How to unstick any seemingly stuck cycle

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brandon429

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Here's my running tally of the way buyers are trained to handle cycling vastly different than sellers:

Nitrite
buyers: you better wait for hard zero proof or you'll stall your cycle. average wait for you, about a month-ish. completion times range; you will never get your tank ready on a known completion date, testing and finesse determines completion date. it ranges tank to tank.
sellers: we never check it and none of our tanks mis a start date at a convention. we certainly wouldn't care if some was detected; we believe Randy's article from 2006. every time we want bioload carried worth $30 grand in frags, we attain that. at home or in a different city, doesn't matter, total timeliness.

Ammonia control
buyers: you must get absolute zero or you'll stall your cycle. expected wait time after dosing bottle bac: one month, it ranges, no two tanks can have a predicted cycle completion date.
sellers: we never check it in our tanks at reef conventions because we've moved over already cycled rocks from styrofoam containers which constitutes complete no-wait skip cycling. that's not in the buyer's option set, as you can see they are patiently waiting a month and dosing more bacteria (convenient, right?) for every perceived stall.
we know reef tanks don't run at zero ammonia, seneye owners know this too, so why would you expect that and wait for it in a cycle relying on the worlds most cheap ammonia test kit to read hard zero


Nitrate
buyers: if your test kit doesn't say some positive degree of nitrate, you're stalled, wait another month.
sellers: we could not care less what nitrate reads in any cycle. If full running reef tanks can be zero nitrate and still retain a cycle, then a newly cycled tank (or skip cycle live rock insta setup) may also show zero nitrate especially if we select to measure with the world's most cheapest available marine nitrate test kit, api nitrate. we dont care, we'll never factor nitrate in a cycle. You will. and you'll buy more bacteria when api commands you to.

*you can now find dry start marine setups at most reef tank conventions, demonstrating the prowess and quickness of bottled bacteria. Their whole company has measured the ability per unit of measure of the bac, that's why the clownfish in the packed display are acting normal, its strong stuff. only forum cycles wrestle with bottle bac for thirty days, even our ten days seems crazy to a convention cycler who knows they are controlling ammonia right out of the bottle. We're more careful here since buyers didnt bring right from factory...they had retail-held bottles we need to verify. all these steps we take are to verify held bottle bac wasn't killed, you can see we haven't come across dead bottles here in 25+ pages so they're uncommon. starting bioloads are easily carried the minute bottle bac is dosed due to dilution and combined ability from the bottle. Nobody at a reef convention is trained to input 2 ppm ammonia and base compliance on api, they let the starting bioload be the feed source for the bacteria...again highly opposite practice to how buyers are trained. Our main issue is we hardly ever get digital test readings from a seneye, when we do my troubleshoots will be far less in demand. these cycles are all setting up very very fast, very very consistently.
 
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Matt's Reefing

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Ok here we go.. First off I am new to R2R and this is my first post. I have read almost every post in this thread and haven't really seen a situation like mine but maybe I'm overlooking something. Here are the details on my "Stuck not Stuck Cycle" lol.

Tank is Red Sea Max S 650, Rock is Marco rock that was in a previously established tank (this tank) that had been neglected and had alot of pests so I bleached the rock to be able to start all over, Sand is dry Fiji Pink. Built the aquascape myself using super glue and Marco mortar(the reason I bring this up is the joints have some weird puffy white stuff starting to grow on them and not on the actual rock). Tank was filled with RODI water that I made myself and used Instant Ocean salt.

Started the cycle on November 25th using Microbacter dry rock cycling kit. Followed the directions to dose ammonia to 2ppm accidentally overdosed to around 2.5 to 3ppm but figured it wasn't that big a deal. Added proper amount of bacteria per instructions and began the testing. There are a few days missed testing but in short I'm on day 15. On 12/1 I added about 75ml more of Microbacter Start XLM as the cycle seemed to be stalled then on 12/6 I added the rest of the bottle about 60ml. Here are the parameters so far.

