in cycle the last ten straight years will show- its all that good. I find instances of folks killing fish day one by bad acclimation. I've seen folks kill fish day one by inputting them into a home built system sealed with the wrong silicone from home depot, but I've never seen raw ammonia kill a fish on day one of a cycle, I've never seen one case

 And as that statement is vetted with online searches, the results are about to show a lot of fish consistently carried day one. 

 

The reason we wait 10-12 days after bottle bac if possible is twofold: 1. Gives time to search out and read about fallow and quarantine and top vs middle effort feeding and 2. Gives implantation time for the swirling bacteria. You want to give settlement time so that water changes can't unseat the bacteria. If the bottle bac must be used on day one to carry fish, at least don't do any water changes for a few days.

[brandon429]

Lastly, some folks will never agree to testless cycling of a bottle bac cycle because in my thread above we're skipping initial verification the bottle wasn't dead. 

 

My friends that routinely test bottle bac and post microbiology experiments on reef2reef have seen the occasional dead bottle bac. The incidence is so low, however, that every seneye ever calibrated and ran on a bottle bac cycle shows immediate action by any bottle tested.

 

The incidence of truly nonfunctional bottles is so low no seneye has ever reported one and us skipping the initial verification has perfect results for three years in one thread. 

 

 

Where cured live rock goes, merely transferred from one aquarium to another even if driven across town, we never use bottle bac on those - they're certainties

 

all the top cycle hacks online agree its true legitimate skip cycle, no fail approach, that the last 690 reef conventions have used simply moving live rock from home to convention then back home again (packed all in Styrofoam boxes) to align the thousands of dollars of livestock the reef convention tanks must keep alive

 

Skip cycle biology is what preserves all the demo tanks we see at reef conventions... nobody ever stalls or misses a due date; consistency is attainable and your investment is safe with it

[Toomanymatts]

1 hour ago, brandon429 said:

Lastly, some folks will never agree to testless cycling of a bottle bac cycle because in my thread above we're skipping initial verification the bottle wasn't dead. 

 

My friends that routinely test bottle bac and post microbiology experiments on reef2reef have seen the occasional dead bottle bac. The incidence is so low, however, that every seneye ever calibrated and ran on a bottle bac cycle shows immediate action by any bottle tested.

 

The incidence of truly nonfunctional bottles is so low no seneye has ever reported one and us skipping the initial verification has perfect results for three years in one thread. 

 

 

Where cured live rock goes, merely transferred from one aquarium to another even if driven across town, we never use bottle bac on those - they're certainties

 

all the top cycle hacks online agree its true legitimate skip cycle, no fail approach, that the last 690 reef conventions have used simply moving live rock from home to convention then back home again (packed all in Styrofoam boxes) to align the thousands of dollars of livestock the reef convention tanks must keep alive

 

Skip cycle biology is what preserves all the demo tanks we see at reef conventions... nobody ever stalls or misses a due date; consistency is attainable and your investment is safe with it

I'm planning to set up a QT tank.  I won't have live rock in there.  HOB filter and some K1 media.  If I get a bottle of tim's and start with fresh water will that cycle in 2 weeks based on the above?

[brandon429]

It’s better to follow the established plan for marine qt - maximum surface area that does not absorb meds and match your cycle salinity to the conditions the qt will see

 

if it’s a hyposalinity quarantine then match the right salinity from the start 

 

if it’s a normal salinity quarantine then cycle it at 1.023 etc 

 

 

 

bioballs are common inclusions / or other types of filtration that aren’t rock or sand (absorbs meds) are most common, and they’re better placed in the flow path coming from a canister or hob filter. You can use a sponge filter with a bubbler through the center plus small air pump to  run a quarantine very very well and they’re cheap, and don’t absorb meds/ can be cleaned and reused between applications 

 

Get Dr Tims for marine , add it plus one pinch of flake food you ground into a powder. Let stew running and heated ten days, the surface area used in contact will be cycled easily. Then to the degree the dosed meds kill off cycling bac, you do water changes to guide ammonia maximums, don’t use prime it interacts poorly with some meds. Water change % and frequency stepped up to match the maximums as indicated by a seachem alert badge is what thousands of quarantine owners do

