How to unstick any seemingly stuck cycle

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brandon429

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Yes it’s fine for sure there isn’t bad form ammonia

what they read is .2 total ammonia which we don’t use in reefing, but per nh3 conversion on both instructions that’s a movement down from prior 1+ now to .02 ppm nh3 which on seneye would translate to .002 nh3 because it’s digital and accurate. That all lines up above just fine for your plan and is about as good as those testers get. Pretty decent of them to read .02 for sure.

The water is safe right now, but waiting till the assigned date and that degree of water change you have is perfect Matt

we got to chart a marked timing drop of ammonia within the stated time frame it’s perfect documentation for us :)
 
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@discostew

do both. When folks dose ammonia only my posit is that the required carbon gets in by trace means and thats enough to work the job, but the pinch of fish food is a lighting boost as noted by Dr Reef in his implantation timing thread for common brands of bottle bac.

sources for trace carbon in a room/ house? Let’s review:

(for any bachelor settings, non married, increase room carbon amount estimates eighty fold- stuff is going to be grungy lol and that boosts cycling as a side benefit)

what does the top of a ceiling fan look like when it hasn’t been cleaned or rotated in eight months? Carbon salad. Some phosphate is in there too because a gnat or nine is degrading too in the dust.


baseboards to my left? Pure carbon topped room salad. When sashaying across this carpet a wake of invisible carbon rooster tail micro dust fills the room, lands everywhere
Especially in water / attracted to it directly

pulled to it if near, in fact, electrostatically


that’s only three, there’s nine more sources and only one is required that’s why married homes still cycle even if they’re much cleaner :)

these cycles can’t work on nitrogen alone, constructing organism mass takes phosphate and minerals and several other requisites but the funked out room provides them. Toss some ground up flakes for the speed boost win~
 

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Furthermore see attached photos. Clear water, safe fish, cycle completed based on days not ammonia test kit levels
20211217_123235.jpg
20211216_095948.jpg
 

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Starting my cycle today. Added dr Tim’s and biospira. Used 45 gallon x .2 (substrate). Added 144 drops ammonia chloride according to calculation on dr Tim’s ammonium chloride. Added 2 punches of fish food.
At this point will i need to add any more ammonium or food during the cycle? Will check ammonia and nitrate for fun daily or every other day pending schedule.
 

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Hi Brandon - this has been one of the most informative threads on reefing I’ve ever ready.. thank you for your time and effort.. I’m now 99% sure my tank has cycled but I do have a question.

Background: I started my tank on November 27th with 20lbs of CaribSea Life Rock (100% dry) and 15lbs dry sand. My tank is 25g w/ around 16.5 G of actual water. I dosed the tank with a 4oz bottle of Dr Tims One and only and followed the directions exactly. I ran it at 82’F and 18ppt Salinity with my lights 100% off to help bacteria growth. I dosed 66 drops of Dr Tims ammonia chloride on the prescribed days.

Day 1 (11/27) - added Dr TIms & dosed 66 drops of ammonia
Day 2 - NH 1.0 (API kit)
Day 3 - NH 1.0 & Dosed another 66 drops per instructions
Day 4 - NH 3.0+
Day 5 - NH 2.0
Day 6 - NH 2.0 & Dosed another 66 drops per insturctions
Day 7 - NH 3+ & checked for NitrAtes (looked around 20)
Day 8 - NH .25
Day 9 - NH 0.0 (here’s where I started waiting for Nitrites to drop they had been at 2-3 since day 5)
Day 10 - NH 0 (nitrI tes still not moving… start googling - found your thread and read over next few days) also started to drop my temperature a degree or two a day down to 76’F
Day 11 - NH 0 - dosed 33 drops (1/2 the amount as I was concerned amount bacteria starving). Also started to raise my salinity to 35ppt over 48-72 hours
Day 12 - (Today December 8th) NH 0.25 - Temp at 76 - Salinity at 30ppt (will get to 35 tomorrow)

So based on what I’ve learned here I’m 99% sure I’m cycled an could support life… HOWEVER - I’m about to leave on a 7 day work trip and would like your opinion on what to do between tomorrow and December 16th.. to keep the bacteria healthy.. Adding fish or inverts isn’t really an option.