Screenshot_20211209-185449_Chrome.jpg


Here are my test results form today I recently purchased a API kit to test along side the Red Sea as I wasn't sure if I was getting good results (matching colors is a pain in the...ya it sucks! Lol) here are my results that I tested today 12/9/21.

20211209_174024.jpg

20211209_180947.jpg
20211209_181050.jpg
20211209_181020.jpg


I was thinking of dosing ammonia back to 2ppm and see if it dropped back down to current reading but I thought I would post here and see what you thought of my situation. After reading all the posts I feel like I might need to do a water change but I only have the capability of changing out 40 gallons of the 172. Would multiple water changes possibly help? Anyway excited to hear what you have to say. Thanks hopefully not too long winded lol tried to include as much information as possible. O and here is a picture of the tank and sump turned lights on to get a picture.

20211209_181724.jpg
20211209_181748.jpg
 
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brandon429

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why did you put a reef in that
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I would not dose more ammonia

thanks for posting this challenge! Very nice setup, per post# 1 pg 1 all we want to focus on is predicting the ammonia control using # of days the arrangement has been running, factoring the brand of bac used, along with the type of feed applied as related to other cycles on file shown to carry bioload safely.

we want to name a clear date your beginning bioload will survive and if you wanted to cart the system to a reef convention you could set up on time without loss of stocked life

Dec 17th

our goal was never to make non digital test kits line up, especially non digital tests. Here below is six pages of Red Sea in 100% cycled reefs, fully stocked, some years running, scaring the living daylights out of the owners making them think the tanks somehow uncycled even though life was fine in the tanks when we ask for pics and video. Those kits above are zero indication of your cycle status or this link below would be of dead reefs, not solely bad Red Sea test reads from great reefs




some of these cycling kits also provide phosphate and carbon included in the dosers. The bacteria want more than just ammonia spikes for food, since I haven’t read to see if microbacter has those inclusions we can use Dr Reefs fish food trick to easily provide some to be sure.

if I could choose any method to finalize that tank as it sits right now for Dec 17th it would be this: add in three pinches of finely ground up flake feed, pulverized to powder, wait until Dec 17th with that feed mixed in with the stew. Do a water change as much as you can do on the 17th- not for ammonia worry, but for less algae feed in an all white system soon to get bright lights. Begin with the selected bioload a week from now after the flake feed addition

dont post param readings here after that date unless it’s from seneye digital nh3, we only want pics of the tank and it’s water clarity and bioload carry as the updates. We don’t want pics from kits that are found in multi page misread threads…seneye doesn’t have a six page ammonia misread collection.

Compare and contrasts to other cycles on file:

-why this recommended extra wait time, ~20 days, vs the common ten day wait time we use for Dr Tims, biospira, fritz?

Because microbacter M doesn’t have any seneye cycles I can link or recall. The others do, and they’re ready in ten days so until we get some reliable digital data Im handling microbacter as slower than the familiar brands. Thirty days wait on feed alone, no bottle bac, gets us a full ready cycle here:

you have dosed bottle bac I don’t think is non functional, merely assessed as slower since we don’t have seneye proof it’s faster-adhering than the big common three brands. at the end you’ll be only ten days shy of the 30 days feed-only cycle above.

pushing this current ~13 day wait out an extra week with flake feed/carbon added as shown in Dr. Reefs bottle bac thread to speed up cycles is prudent. a week with fish food boost is going to kick your biofilm and filter bacteria communities into hyper drive and if the kits already provide carbon and phosphorous the extra boost isn’t going to hurt.


-this puts us well past day ten ammonia drop date on a cycling chart.


-after clean water is attained on the 17th your starting bioload in that dilution is hardly any test loading at all.

-we dont have a single example of a failed cycle on file, and I can’t find a single example off the internet (that isn’t test based, an animal loss cycle in gray smelly water would be a real fail)

going double the wait time here is simply because we havent studied this brand very much. It’s more likely than not this bacteria is ready on day ten like the others, but to ensure completion a doubling wouldn’t hurt until we get digital confirmation one day in the future.
 

