8 week successful fishless cycle...broken?

[brandon429]

*Can we please get a picture of this tank, so we can clearly see the rocks/ratios/things added as a pic pls

the reason all stuck cycle threads must have a tank picture provided is sometimes the picture itself resolves any question of a cycle problem...such as times people build their scape out of cured live rock with coralline on it, but don't tell us that in the opening descrip.

 

[olonmv]

@brandon429 isnt saying you need to buy one. He’s staring the fact that you can’t stall or break a cycle. Once you have nitrifying bacteria it’s there and capable of doing its job. No need to buy more bottle bac.

you need seneye because a multi-million dollar sales industry for bottle bac sales, replenishment for contantly claimed dead bacteria, are supported by non-digital testers and nobody who owns a seneye gets fearful about ammonia control

I agree with @brandon429 on a bunch of stuff. It just sounds like he’s suggesting that without seneye the cycle will never break through the stall and that bottled bac is just snake oil. Maybe it is but all Im sayin is that I’ve successfully, along with many others, seeded media with bottled bac, IE Mb7, when others have had unsuccessful results with dr Tim’s. From what I understand, dr Tim’s and MB7 are 2 different strains of beneficial bacteria and for some reason dr Tim’s needs to be supplemented with other bacteria to push through or accelerate cycling. There’s a ton of different ways to approach this hobby. I just couldn’t wrap my mind around how a device helped populate bacteria. It’s clear to
me now that it’s to monitor the process. Still, I say it’s an overpriced temp monitor once the cycle is done.

 

[Dbichler]

I agree with @brandon429 on a bunch of stuff. It just sounds like he’s suggesting that without seneye the cycle will never break through the stall and that bottled bac is just snake oil. Maybe it is but all Im sayin is that I’ve successfully, along with many others, seeded media with bottled bac, IE Mb7, when others have had unsuccessful results with dr Tim’s. From what I understand, dr Tim’s and MB7 are 2 different strains of beneficial bacteria and for some reason dr Tim’s needs to be supplemented with other bacteria to push through or accelerate cycling. There’s a ton of different ways to approach this hobby. I just couldn’t wrap my mind around how a device helped populate bacteria. It’s clear to
me now that it’s to monitor the process. Still, I say it’s an overpriced temp monitor once the cycle is done.

Actually the opposite on bottle bac. It’s so effective you just don’t need more.

 

[Rick's Reviews]

I have a 90 gal display (120g total) that's been cycling for about 8 weeks. I did a Dr. Tims fishless cycle with ammonia chloride pretty much verbatim from their guide and after three weeks or so things were looking good. Ammonia and nitrite were good and I could dose ammonia and have it back down to zero in a day or so. I did not add fish as we were still trying to decide on what to get and from where. So in the mean time I dosed phyto, added pods and continued to feed the tank a small bit a couple of times per week while feeding my other fish. For several weeks everything looked great. The water continued to check out fine (testing about once per week), I had lots of free swimming pods and I thought I was good.

About a week ago I had what I assume was a bacteria bloom. The water looked smokey. I added some activated carbon (per a few threads I found here) in the sump and after a day or so it cleared. This week we were ready to move some fish over from another tank. I decided to dose ammonia one more time, just to confirm all was well. I dosed to about 2 ppm and now, three days later, it's still basically unchanged. Now I'm starting to think I screwed up somewhere, maybe with the carbon?

Any ideas what I did wrong and what I can do to get things back in order? Should I continue to just wait?

Followings

 

[Rick's Reviews]

I have a 90 gal display (120g total) that's been cycling for about 8 weeks. I did a Dr. Tims fishless cycle with ammonia chloride pretty much verbatim from their guide and after three weeks or so things were looking good. Ammonia and nitrite were good and I could dose ammonia and have it back down to zero in a day or so. I did not add fish as we were still trying to decide on what to get and from where. So in the mean time I dosed phyto, added pods and continued to feed the tank a small bit a couple of times per week while feeding my other fish. For several weeks everything looked great. The water continued to check out fine (testing about once per week), I had lots of free swimming pods and I thought I was good.

About a week ago I had what I assume was a bacteria bloom. The water looked smokey. I added some activated carbon (per a few threads I found here) in the sump and after a day or so it cleared. This week we were ready to move some fish over from another tank. I decided to dose ammonia one more time, just to confirm all was well. I dosed to about 2 ppm and now, three days later, it's still basically unchanged. Now I'm starting to think I screwed up somewhere, maybe with the carbon?

Any ideas what I did wrong and what I can do to get things back in order? Should I continue to just wait?

It will happen, forgetting all the previous posts about chemistry sets, you may consider your aquarium cycled but honestly it will not be using this quick method, it may allow fish/ corals to survive but it will be short lived and you will experience alot of problems in due course, feel free to ask questions but please ask and learn before taking on this lifestyle

 

[bushdoc]

I don’t understand why a $200+ piece of equipment that monitors only temp ph and ammonia is recommended as a necessity when in reality those parameters are rarely tested after the cycle and can be tested with simple cheap test kits/strips. After my cycle, ammonia was never/rarely tested and ph is seldomly tested (for me). What am I missing?