When I get back I plan on doing a 99% water change and getting fish in the tank asap. Cheers!!!
So figured I'd do a follow up on this in case it helps anybody.

I went on my work trip and did nothing to the tank, simply left it running as is with lights off. When I returned I did a API test kit and low and behold I had both Zero Ammonia and Zero Nitrites (I know we don't care but I was curious).. and some very high level of Nitrates (40+)

I ordered my fish and did a 16g water change... for kicks I did the 3 point test that you talked about and saw the Ammonia raise and fall within 24hrs and have now introduced my 3rd fish to the tank :)

I feel VERY confident that I could have introduced fish on Day 12 of the cycle (or earlier if I wanted to cycle with the fish).

Thanks again for running this thread and now I can enjoy this over the holidays!
 
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@discostew

one round of feed is plenty, we expect that much ammonia to cause non digital kits to stall in resolve for weeks on end (page one examples) but it will feed the bottle bac nicely along with carbon and nutrients from the fish feed. when fish food is not given during a cycle, standard room contamination provides enough carbon input as well as of the alternate nutrients bacteria need for cycling to be able to oxidize ammonia waste. the fish food speeds up deposition of bacteria on surfaces quickly per Dr Reef's bottle bac study thread.

at no time does any cycling reef require even a third that much ammonia, his instructions for everyone to dose that much overpowers nearly all test kits well past their ability to read accurately, and the result is a perceived stall, and then redundant sales of bottle bac in follow up.

also in play in false stall notions is the painted and stated fear from those same directions that ammonia over 5 ppm or nitrite/I forget which warning level it was/ causes a stall

and inputting 2 ppm ammonia per his rules at the start nearly guaranteed to make cyclers think its above 5 simply because the vial will be so dark they have to guess...so they buy new bottle bac thinking this addition has killed their starting cycle.

Old cycling rules are designed to cause doubt, the whole thing if we read it or see it in videos implies a risk taken for dosing too much or too little, yet here any way a tank presents it gets a clean start date.



starting with that much ammonia up front is the primary reason we elect to do water changes on an assigned date...the extra boost did not kill or stall ammonia processing, it fed the bac very well but overpowers the non digital kits with factors yet to be uncovered. by doing a full water change on those ammonia blast cycles we remove any concern and replace the water table with known safe levels of ammonia water. (and then sometimes they still take a test and the kit shows high, lol, its wrong, seneye wouldnt show that see page one post #2 first link)

***it is very important @discostew that we not post test kit readings from non digital kits along the way, they’ll insert doubt in our confident approach*******

we don't test for nitrite at all here

and ammonia testing we either want calibrated as Brad mentions or as digital seneye uncalibrated, post those all day long. **the calibrated testing isn't required, nobody misses ready dates assigned here. that form of testing is offered for those who just want to double check and even if it didn't pass using cheap test kits I wouldnt think its a fail until we see some dead fish or a seneye showing a stall. these cheap kits can have wait-time errors in reporting, reagent prep issues, fill line issues, use of Prime in the water unstated, the list of adulterants never ends. Glad Brads worked above and we find many users like Dan or MNFish1 very able to make the kits read consistently run but it doesn’t seem that same skill applies to all reefers if we search “stalled reef tank cycle“ on Google. Those are bad test kit reads, not bad cycles. Try and assemble alternatively a long running list of seneye stalled cycles and link those

a non digital test kit will never never never be proof of a stall here.

what we use for proofing is fish in a clear water tank--that's what sets us apart.

Your arrangement disco stew can actually carry fish bioloading instantly, on day one, the minute you dosed bio spira or Dr. Tims. the huge blast of ammonia may take some time to clear, but we don't track wastewater clearing time here so it will be unfactored in your assigned start date.

5 days, lol that's how long implantation will take for your setup discostew. In five days do a 90-100% water change and you have a complete cycle left on surfaces, per Dr Reefs bottle bac thread where all the top name brands were given measured time to adhere and then he did a full water change + retest as proofing, and those brands you use are done in more like 48 hours so five days is well beyond the wait time required, you just paid for concentrated bac in a bottle and it'll work for sure. wait ten days if you want ultimate safety.


additionally, its not possible you bought two dead bottles of bac. by adding two different brands one is certain to work in this timeframe and 99.99% of the time both bottles were functional.