Matt's Reefing

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Hey thanks for the great info and taking the time to try to help Brandon! Below are the directions that came with the kit. The only things provided in the kit were a bottle of Ammonia the Bottle of Start XLM bacteria and Microbacter clean for helping with the ugly stage. I wish I was able to start the cycle with the Seneye but have not been able to pick one up as of yet. I had read several different posts about how fast some people's tanks cycled with the Microbacter kit so I thought why not give it a shot. I regret my decision now lol. I ordered salt today to prep for a large water change so I will be ready for that on the 17th at which time you think I could start to introduce livestock? Should I expect the ammonia levels to drop by then? I have a separate holding tank that is currently housing the fish, inverts and a couple of corals that were in the tank when I got it and I'm sure they are ready to get back in their larger home. Again thanks for the advice I will drop some flake powder in the tank tomorrow. Is there anything I should be on the look out for?

20211125_125559.jpg
 
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brandon429

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You can introduce stock on the 17th

we won’t be assessing if ammonia drops with those kits we are abandoning them, that’s what we do in this thread


any other cycling thread has you wait weeks and weeks and weeks until all three of those tests line up, because they misread so badly

we do assigned start dates here knowing those kits have a bad lag time and seneye isn’t needed, for 25 pages we are ok without. You can see the few times seneye was used to spot check our assigned dates, the systems were ready, that consistency is why we are abandoning use of those kits you have.
On page one, post #2 first thread called seneye vs api you can see how bottle bac got the tank ready day one per seneye, and on day 11 api still showed as high as you posted above, those kits aren’t accurate for cycling because everyone’s cycle directions has us input way too much ammonia although it doesn’t matter once we do the big water change on the assigned action date

directly above is the six page thread where ammonia didn’t drop in a two year old running reef, and then several running reefs, that’s why it doesn’t mean anything if it doesn’t drop in your tank, those tests are bad for cycling, not good.

also per page one the focus on non digital testing concern completely replaces the desire to research fish disease so the outcome is people end up waiting weeks past a ready date, sometimes months as a false stall concern we have collected examples here, and they never read up on fish disease preps. They stock unprepped fish from the fish store, things work seemingly well for a few months then velvet wipes out some or most of the fish. We can see zero entrants here lost any fish during cycle completion times, losses happen due to disease.

so after the added feed trick + stewing until the 17th and then implementing the big water change, you need to add quarantined fish. You can choose to skip that, most new tankers won’t make the effort on round one, but once you add any group species beyond clownfish your chance of loss to disease of some or all fish is about 80% within eight months of setup. Instead of any concern over cycling you need to aim concern and read preps on two fronts:

acclimating new fish into the tank, search out in the fish forum ideal ways to introduce pet store fish and or shipped fish, some folks do custom acclimation for hours and it kills the fish quickly when in the tank due to ammonia buildup in the cycling bag, not the tank. There are ways to acclimate in a timely manner that won’t kill the fish, locate those threads and have an acclimation plan based on where the new fish come from


second read is a few hours in the fish disease forum to choose skipping preps, or fallow windows to select and sources for quarantined fish bought online or prepped by you in a separate quarantine system. There isn’t any more use for your kits, here on out we rely on the timed wait and water change action and then afterwards your water will stay clear and healthy and carry the first entrants you select

there isn’t a need for seneye we do fine without it. Seneye was recommended because new tankers usually won’t quit testing out of doubt for the process, in spite of links shown right above those tests mislead thousands of reefers. Either buy one for peace of mind or don’t spend $180 to track ammonia which we’ve been predicting here for two years straight and get peace of mind from all the prior working reefs who seemed stalled at the start :)

when you run the tests anyway on the 18th (but don’t report them, we don’t want doubt created by misreading test kits) that’ll just torture you lol with doubt as I dont ever expect them to read accurately…but like the example thread above on ammonia misreads you’ll also have a perfectly working reef tank with normal fish behavior and clean water to observe along with both those misreading kits and that ongoing conflict is what we study here. those tests will misread yet new tankers grip onto them at all costs because no other cycle training pins them as horrible tests with a bunch of examples of them reading horribly inaccurate. Any other cycling thread puts 100% trust in the kits I show in the false ammonia alert thread as completely inaccurate.
 
