Updated Cycling Science thread 2020

[brandon429]

We change water only due to nitrates its not for ammonia safety, that part can be skipped if you like. Your tank will smell bad if ammonia was ever an issue...stuff is very potent

if you want to change a good amount of water, your call on %

a fresh start may be less algae if we are lucky
If you change no water, no harm.

when a reef tank has sand and or rocks for attachment, and we are past the # of days on the bottle bac instruction alongside feed and dosed water and ammonia moves down from a high to low setting, and the water smells and looks normal, it means ammonia trends to .00x ppm long before a non digital ammonia test will let us see that.

Within an hour I suspect, that fast, not days. once it trends down it goes to the safe zone, and the tests simply will not let us see that unless we own a good working seneye.



should we ever find an example of high surface area in contact with known feed and cycling bac of the best possible strain, correct # of days waited, going grey crash and unable to keep a bioload after showing ammonia trending down this thread will have no purpose. The #1 gap we fill in for the old material is that the trend down is fast, consistent home to home, and doesn’t stall partially between 1+ ppm and .00x

it goes from uncycled to cycled (can withstand a 100% water change) in a matter of hours for the most active bottle bac brands. Dr Reefs ninety page bottle bac thread uses 100% water changes to ensure bacteria are adhered to surfaces, and it works when the bottle directions say it will.

we use too much surface area to casually leave the most important feed substrate (nh3) unused.


that is a truly fun gradient to be working against.

it doesnt mean occasionally a diseased fish or a bad acclimation or shipping ammonia burn won’t kill a new fish in a cycle one day. I just saw a kalk overdose post kill a fish too, things happen. Single losses are never systemic ammonia...the whole tank is visually wrecked of life when nh3 is not under control.


we are looking for obvious systemic noncontrol of ammonia nh3 and it will be so obvious, and smelly, when that happens that no test will be needed to see its effects.

old cycle rules gave nh3 noncontrol a wide variation of times it could manifest, like a minefield. Better buy an offset to make sure no pop ups happen


but a cycling chart has its ammonia stay down at day ten, no chart from any site shows it going back up for a reliable reason.


all we have to do to create the null condition is take a paint bucket full of dry rocks and input saltwater and ten good sized snails and a little food.

theyll be dead in max 36 hours, cloudy smelly water.

conversely, if you sub in cured live rock from the pet store, you have a nano reef the instant you set the rocks in the bucket. The snails will live and feed just fine.


rule:

Free ammonia can only trend to safe in a reef tank or it will trend to destruction, there is no middle ground holding. The trend is fast, within hours. That is the top rule in updated cycling science.

 

[brandon429]

Ammonia at .25 PPM. Water change or wait?

Hi folks! After my water change last week, my ammonia read 0 (API). Always does. However, after yesterday's water change (approx 20%), the ammonia is reading .25PPM. Tested 3 times. The fish seem fine, but I'm freaking out! I added Microbe-Lift Nite-Out II, but this morning it is still...

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Team, we are backsliding. We are going in reverse as a hobby on free ammonia troubleshooting.

using our thread here for updated cycling science, none of these tanks have free ammonia, it’s how we are able to predict their entire reef status before they post update pics.


our hobby FALSELY claims that nh3 can be out of control yet all fish are fine, corals are fine, and lots of surface area is present. That’s a false claim, it happens when we exclude surface area mechanics from ammonia tracing threads. What ammonia does is predictable, it’s never never unpredictable

false unneeded bottle bac sales have happened now twice

do you see how the people who make cycling rules while selling bottle bac are doubly benefitted by using old science, yet robbed of boosted profits if we use new science?

 

[JGT]

Yes, this is completely true. On a PM exchange with Brandon, I setup a QT tank with new SW and a HOB filter. No fish. Added some media matrix to it and added a bottle of biospira. Gave it a week, tested water, no NH3, ~5 NO3. Added coral frags, all doing great. Once a week, add a pinch of flake food to feed the bacteria. Cycle done.

 

[LauriesaurusRex]

That is 100% agreeable
As long as rocks and sand are in the tank as attachment points all this time

fritz alone is instant cycling bacteria, meaning even if we added fish day one like so many thousands do, they still don’t die for lack of ammonia control

in addition, you are approaching day ten of any cycling chart, those tell us when bacteria set up shop, the ammonia goes down on or before that date especially when we’ve boosted known sources for filter bacteria

and you’ve specifically seen ammonia go down within the known range of the bottle bac.

the bacteria are plated on surfaces and immune to a 100% water change, Dr Reef found fritz able to handle this in a day or two max, after addition.

you are cycled by every marker we use, please update us! The living animals are the final say.

if your tank is in the least uncycled, it’ll go cloudy in two hours from the new fish and the whole thing will be dead by tomorrow. That’s not happened in any link here, or even one from the whole site.


no more bottle bac is due here. The initial sale was plenty and valid at that point.