Your tank will carry fish just fine in five days + a nearly complete water change, regardless of what any cheap test kits say=what we've been doing here all year

thanks for posting, can't wait to see your pics of fish in a tank or hear about them
 
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@discostew

one round of feed is plenty, we expect that much ammonia to cause non digital kits to stall in resolve for weeks on end (page one examples) but it will feed the bottle bac nicely along with carbon and nutrients from the fish feed. when fish food is not given during a cycle, standard room contamination provides enough carbon input as well as of the alternate nutrients bacteria need for cycling to be able to oxidize ammonia waste. the fish food speeds up deposition of bacteria on surfaces quickly per Dr Reef's bottle bac study thread.

at no time does any cycling reef require even a third that much ammonia, his instructions for everyone to dose that much overpowers nearly all test kits well past their ability to read accurately, and the result is a perceived stall, and then redundant sales of bottle bac in follow up.

also in play in false stall notions is the painted and stated fear from those same directions that ammonia over 5 ppm or nitrite/I forget which warning level it was/ causes a stall

and inputting 2 ppm ammonia per his rules at the start nearly guaranteed to make cyclers think its above 5 simply because the vial will be so dark they have to guess...so they buy new bottle bac thinking this addition has killed their starting cycle.

Old cycling rules are designed to cause doubt and sell orders of repeat bottle bac in my opinion. in furtherance of that notion, we don't have a single stalled cycle here in 29 pages and out in the postverse nearly every cycle appears to be stalled on the old rules, watch for new posts about it this week in forums we haven't even seen written yet. they're coming, every week are new stall cycle posts.


we are against that entire process here :)

not to be rule breakers but to earn one detail on every page every job that no other cycling thread lends:

a timely start date with zero losses reported.


starting with that much ammonia up front is the primary reason we elect to do water changes on an assigned date...the extra boost did not kill or stall ammonia processing, it fed the bac very well but overpowers the non digital kits with factors yet to be detailed. by doing a full water change on those ammonia blast cycles we remove any concern and replace the water table with known safe levels of ammonia water. (and then sometimes they still take a test and the kit shows high, lol, its wrong, seneye wouldnt show that see page one post #2 first link)

***it is very important @discostew that we not post test kit readings from non digital kits along the way, this cycling thread is polar opposite of any cycling thread on the web for that reason*******

we don't test for nitrite at all here

and ammonia testing we either want calibrated as Brad mentions or as digital seneye uncalibrated, post those all day long.

what we use for proofing is fish in a clear water tank--that's what sets us apart.

Your arrangement disco stew can actually carry bottle bac instantly, on day one, the minute you dosed bio spira or Dr. Tims. the huge blast of ammonia may take some time to clear, but we don't track wastewater clearing time here so it will be unfactored in your assigned start date.

5 days, lol that's how long implantation will take for your setup discostew. In five days do a 90-100% water change and you have a complete cycle left on surfaces, per Dr Reefs bottle bac thread where all the top name brands were given measured time to adhere and then he did a full water change + retest as proofing, and those brands you use are done in more like 48 hours so five days is well beyond the wait time required, you just paid for concentrated bac in a bottle and it'll work for sure.


additionally, its not possible you bought two dead bottles of bac. by adding two different brands one is certain to work in this timeframe and 99.99% of the time both bottles were functional.

Your tank will carry fish just fine in five days + a nearly complete water change, regardless of what any cheap test kits say=what we've been doing here all year

thanks for posting, can't wait to see your pics of fish in a tank or hear about them
Thanks for the insight. I imagine there is no harm in waiting 7-10 days to do the water change right? Will be pretty busy in 4-5 days.
 
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agreed we've been using ten days as the going theme for the speedier approaches as that also coincides with the universal ammonia drop date on all cycling charts and all seneye logged cycles. its a solid solid safe wait time for boosted and fed bottle bac cycles.
 