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brandon429

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One very neat detail from those posted instructions: look how nearly everything in cycling revolves around a ten day wait-even this mix. They know waiting subjectively any longer past ten days is safe and will take into account all the ranging kits people use as a guide

its fascinating how that timeframe keeps popping up here in clues and pattern, thanks for posting those instructions. That’s the date on anyone’s cycling reference chart from a book or online where the ammonia drops (in truth, not necessarily with cheap non digital test kits that nearly always misread for cyclers)

we will be waiting twice that timeframe I’m completely sure it’ll be fine and I don’t expect those kits to agree one bit, because they’re wrong.


***Ive seen probably 50-75 seneye cycle logs now among the thousands of various cycling posts on forums over the last few years, and not one on a calibrated and tuned seneye took longer than two days to drop initial ammonia. There is not any seneye logs for proven calibrated seneyes showing the ammonia drop to take longer than ten days, not one. That’s the reason we abandon trust in those Red Sea and api kits- try sampling those in cycle posts for indicating ten day drops, 98% don’t show it. 100% of seneyes do, those non digital kits are bad/ not good— they are the cause of the false stall notion, nobody’s cycle is stalled and just about everyone could handle bioload on day one if they weren’t trained to overdose ammonia to a gross degree.
 
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Matt's Reefing

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Very interesting take. We as hobbiest are led to believe test test test as per the instructions u see on the box which sells sells sells and that's what we do, I could be setting on these results for another 2 months and after buying another bottle or 2 of bacteria it might be ready according to the tests we are supposed to rely on? Testing is almost a addiction should I dare say at this moment. Hard to break the ritual I hope my case will help someone in the future as well.

Fish and inverts are already in quarantine as the tank had them in it when I got it. So they are ready to go in as soon as it's ready. Going to add the powdered fish flakes as soon as I get off work today.

Thank you for all of your help and knowledge! I will keep updating and posting here of the results.
 
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brandon429

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Already in qt: very rare, very very nice that’s totally up to date reefing

excellent cycle we get to track out here. can’t wait to see the pic updates a few days after adding the fish, it’ll be working great

hey just now in the chemistry forum / random timing / this guy just updated in the Red Sea vs api thread that Red Sea shows a bunch of free ammonia in distilled water lol

*not all kits are bad, I don’t think 100% are bad but if we have a known mix of misreads among accurate reads we need an officially neutral meter to use on cycles, that’s what we hope to refine here. # of days stewing + equalizing water change at the end of the calculated wait based on boosters used trumps all non digital test issues, the hope is we want to earn timely cycles (a known date where intended bioload + feed is carried safely)

thank you for posting and adding nice data and setups others will be able to copy as they scan for similar challenges

we are honored to have your first post here at rtr its a great forum. After being online 20 years this place meets the best standards of debate and discovery, constant work jobs available for data mining and outcomes, this place is full of gold nuggets and ore
 
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brandon429

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It can be added to any system, even ones where non digital ammonia testing shown to be inaccurate for 28 pages still causes doubt.


it is not required, we have not used replacement bac not once here in 28 pages because doubt isn’t allowed but I know it’ll get through occasionally

Dr Tim has folks ultimately concerned about stalls, one incident a year here is acceptable

this cycle is already ready we just wanted the extra five days with fish food in place to finalize the same prediction set that’s worked for two years here.