[brandon429]

We should do a case study and comparison just to keep your thread active with similar cycle issues 

 

https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/cycling-barebottom-100g-is-taking-over-2-months.905491/#post-10169668

 

that reef 

 

what biomarkers for cycling proof are described 

 

what timeframe is the tank at compared to the universally ready date 

 

are there any cycling charts that show two months and still not cycled?
 

is that reef measuring updated parameters and with what tools do they derive the measures stated? 
 

see how old cycling science teaches unsuredness, buying of repeat bacteria it was discussed above before seeing that post example above of a false stall

 

we don’t factor nitrite in reef tank cycles in updated cycling science, see how it causes an unnecessary stumble? It was a very important parameter to measure in old cycling science rules, nowadays you’re better off not factoring it due to its neutrality in the display reef tank

 

lastly, see how old cycling rules never discuss the #1 loss of all fish in new tanks (disease from skipping preps)

 

the hyperfocus on a poor test kit parameter set has excluded all talk of disease preps, there’s a 99% chance fish were added to the setup without preps if he used the common method. If invited to a reef convention, that tank couldn’t set up on time he’d miss the start date by eight weeks. See how old cycling science is bad, and updated cycling science is good and decent and timely? 🙂
 

 

 

that tank above has dosed a bunch of stuff. He’s well past day 10 on a stewing mix + has benthic visual cues mentioned so he should just change the water and begin, using pre quarantined fish. All he needed to do at the very start was not own an api kit, dose three pinches of ground up flake food to one bottle of Dr Tims bac and wait ten or twelve days and begin. None of the headache was needed. If he was invited to the convention he could make a Friday start date using updated science. If he isn’t using undisclosed skip cycle rock then his wispy growths are bacterial strands because all the niches are filled up from the first round, the two other bottled runs were far beyond what the system can carry for the surface area. One big zip of bacteria, a big pinch of ground up food, 10-12 days and done. He could start ten days early before the convention, and simply cart over the ready rocks piled in styrofoam and set back up at the convention with water, and the display will skip cycle and carry several fish safely.

[azureus]

9 minutes ago, brandon429 said:

We should do a case study and comparison just to keep your thread active with similar cycle issues 

 

https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/cycling-barebottom-100g-is-taking-over-2-months.905491/#post-10169668

 

that reef 

 

what biomarkers for cycling proof are described 

 

what timeframe is the tank at compared to the universally ready date 

 

are there any cycling charts that show two months and still not cycled?
 

is that reef measuring updated parameters and with what tools do they derive the measures stated? 
 

see how old cycling science teaches unsuredness, buying of repeat bacteria it was discussed above before seeing that post example above of a false stall

 

we don’t factor nitrite in reef tank cycles in updated cycling science, see how it causes an unnecessary stumble? It was a very important parameter to measure in old cycling science rules, nowadays you’re better off not factoring it due to its neutrality in the display reef tank

 

lastly, see how old cycling rules never discuss the #1 loss of all fish in new tanks (disease from skipping preps)

 

the hyperfocus on a poor test kit parameter set has excluded all talk of disease preps, there’s a 99% chance fish were added to the setup without preps if he used the common method. If invited to a reef convention, that tank couldn’t set up on time he’d miss the start date by eight weeks. See how old cycling science is bad, and updated cycling science is good and decent and timely? 🙂
 

 

 

that tank above has dosed a bunch of stuff. He’s well past day 10 on a stewing mix + has benthic visual cues mentioned so he should just change the water and begin, using pre quarantined fish. All he needed to do at the very start was not own an api kit, dose three pinches of ground up flake food to one bottle of Dr Tims bac and wait ten or twelve days and begin. None of the headache was needed. If he was invited to the convention he could make a Friday start date using updated science.

Thanks for saving me the headache. I’d hate to be 3 months in not knowing that. 

[brandon429]

Thanks for not letting tldr prevent a discussion appreciate the feedback. People on the internet can make up anything / am aware but the details I’m noticing come from core patterns and tenets within our hobby, watching what other people do to end all cycling headaches has copyable patterns in my opinion. It will directly save money to look at reef cycling from the convention seller’s perspective