So, to update you: one of the clowns died within 12 hours, but the other one is doing great. The one that died seemed really stressed and wouldn’t stop swimming against a strong current, even after I nudged him into a calmer area with a net. He just kept going back to where he was in the corner and never really settled in. We got another one today and it’s doing well too.

 

[brandon429]

Not sure why some acclimate over roughly, glad the others are ok. Ammonia is such a thorough killer the water would go cloudy, the fish won’t feed or act normal, and they all die quickly. The #1 thing to watch out for is water clouding not so much a test kit reading, let me know if it clouds up as you begin light feeding/ no overfeeds and easing into full on reefing with the setup

thanks tons for posting!

 

[brandon429]

how we cycle is tied to tank longevity. It would not seem that being hesitant about nitrite would matter, but it freezes a reefer into total passivity in the initial doubt mode. Doubt is what they’re taught right off the bat if we factor nitrite in reef tank start dates. We learn delay, open ended wait, no timeliness.


but bacteria are reliable, and timely, so to doubt them is false training.

refusing updated cycling science causes unneeded retail purchases and in some cases, more loss than just following the updated rules for peace of mind:

EMERGENCY - Crazy Ammonia spike

Hey all, This tank has been up for 1+ year and its been doing great with SPS, LPS etc. Today I had 1 sps peel out and I thought maybe it was the new carbon I changed out, went to rent out a par meter to make sure had them test the water just for ***** and giggles as I test it myself x2 weekly...

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thats four pages of unfounded fear about ammonia, most of the tenured crew reinforced the concern vs neutralized it, and adding all sorts of bottled bac to create an unneeded stew for the sps hurt vs helped. Adding oxygen-consuming bacteria was never indicated in this help thread


***the reefer was not told to drop light intensity fast enough*** because ammonia was the focus, incorrectly, this is the price in sps loss for using old cycling rules. The rulemakers caused this sps loss, not the tank owner, the peers who doubted bacteria factored in the loss not the arrest of problems.

That is a cycling issue, claimed, nine months after cycle completed.


how you choose to cycle affects your long term reefing because we adopt either true or false notions depending on the cycle rule set we choose at the start.

if you are helping someone with a cycle, you need to know how long the bottle bac says it will take and factor that in your assist. Don’t use arbitrary start dates/wait longer

are their ammonia claims going against a common cycling chart where on day ten, its basically ‘zero’ and doesn’t come back up? isn’t that all stuck cycle posts? Cycle charts are trustworthy, our tests aren’t.


accurate cycling 2021 and beyond already knows it’s completion date before anything is assembled, you can run reef conventions and pet stores off that accurate info. Do not advise or train new reefers using passive misinformation it will cost them dearly over the long haul. Train up new reefers using cycling info that runs million-dollar pet stores and reef conventions.

Cycling is about meeting a pre planned start date, it’s not an open ended wait.

your pet store doesn’t receive from shipping a crate of life they paid fifteen grand for, and then accept it hesitantly into a maybe-cycled setup and test for nitrites for twenty days. Knowing accurate, timely cycling and skip cycling is how they keep the $15k investments alive until you buy them, they’re transferred skip cycle into holding tanks where accurate surface area dynamics know the ever-changing bioload doesn’t alter the filtration ability of the holding tanks. Cycles are locked in place, they know.

you don’t even see your pet store owner testing for ammonia once they’re 10-15 years into the game, they can predict without it.


Everything a forum cycler does is opposite of what a pet store or a convention cycler does, notice this trend. After being told that, most incensed aquarists will claim safety from the longer wait...but thats the problem, there’s no benefit in the longer wait and it taught you pure hesitancy that can result in you losing sps a year later well after cycling by distrusting a cycling chart when api told you to.


***waiting past the “full date” for bacteria on rocks doesn’t add more bacteria, that’s a false buyers notion. On the “full date” your rocks are ready, and water shear/nutrient levels and other factors prevent buildup on rocks to infinite levels. Waiting longer literally adds no more bacteria than waiting the correct date (date on the label for bottle bac)***

waiting longer didn’t add more bacteria to your rocks, it caused you another trip back to the pet store to buy something for a cycling matter long after the cycle closed. If you use updated cycling science what you are buying at the lfs is fish, corals, feed, medication, hardware, but not bottled bacteria after having completed your cycle.