The extra bottle about to be added is still ok because we study how old cycling rules are designed solely to sell us repeat bottle bac out of fear, and those old rules work well for that


if you add it, there is a 100% requirement that you don’t post future non digital test kits here whatsoever, that’s the deal if we are to track your cycle here. We specifically only want to see pics of a tank with life in it, no matter if that extra bac is added or not, fair deal?
 

Matt's Reefing

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I was just curious what you thought, I have been testing ever day and parameters have not moved from what I posted but I think I will just let it ride. Definitely not in a hurry just imagined I would see some definitive changes.
 
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brandon429

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No, not on those kits, per page one post #2 first link seneye comparison test


the tests are bad and can’t be used accurately for cycling. If convention cyclers, sellers, relied on any of those kits nobody could make a reef convention on time


there really is a thread in the chem forum kicked up last week about red sea ammonia falsely showing high ppm ammonia in distilled water, that literally means the kits are bad, not good.
 

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No, not on those kits, per page one post #2 first link seneye


the tests are bad and can’t be used accurately for cycling. If convention cyclers, sellers, relied on any of those kits nobody could make a reef convention on time
Ok, I guess the thing for me is my quarantine tank paremeters look great using the same kits and I think that's where I'm getting hung up. Really appreciate the advice and the time you take to answer these questions and concerns!
 
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brandon429

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once you do the full water change on 27th that’s going to pull out any suspect water and replace with water we know is free of any risk


and a thick active layer of microbiology will be the living veneer on surfaces, and when you add fish to the new tank with that working slime coat + high dilution and low common fish starting bioload you’ll love it, they’ll work perfectly for sure. Wastewater is expected to cause total concern in the interim :)
 

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So for those reading this thread, I hope this post helps others.

I first raised concerns that my new tank cycling that it had stalled. This was after I added 5kg of live rock and 35kgs of dry rock, plus using a Bottle of Dr Tims, I followed instructions and dosed ammonia accordingly.. after constantly reading 0 ammonia I went and got a second opinion and and a third on day 6. These results came back as 4.8 and 4.6 one digital and the other RED SEA. Yet my salifert still reads 0..

After 15 days as mentioned by @brandon429 I stop testing and did a 99% waterchange.

4 hours later ran some test for piece of mind and behold.

Ammonia 0
Nitrate 5

Obviously nitrite was 0 but that doesnt matter.

First 2 fish went in Scotts fairy wrasse 3" and a Chromis.

24hours later both are well and alive and eating normally. Happy in their new environment.

Again tests still read as per above after adding fish. Meaning ammonia caused by the fish is been converted at a rapid rate.

Thanks for everyone that assisted and for @brandon429 for his experience with tank cycling and everything else.
 
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brandon429

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First 2 fish went in Scotts fairy wrasse 3" and a Chromis.


hey thats a great starting bioload where it won’t overpower the tank and I appreciate your documentation~ we had been working up to Monday’s fish transfer / inclusion and this was a nice tie in for our prep work thank you Rusty
 

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Thought I had to pick up my purple tang and onyx clown and put them in but LFS were happy to keep them for another 10 days. The good thing is they keep them in a copper treatment. All are extremely healthy.
Once back from Holidays in 10 days time ill be able to add all the fish together, along with the transfer of corals. Then the decommissioning of my 70.2 will begin
 
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How nice it is to see tanks retire due to growth and expansion vs recession from disease and invasion, this is ideal reefing succession
 

Matt's Reefing

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So just an update I haven't been doing much testing but decided to test today as my Sechem ammonia alert indicator turned yellow today. Turns out ammonia tests using both API and Redsea test kits are showing right around .2 and Nitrates are in the 30 to 40 range.

Getting ready for water change this weekend. I only have the capacity to replace 60 gallons of the 170 at the same time. Do you think I need to change that much or would 30 gallons be enough? The reason I ask is I do the whole 60 I have to use my RODI storage as well. I have bigger tanks coming to set up water change station but won't be here till after the new year. So for now I am using 32gallon brutes.

Thanks again for the advice can't wait to report back with fish swimming in the tank!
 

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