Fish Cycle with Dr Tim's

[Mike Arnold]

I finally got my tank wet and decided to try a new cycle technique (new to me)

I'm doing a fish cycle using Ocean Direct sand and Dr Tim's one and only bacteria.

I added the water, sand, MarinePure Ceramic Biomedia 1 1/2 Spheres, and small (maroon) clown on Sunday Nov 2nd. I didn't test for ammonia or nitrite until Tue night Nov 9th. I tested with Salifert Ammonia and Nitrite test kits, but the the results shows Zero (clear) on both. I thought that was very odd. I've been over feeding the fish twice a day and expected to see some ammonia or nitrite, but maybe that defeats the purpose of a fish cycle. I don't want to kill the fish.

Am I missing something?
did the cycle not start yet?
is there such thing as an instant cycle?

Thoughts?

 

[taricha]

Since you never hit it with a bulk dose of ammonia, you may not have ever exceeded the nitrification ability of your bacteria from the bottle.

Totally possible to think that ammonia and nitrite were created and processed in a trickle and your bacteria are caught up to your current food load.

 

[Soren]

Based on what I understand from recent threads on nitrification, it seems entirely likely that your small ammonia bioload from one maroon clownfish is taken up and converted before detection if you are not dosing ammonia directly.

+1 to what @taricha said, and he has much more experience than me!

 

[brandon429]

Agree fully all. This is how folks get away with six fish, a three hundred dollar anemone and some corals and clean up crew all on day one of a dry tank start, bottle bac works this well.


**you’d specifically not try to spike ammonia it’s not needed. Just feed normally dont quick force uglies with an overfeed, given this long in delay your surfaces have been implanted with bacteria and enough insulating biofilm such that a 100% water change wouldn’t uncycle you. In this type of contact based cycle it’s about the # of days waited to adherence, not about getting a registered spike.


when I say folks I mean Ike https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/bio-spira-works-great.668674/

(most stuff placed inside a fish in cycle record, also proves no burning happened it’s an ethical cycling option if the bacteria were alive and well in the bottle. Disease vectoring is the risk to the fish, not lack of cycle)

 

[Soren]

Just be careful with how fast you add more fish/bioload, since you have no indicators yet how large the bacteria populations are that are established, just that there is enough nitrification to handle the ammonia production of your one small fish. Likely, the bacteria from the bottle has seeded populations with the capability to handle more than the ammonia of this one fish, but, unless you measure the time for ammonia to be converted and drop to zero with a controlled amount, you have no indicator how many fish your tank can handle yet.

 

[Jezzess77]

did you test for nitrates? if you have nitrates, with no ammonia or nitrite then id say your cycled!

 

[Mike Arnold]

Thanks for all the input. Yes, it is very likely the added bacteria via Dr Tim's, and Ocean Direct Sand is enough to process the little bit of ammonia produced from the gills and decay. This is new for me; no real way to track the cycle. I'll continue this process for several weeks before I turn the lights on.

I haven't tested anything other than Ammonia/Nitrites yet; I guess, I'll test Nitrate and Phospates tonight.

 

[Mike Arnold]

did you test for nitrates? if you have nitrates, with no ammonia or nitrite then id say your cycled!

I'll test for nitrates tonight. Thanks

 

[Soren]

If you want to verify how much bioload your tank can carry, you should probably add ammonia at a certain measurement (1-1.5 ppm is somewhat typical, I think?) and measure how long it takes to be eliminated. Tracking the rise and fall of nitrites as well is helpful in determining if your tank is cycling at higher bioload capabilities. Nitrates should start to increase as these first two steps are completed. If the tank can reduce 1.5 ppm of ammonia in 24 hours, you are probably ready to increase bioload closer to full capacity.

Just remember that cycling is basically just a term for establishing bacteria populations for denitrification. The more fish you have, the higher the bioload and the more denitrifying bacteria you need. Bacteria populations need some time to grow, so they are unlikely to be immediately established to full bioload capacity even after adding bottled bacteria. Unless you add a measured amount of ammonia and measure the ammonia and nitrite reduction to ensure capacity of the bacteria to handle bioload, you don't have a good way of knowing how much bacteria is established, especially since you will likely always have undetectable levels of both ammonia and nitrite in a tank this size with only one small fish in it.