 

[brandon429]

Guess how many failed or stalled reef cycles we have in reefing for 2021 so far: none.

 

[brandon429]

Build Thread - My SPS Waterbox Peninsula Mini 15

Beautiful build and scape!

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*****Howaboutme contributes to updated cycling science because he has two clowns alive and well, fed and in clear water, after simply feeding an all dry system some fish food in saltwater and waiting one month. Cycles don’t stall they revert to this timeframe at most.


what a cycling chart says happens did happen, it’s right there he did not pay for boost bacteria, his cycle didn’t stall it met the prescribed timeframe for natural bacteria vectors. This is so very old school and new school legit combined, that we can trust bacteria vs doubt and redundantly reinforce them, it belongs here as a reminder of some legit old school discoveries that affect reef tank design.


we can always fall back on the good old cycling chart, written long before bottle bac was for sale and a need given to the market.

 

[brandon429]

Team

I present to you the baddest meanest test of reef surface area laws I’ve ever seen. Jbj 45 gallon matured reef w corals rocks sand running normally.

and then twenty clownfish added at once, it’s been a week, no change in ammonia. I’m editing this back in first post for the section on surface area mechanics. We know ammonia is controlled by his pics and timing descriptions, not the test kits for ammonia that luckily agreed with the biggest bioload jump we’ve seen. They do agree however, so we’d better captain Morgan pose on this bad boy for a sec.

Suddenly add 20 fish to Established tank

@brandon429 I have to admire your ability to convince people that their tank won't crash and everything won't die. You are becoming a pro at it. I agree that Tou will be fine. If I can remove my 25-30+ adult cichlid tanks sandbed in a move without a toxic ammonia event then anyone with...

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there are NO old reefing rules and procedure that allow for that to work out ok, it has because of surface area rules that say bacteria do NOT require time to take on more bioload they’re instantly ready


nobody knows what the bio-carry limits are, fish disease tends to set the upper limits not nh3 handling.

 

[brandon429]

Ammonia alerts are misreads.

the first post #1 section on active surface area is the reason we deem these false.
all subsequent posts are total misreads, causing massive concern to all readers except the lone assessor

Sustained Ammonia spikes are misreads

The reason you think your reef tank can’t control its ammonia is due to false training from old cycling science. That and you don’t own a seneye on the tank in question: if you did, you wouldn’t ever think your ammonia was out of control...

www.reef2reef.com

 

[brandon429]

Bacteria in a bottle, Myth or Fact

Did the online calc indicate to use one mil in the tank for your gallonage

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That is the first data available in reefing regarding the true, unassisted reef tank cycle that I have seen posted. It belongs in our thread because its free

not from a bottle

doesn't stall

doesn't need our help, nature provides and it gets us back to seeing how redundant adding bottle bac to a system and then waiting a few weeks can be. even without the bottle bac, you'd have the filter.

we are trained buyers in this hobby, that thread is refreshing.

 

[brandon429]

Team

would anyone with a seneye like to try the unassisted cycle proofing at day 30/matching a common cycling chart? that would be data gold and only requires a paint bucket, some saltwater, heat it up to 78 ish, circulation if possible, and 30 days wait. at the end dose only a fraction of ammonia to move the system barely up


then see it come back down overnite...that is if cycling charts have it right (for the ammonia param, that's what we track here not the other two)

*the information in post #71 cannot be found anywhere on the internet that I've seen. someone try and find a scholar article, a google article or a reefing article on how long it takes to complete a fully unassisted marine tank cycle and link it


I have been looking for that for twenty years. he does it with api, convincingly I might add.

 

[brandon429]

Fishless cycle - concerned about stalling

This cycle is done. Nothing left to measure, do the big water change and begin https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/nitrites-still-too-high.814854/page-2#post-8737385 you met the dates on the bottle bac label, it was ten days. plus ammonia control is set, see Randy’s post. Choose a fish disease...

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notice how these aquarists cannot begin on time, after paying for a timely start. this is the consequence of using old school cycling rules and its producing hesitant, less-able new reefers.


not focused on disease control, the real risk, but led to think a cycle will stall with our slight mismanagement


They’re missing the #1 benefit in this thread: a highly specific start date where everything lives fine and we can reef with confidence


A start date, a set time, a can-reef no hesitation date. Old cycling rules can not practice prediction biology and that’s what updated cycling is ALL about. Old school cycling says predicting start dates is bad, risky, you must wait until api shows hard yellow zero on the kit to proceed. planned start dates are not an option.