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Just had a question. Day 4 in cycle. Values as below (sorry for messy writing)

is it odd the nitrate is so high already or does that mean the bacteria are just processing right?
Red Sea kit.
 

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That reading wouldn’t influence your ready date even if it said zero.

considering the tank isn’t two months old yet that reading can be a nitrite-caused nitrate misread. we omit data from non digital test kits here whereas all other cycling threads require the data and believe it

the bacteria would still be at work even if the non digital test kit said zero, making it look like they weren’t working

Thats quite normal above and since we are a collection of nearly constant misreads from non digital kits the real fun would be if it said zero we would still know the cycle is working independent from the stated reading based on prior posts reflecting assigned start dates with pics of happy healthy fish

waiting to day ten and doing a big water change before adding fish is going to work great

once we see a picture of your tank with fish in it a few days after stocking and the water is clear and the fish are fine, thats what we use as the cycle meter without any form of reference from Red Sea kits.

a bad cycle will have gray water and dead fish in the pic

It’s hard to omit non digital test info from cycling since we are trained by bottle bac sellers and peers to solely gauge off the non digital test kits — but you’ll be happy when you add fish and they act very normal and the water stays clear on the predetermined start date, it’ll work for sure

have your pinch of fish food in place four days ago
 
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Disco

whats your disease plan

we cover on post 1 page one that disease prevention planning is the top requirement in safe reef tank cycles. What’s the plan

these dry start tanks have it easy: can buy pre quarantined fish and use them initially, that keeps the chain of control in place. Some pet stores sell pre quarantined and observed fish, but not many
 

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Disco

whats your disease plan

we cover on post 1 page one that disease prevention planning is the top requirement in safe reef tank cycles. What’s the plan

these dry start tanks have it easy: can buy pre quarantined fish and use them initially, that keeps the chain of control in place. Some pet stores sell pre quarantined and observed fish, but not many
Pre quarantined fish initially. I do want to set up a hospital tank. I was actually going to ask. I have limited space. If i were to need the hospital tank. Could i fast start it as needed? I was thinking a 10g tank. Aquaclear hob filter with sponge. Use bio spira and an ammonia badge. Could i basically do that at a moments notice and have it hold 1-2 small fish (if needed).
 
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I cannot thank you enough for writing that. Its literally helping us stand far apart from all other cycling threads, you guys collectively as a team of cyclers have done more preps on fish disease than can be found in any cycling thread online. That's a valuable valuable post for us Disco, your tank is about to rock and roll.

agreed on the quarantine option: if you approximate the flow and surface area from any of the common qt setups in the disease forum that'll carry the corresponding fish waste reliably, those bottle bac mixes are great. allow that setup too about 10 days ish with feed in place/bottle bac then a good water change and that system will be prepped just the same

referencing info from page one about Paul B's quarantine approach and how that differs vastly from the common way: muted lighting, earth tones and real rock hiding spots...perhaps some fake plants too be sure n check the post its a rather stark comparison between his qt approach and the bright, white, pvc bare bottom setups so commonly used which are simply scarier to fish and keep them stressed moreso than the former

it shows us there are gradients to quarantine quality that exist just like reef tanks themselves have gradients of planning and quality. any trending towards Paul's setup training will result in more effective quarantine I honestly believe that.

being able to have that discussion with folks willing to combine fish disease preps directly into their cycle preps is 100% the direction we need for this post. Literally everything we do here is opposite of all other cycling threads and videos that can be found, its a joy/reward to be collecting these recurring outcomes for sure I'm thankful



Team, read this thread after reading page one/first paragraph here on our thread about disease

here's a new reefer a few weeks ago asking about cycling and getting the typical response that never agrees to prep for disease:


cycle set (because you can't mess up a bottle bac cycle)
and now with fish:


I also included in that last post a link to the great debate on quarantine so you can see that the cycle umpires there above voted no, passionately, and will refuse to relay disease risk to new cyclers even though this is harming fish.

that's why we do disease preps here, as part of the cycle, because that's a trend anyone who cares about reefing can spot a mile away.
 