If you don't fully understand cycling or don't know how to or want to measure an ammonia addition that is reduced to nitrates, the safest option is to add new fish slowly and allow the bacteria to feed from the increased ammonia and establish (or prove already established) populations enough to handle the ammonia. Adding fish slowly is usually recommended anyways to allow for fish to become established and limit aggression issues due to territoriality. Research and plan the order and time-frame of your fish introductions based on aggression levels to help limit overall issues.

 

[IslandLifeReef]

If you want to verify how much bioload your tank can carry, you should probably add ammonia at a certain measurement (1-1.5 ppm is somewhat typical, I think?) and measure how long it takes to be eliminated. Tracking the rise and fall of nitrites as well is helpful in determining if your tank is cycling at higher bioload capabilities. Nitrates should start to increase as these first two steps are completed. If the tank can reduce 1.5 ppm of ammonia in 24 hours, you are probably ready to increase bioload closer to full capacity.

Just remember that cycling is basically just a term for establishing bacteria populations for denitrification. The more fish you have, the higher the bioload and the more denitrifying bacteria you need. Bacteria populations need some time to grow, so they are unlikely to be immediately established to full bioload capacity even after adding bottled bacteria. Unless you add a measured amount of ammonia and measure the ammonia and nitrite reduction to ensure capacity of the bacteria to handle bioload, you don't have a good way of knowing how much bacteria is established, especially since you will likely always have undetectable levels of both ammonia and nitrite in a tank this size with only one small fish in it.

If you don't fully understand cycling or don't know how to or want to measure an ammonia addition that is reduced to nitrates, the safest option is to add new fish slowly and allow the bacteria to feed from the increased ammonia and establish (or prove already established) populations enough to handle the ammonia. Adding fish slowly is usually recommended anyways to allow for fish to become established and limit aggression issues due to territoriality. Research and plan the order and time-frame of your fish introductions based on aggression levels to help limit overall issues.

@Mike Arnold, you DO NOT want to add ammonia to your system to test the ability of your bacterial colonies, you already have a fish in your tank. As you probably know, adding ammonia to the level mentioned above can definitely harm your fish.

 

[Soren]

@Mike Arnold, you DO NOT want to add ammonia to your system to test the ability of your bacterial colonies, you already have a fish in your tank. As you probably know, adding ammonia to the level mentioned above can definitely harm your fish.

Thanks for this catch, @IslandLifeReef. I failed to note that adding ammonia should only be done with no fish in the tank and agree that this is absolutely critical.

Though I probably did not make it clear enough in my earlier posts, my personal recommendation for this situation would be to add fish slowly to give time to ensure bacteria populations are high enough to handle the ammonia increases.

 

[brandon429]

I think it’s prudent to prove ability out of the bottle so that dead bottle events don’t occur.


This tank above here was ok only because 99.9% of any bottles bought are ok, but it’s prudent to prove motion ability before fish fully agreed. Do not use 2 ppm, that’s entirely too much ammonia for proofing because it messes up cheap test kits to go that high

here’s how we proof a bottle bac skip cycle reef in 2021

set up tank saltwater levels all set heated and ready.
Take one ammonia reading of the known safe condition reef, this is your zero calibration. Whatever this color reads, that’s the comparison color that means zero, safe levels on the coming comparison tests

this adjusts, calibrates, low end testing conditions home to home.


we would add only enough ammonia to the water, before adding bac, to rise ammonia levels on the kit a tiny bit. One step up, say .5 ppm — the smallest increment up we can discern as different than test one.
Add the bottle bac


next, wait 24 hours take third pic. If it equals pic one, bottle bac live.


testing any other way on non digital kits is everyone’s false stall cycle post. Never, ever dose 2 ppm into a proof reef not because thousands haven’t passed that assessment: it’s because thousands also have passed it but were using uncalibrated kits and were tricked into months of false delay from the false notion of a stalled cycle, the calibrated method above works home to home. This is how we wrangle a thousand non seneye cycles into perfect compliance for as many pages as we want to track it in work threads. Works with API, Red Sea, nyos salifert etc

 

[brandon429]

Jack Alexander did the best calibration run I’ve seen, so clear pics.


he even took the ammonia dose twice as high, but it passes in 24 hours on Dr Tims bac.
He takes a reef we want to know if it’s ready and does 100% water change posts this calibration pic


doses ammonia

overnite back to ready

 

[brandon429]

Notice how in perfectly new water after a complete change his starting pic was still .25



thats an unimaginably important clue in reef cycling. If we’d listened to peers and calibrated on RO di water, itd be bone zero bright yellow. Proofing in the known safe condition reef is required.


so, the impact of not being told about this testing method by bottle bac sellers is:


ten bazillion extra bottles get sold. Corvettes get driven. Cycles certainly stall. The above minimum baselines don’t get better using red sea they‘re the same mis steering impact. Only going digital nh3 can stop the madness heh.