(can we predictably move a thousand reefs into a convention and skip all cycles for the next upcoming MACNA? prior pattern says so)

Ammonia

My tank cycled but ammonia is still up. I know it’s cycled because I’ve been testing every day and have watched the ammonia rise and fall to about .5 ppm and the nitrates and ites rise and fall to zero. The problem is my ammonia is still at .5. I have two astrea snails in there right now, should...

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the cycle solve that occurred here was based on predictive biology.

 

[brandon429]

How does the surface area degree and presentation differ between Quarantine and Display tanks and how does that factor in updated cycling science vs the old methods?

Is my quarantine tank cycled ?

Hi hope all is ok. Well day 22 of cycling my tank using doctor tims one and only and amnonia chloride 54 litre tank /15 us gallons i believe. 27 march =added 45 drops amnonia Amnonia 2 ppm ,nitrite/nitrate 0 28 march =same. 29 march= added 20 drops amnonia as amnonia 1 ppm so got it back to 2...

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see that post for analysis and breakdown.

Display tanks have immediate contact zones for nitrification of wastewater. Quarantine tanks tend to allocate the contact zones away from the wastewater, wastewater swirls and rolls in the mid section a while before it touches a filtration contact area. it’s not as much about bacteria as it is about presentation and degree of flow, currents (eddy vs laminar) contact.


Our cycling training does not include surface area mechanics and in some cases that’s 90% of the issue, not the bacteria. The result of this training and omission is we are primed (and do) buy new rounds of bottled bacteria (that have no where to attach, surface area was kept the same) for all slights in a reef tank.

 

[brandon429]

What effect does rinsing out my filter cartridges have on my cycle/stability of the system in general


Before reading the outcome, consider our 4 pages here. make a prediction to yourself first if rinsing out a hang on back filter will harm a reef tank

HOB filter media replacement

Do I have to replace (like completely get rid of) my filter cartridge in my hob filter for my reef tank? Or would washing it out be enough? Also, how often should I replace/wash the cartridge?

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re read the section page 1 on our thread here regarding surface area before clicking above, make a prediction as to whether or not hang on back filters or canister filters are integrally required links in a reef tank

also read the sandbed removal thread before making up your mind

 

[brandon429]

this aquarist is being told to both pay for Dr Tims *and* wait out the timeframe involved in unassisted free cycling. Forum cyclers can’t win...they’d have already set up and closed down two or three full MACNA conventions in the time frame this poster is allowed to add two clowns.


old vs new cycling science. Buyers vs sellers training in effect. The sole reason you pay for bottle bac is so you don’t have to wait a month, read the dates on the label. The bac will work by then.

New to Saltwater & Reef Aquariums? Post Here

If you're new to the Saltwater Hobby and have questions please post them here. So you finally decided to take the plunge. The only dumb question is the one you don't ask!

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[Jeffcb]

Your build Thread isn't working btw @brandon429

 

[brandon429]

Yep I asked em to remove it lol that was linked back once to the reefs.org site/ advanced aquarist but it’s gone now

 

[brandon429]

in lieu of making a new thread this page here will be for 2021 updates


The Most Important Fundamental Change in 2021 Cycling rules for the hobby is the preparation for Fish Disease


you can see from the myriad 2020 examples logged a cycle is as good as done when you wet the tank, after a brief time delay we can exactly calculate before you set up the tank and so can every single reef tank entrant that has ever existed in a reefing convention.


Read this forum, and tell me if reefs under 8 mos old aren't in dire need of preps for fish disease. **the concern in cycling is no longer ammonia and nitrite, its quick disease wipeouts from skipping preps

Fish Disease Treatment and Diagnosis

A forum for discussing treatment and diagnosing saltwater reef fish.

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so what are the ideal preps>

post some that are better, and better measured with feedback, than from that link above and we'll consider them. Can't be a thread about someone's single reef, needs to be a forum of pages using other's reefs and their unbiased feedback. under those constraints i expect zero alternate examples to be linked. its ok to insert solely examples of one person's reef who skipped preps and has no disease, I know that's all we can find lol.


my self-appointed job here is to relay reefing microbiology trends to you six years before they're formally adopted. if we dont get on fish disease now the entire world is going to hate our hobby.


(get a pico reef, gain the ability to never have to fallow and quaratine because you keep corals and inverts only, there's ways around these unfavorable preps )

 

[brandon429]

If you're putting fish into a recently dry rock reef that is certainly cycled, prepare to get canceled in like 2028.

*that is unless you bought the fish pre quarantined from a pre quarantined site, or did it yourself. In that condition you're in total compliance with this entire decade's cycling rules and trending present and future.