after losing a few fish from marine ich in my 35 gallon I decided to do a fallow period. I ended up just getting rid of my fish for the entire summer rather than just a month like I had planned. I made the mistake of not feeding my tank anything the entire time, ph is 8.2, ammonia is 0.25, nitrite is 0 and nitrate is 0. Should I just slowly add fish back in 1-2 at a time or do I need to completely recycle my tank?
Re-Cycling after fallow period?
- Thread starter bstaton
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its true bstaton that fallow time does not reduce filter bacteria in a reef tank, they don't starve in a set-in tank ever because organics packed in the system are permanent bacteria feed. if you went fallow for eight years, you could then reintroduce all your fish and no mini cycle would happen, because they're feeding the whole time vs starving
disease reintroduction is your risk, not ammonia control.
starved cycling bacteria is a tenet of old cycling science, where a large majority of the current reefing population still espouses thanks to videos on youtube from bottle bac sellers who warn of stalled cycles, which trains the viewers to buy copious repeat extra bottles of bacteria to remedy false ammonia readouts or inconsequential nitrite readings
you don't have to test to verify either, it cannot cause a new cycle. what can happen though is a retest, a false reading, a reaction of lots of additives to quell a false stall. that's what will happen if ammonia testing is ran during the process
add the fish, dont test for cycling or you will get a false stall if the kit isn't a tuned seneye.
disease reintroduction is your risk, not ammonia control.
starved cycling bacteria is a tenet of old cycling science, where a large majority of the current reefing population still espouses thanks to videos on youtube from bottle bac sellers who warn of stalled cycles, which trains the viewers to buy copious repeat extra bottles of bacteria to remedy false ammonia readouts or inconsequential nitrite readings
you don't have to test to verify either, it cannot cause a new cycle. what can happen though is a retest, a false reading, a reaction of lots of additives to quell a false stall. that's what will happen if ammonia testing is ran during the process
add the fish, dont test for cycling or you will get a false stall if the kit isn't a tuned seneye.
there are some very neat cycling experiments underway in the recesses of the site involving bacterial starvation testing. results might be interesting next year (by Dan)...
those tests underway are testing common bottle bac out of the bottle into a barren test tank for starvation, no years/months of previous feeding and waste in place, just a raw starvation/feed acquisition from nature ability check for the dosed bacteria.
but a used tank with all crevices lined with waste/literal bacterial feed stacked miles high for them--> that cannot starve in 50 years of fallow if all common parameters like salinity/temp were kept in place.
bacteria in water in our reef tanks do not starve, they just don't. a very abnormal test setting is having to be created to see if they can starve at all, even in an unnatural reef setting.
its hard for us to conceptualize they're getting food without us giving it to them.
those tests underway are testing common bottle bac out of the bottle into a barren test tank for starvation, no years/months of previous feeding and waste in place, just a raw starvation/feed acquisition from nature ability check for the dosed bacteria.
but a used tank with all crevices lined with waste/literal bacterial feed stacked miles high for them--> that cannot starve in 50 years of fallow if all common parameters like salinity/temp were kept in place.
bacteria in water in our reef tanks do not starve, they just don't. a very abnormal test setting is having to be created to see if they can starve at all, even in an unnatural reef setting.
its hard for us to conceptualize they're getting food without us giving it to them.
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bstaton
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After my
awesome, thanks for the response. Right when all my fish got ich I quickly set up a quarantine system, bought a copper Hanna tester and medicated with copper power. I quickly realized that a small quarantine system with no filtration would be near impossible to keep stable as I have to switch between parents houses and travel a good bit. Do you think it would be unrealistic to only buy fish that are pre quarantined/medicated? Also what would the price difference be between a pre quarantined fish and an un quarantined fish? Again, thanks for the help.
seek out Dr. Reef's site for info there, that's his specialty/prepping and selling prepped fish-too much info to summarize in one post but we can hit the highlights
some of the highlights in place with that brainstorm include:
-buying pre qt fish is great, but that means by extension you've studied and are already applying aseptic technique to any and all things added to the reef tank or else you'd quickly undo the $ paid for pre quarantined fish. For example: buys $100 wrasse, then puts it into a tank where snails from a pet shop are routinely bought, then added, without any qt. that would break your disease control attempts in the pre-qt buy. You would buy pre qt fish only if you are ready to fallow all future additions to the tank as well.
-its not possible for anyone to sell 100% disease free fish in this venture. What Dr. Reef is doing is he's taking costly steps to prep fish using the best methods possible of the day, sometimes things get through, but not nearly the rate for no efforts at all. So that means the most solid way to use pre prepped fish is they go into our own observational quarantines, for us to observe to make sure nothing gets passed. most people will not go through that much effort, so second best is buying from him trusting his % control rate/
some of the highlights in place with that brainstorm include:
-buying pre qt fish is great, but that means by extension you've studied and are already applying aseptic technique to any and all things added to the reef tank or else you'd quickly undo the $ paid for pre quarantined fish. For example: buys $100 wrasse, then puts it into a tank where snails from a pet shop are routinely bought, then added, without any qt. that would break your disease control attempts in the pre-qt buy. You would buy pre qt fish only if you are ready to fallow all future additions to the tank as well.
-its not possible for anyone to sell 100% disease free fish in this venture. What Dr. Reef is doing is he's taking costly steps to prep fish using the best methods possible of the day, sometimes things get through, but not nearly the rate for no efforts at all. So that means the most solid way to use pre prepped fish is they go into our own observational quarantines, for us to observe to make sure nothing gets passed. most people will not go through that much effort, so second best is buying from him trusting his % control rate/
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