 

[MnFish1]

Jack Alexander did the best calibration run I’ve seen, so clear pics.


he even took the ammonia dose twice as high, but it passes in 24 hours on Dr Tims bac.
He takes a reef we want to know if it’s ready and does 100% water change posts this calibration pic


doses ammonia

overnite back to ready

What I notice in the 3 vials is that the water levels are different - which they should not be. Suggesting a problem with the testing

 

[brandon429]

its ok, the outcome was awesome we can track Jacks tank now into its second year. fish disease takes priority over all cycling concerns, there isn't a failed cycle on the entire site past the ten day mark, there are only api and red sea misreads.

 

[brandon429]

the movement shown above was accurate given the natural variation of these kits

and doing the three picture way accounts for the minor variances these multi step kits require

100% Water Change

So in my previous thread, I had an ammonia issue that was out of hand. As suggested, I did a 100% WC and now i’m wondering when I should start adding fish back. If anyone has suggestions, let me know!

www.reef2reef.com

most of the time even with good fill, people report their ammonia levels without the required wait time, all of that is handled in the calibrated run we can see for every single outcome of any cycle on the site-the animals live, the non digital test kits indicate a stall.

we aren't needing them to report the levels as nh3 vs nh4 with these calibration runs, we get to see a light-dark-light change and that's proof enough

it doesnt apply that chemists and lab techs can get api to zero, you can see on any search attempt the average reefer can't get it below .25% and by all means, start a poll to see who gets hard zero on api on their running tanks.

cycling is so pinpoint we can now cycle any reef tank on this site without one single test at all. we have been doing that for multiple years in two of my cycling threads. i advocate testless cycling vs nondigital cycling in all cases, it doesnt fail, we don't have a single fail on file using testless cycling rules.

 

[brandon429]

testless cycling formula:

select either Dr. Tims bac, biospira or fritz refrigerated bac. exclude the other brands, they seem slow and aren't well tested with seneye yet as these three have been.

input the amount into the tank per directions

put in a few drops of cycling ammonia, specifically not 2ppm, a few drops is fine.

add two or three pinches of ground up fish food, ground into powder.

wait two weeks, do a full water change, you're cycled, and can't not be cycled. even if your bac was dead which I've never seen in any cycling thread I've ever ran, you are covered above by the wait time. source for claims: ammonia drop line on any cycling chart ever made. for the most fearful/concerned cyclers, use two inputs of bottle bac from two different brands above. you can't lose, you can't buy two completely dead bottles of bac from two different brands above any more than you can walk into a gas station and buy a winning powerball ticket right now.

 

[MnFish1]

testless cycling formula:

select either Dr. Tims bac, biospira or fritz refrigerated bac. exclude the other brands, they seem slow and aren't well tested with seneye yet as these three have been.

input the amount into the tank per directions

put in a few drops of cycling ammonia, specifically not 2ppm, a few drops is fine.

add two or three pinches of ground up fish food, ground into powder.

wait two weeks, do a full water change, you're cycled, and can't not be cycled. even if your bac was dead which I've never seen in any cycling thread I've ever ran, you are covered above by the wait time. source for claims: ammonia drop line on any cycling chart ever made. for the most fearful/concerned cyclers, use two inputs of bottle bac from two different brands above. you can't lose, you can't buy two completely dead bottles of bac from two different brands above any more than you can walk into a gas station and buy a winning powerball ticket right now.

I will try again - What is your definition of cycled? and. Does 'cycled' for 1 clown fish = cycled for 25 clownfish? I tend to totally agree with your comments above - But I think the bioload makes a difference. Additionally - I thought I read in another thread - that you recommend doing testing at the end to verify that ammonia is processed to a certain level (1.5 ppm or 2?) Is that the case?