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I cannot thank you enough for writing that. Its literally helping us stand far apart from all other cycling threads, you guys collectively as a team of cyclers have done more preps on fish disease than can be found in any cycling thread online. That's a valuable valuable post for us Disco, your tank is about to rock and roll.

agreed on the quarantine option: if you approximate the flow and surface area from any of the common qt setups in the disease forum that'll carry the corresponding fish waste reliably, those bottle bac mixes are great. allow that setup too about 10 days ish with feed in place/bottle bac then a good water change and that system will be prepped just the same

referencing info from page one about Paul B's quarantine approach and how that differs vastly from the common way: muted lighting, earth tones and real rock hiding spots...perhaps some fake plants too be sure n check the post its a rather stark comparison between his qt approach and the bright, white, pvc bare bottom setups so commonly used which are simply scarier to fish and keep them stressed moreso than the former

it shows us there are gradients to quarantine quality that exist just like reef tanks themselves have gradients of planning and quality. any trending towards Paul's setup training will result in more effective quarantine I honestly believe that.

being able to have that discussion with folks willing to combine fish disease preps directly into their cycle preps is 100% the direction we need for this post. Literally everything we do here is opposite of all other cycling threads and videos that can be found, its a joy/reward to be collecting these recurring outcomes for sure I'm thankful



Team, read this thread after reading page one/first paragraph here on our thread about disease

here's a new reefer a few weeks ago asking about cycling and getting the typical response that never agrees to prep for disease:


cycle set (because you can't mess up a bottle bac cycle)
and now with fish:


I also included in that last post a link to the great debate on quarantine so you can see that the cycle umpires there above voted no, passionately, and will refuse to relay disease risk to new cyclers even though this is harming fish.

that's why we do disease preps here, as part of the cycle, because that's a trend anyone who cares about reefing can spot a mile away.
Tomorrow is day 10 of my cycle. Used biospira and dr Tim’s. Will hopefully do a water change this weekend. Fish aren’t ready to be placed in the tank.

should i do the ammonia trial mentioned on earlier pages or just leave be?
 
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Leave it be. Since we don't have seneye it's not worth the doubt non seneye tests will cause, nor the headache from the water change work to run the calibrated testing / there's no way both bottles were dead so that's an ideal approach so far you've assembled


We're not skipping it flippantly it's safe to do because of our outcome patterns already logged here and because of timing charted in Dr Reefs bottle bac thread for those brands. We don't have a mix of some fails some wins- it's all wins given ten days wait

every fish- in cycle that worked successfully used those brands, one of them, and you've waited an extra ten days plus fed the system well. The vast majority add fish on day one before bacteria even have time to seat and when tracked on seneye here- the fish are fine and ammonia from them never breaks hundredths ppm.

You had the fish food in there this last week is that right
 

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Leave it be. Since we don't have seneye it's not worth the doubt non seneye tests will cause, nor the headache from the water change work to run the calibrated testing / there's no way both bottles were dead so that's an ideal approach so far you've assembled


We're not skipping it flippantly it's safe to do because of our outcome patterns already logged here and because of timing charted in Dr Reefs bottle bac thread for those brands. We don't have a mix of some fails some wins- it's all wins given ten days wait

every fish- in cycle that worked successfully used those brands, one of them, and you've waited an extra ten days plus fed the system well. The vast majority add fish on day one before bacteria even have time to seat and when tracked on seneye here- the fish are fine and ammonia from them never breaks hundredths ppm.

You had the fish food in there this last week is that right
Yes. I put about 2 punches of flakes. Looking back at older posts i did not grind them. They are still present in the rear sump decomposing
 
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That is just fine for sure no harm. Very well done preps! Ready for fish when your new entrants are ready for sure. The food has been breaking down in micro portions anyway via mixed strain bacteria in the water column and in turn that's been speed feeding the filter bac component this entire time. Very nice setup here all set.
 
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Disco check that out, terrible fear comes from non digital testing and total relaxation comes from seneye.
 

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Disco check that out, terrible fear comes from non digital testing and total relaxation comes from seneye.
Nice. Surprisingly the Red Sea test has shown expected trend for me Ammonia and nitrite have been zero for a few days. Nitrate went from 50 to 20 after the skimmer went on.
 
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