Also, I recently seeded a reactor with MB7 (along with many others) and it went fantastic.

Perhaps brandon429 is Seneye aficionado?
62% of his posts are advocating that monitor.
I am a Merlot aficionado.

 

[jrill]

We, as hobbyists, accept any stated param as fact and immediately move to limiting the most adapted organisms in our tanks to fit the stated param condition

Literally I could make a ghost profile, begin by saying my nineteen week cycle can't move past 1ppm and it'll be immediately supported as true.

There are no eight week delayed cycles

None

Taricha

Broken cycle article will be the most important article this decade pls rush it


Guess how I know this isn't a seneye thread written by the op

T

You need seneye data
I know you'll use the hanna but for the only cycling study in recent memory why not extra mile it, hit it out of the park, and try and break or stall seneye cycles among real rocks in a full nano display?

Didn't BRS show seneye to be unreliable for ammonia cycling?

 

[brandon429]

can you post a full tank picture pls of your setup, it will have details and clues indicating the cycle was never broken


I can understand if they meant we couldn’t tune and calibrate a new seneye in a cycling tank due to the really high levels of ammonia at the start, but a tuned seneye calibrated off a running tank will work fine to show ammonia control when moved over to a cycling tank, we have several examples of the device working great

 

[JCATL]

can you post a full tank picture pls of your setup, it will have details and clues indicating the cycle was never broken

tank pic attached. I’ve changed over about 90% of the water over the last 4-5 days and ammonia is within spec again.

There’s still a ton of life in there as well. If I kill the flow it’s swarming with pods. If they survived I’d assume bacteria would as well?

 

[brandon429]

100% yes that’s ready to carry life easily. very nice scape!

we simply focus on fish disease preps. We simply don’t run tests for ammonia or nitrite at this stage, because ammonia control cannot be undone once set in. This is a classic false stall. take no action whatsoever for cycling, focus on fish disease preps.

 

[brandon429]

How did pods get in that’s critical in our tracing of your cycle


did you add live rocks or add them via bag o pods

if those rocks were wet when added, that’s an entirely different type of cycle called a skip cycle. It’s important that we differentiate types of cycles during the assessment phase. Any form of live rock transfer into a tank is the most solid form of cycling on the planet.

 

[JCATL]

How did pods get in that’s critical in our tracing of your cycle


did you add live rocks or add them via bag o pods

if those rocks were wet when added, that’s an entirely different type of cycle called a skip cycle. It’s important that we differentiate types of cycles during the assessment phase. Any form of live rock transfer into a tank is the most solid form of cycling on the planet.

Rocks were all dry. Pods/phyto were added around week four and coincided with beginning to run the lights on a normal, though reduced power, schedule.

Also, keep in mind that my use of the word Broken to describe my cycle is probably not what you more experienced reefers would use in my situation. It was the best word that came to mind when I wasn't seeing an ammonia drop after 1-4 days and not knowing more than I do.

After reading the discussion here, I've come to understand that there's obviously a concept of somehow killing the BB that's in the tank and having to start over, IE, broken cycle. Is that correct?

While the idea of having to start over certainly came into my mind, I didn't think it was that far because of the aforementioned pods that appeared to be thriving despite the high ammonia.

Thanks again!

 

[brandon429]

Yes. The hobby has been trained to follow anything a non digital test kit says without question. This includes failure to set up initial cycle, as well as the death of bacteria you mentioned

I never, ever believe either condition happens in a home reef setting.

New science, and digital ammonia test kits, show us with new revelation that water bacteria don’t fail to set up shop in water after a certain number of days and feed. Nobody knows the exact wait times needed. it’s still being studied

A common cycling chart I would guess is about fifty years old now. the ammonia line drops at day ten, and never rises up. There’s nothing in books for human wastewater management showing how a bacterial processing system dies once it’s set up and established, ONLY the reef hobby is trained to believe this. I spent a good while on site studying common aerobic and a few pathogenic species that inhabit beef slaughterhouses, we sampled the bacteria every morning at 4 am before production began, we’d plate and incubate each swab and not one single surface of any damp zone was free of myriad bacteria. Only the reef hobby claims sterility sets in via starving, too much common cycling ammonia etc.

slowly over the next five years the hobby will begin transitioning to all digital meters, and we will have throngs of new data patterns to inspect vs the few we have now, that I base my rants off of he he

*chemists here help us understand that we may not always be dealing in misreading ammonia non digital kits; we are often times reading the marine test kits as nh4, the freshwater conversion, whereas the kits also show how to estimate the nh3 levels which are for marine settings. Old rules tell us ammonia must be zero to be safe; new rules and the limited digital measurements we have (see any nh4 reading from Hanna digital ammonia tester, NONE are zero in a reef tank, none, not any) are starting to show new expectations for a running reef tank. Never zero ammonia. How high means a cycle is broken? Under debate, currently evolving.

 

[Subsea]

@brandon429

I have been dosing ammonia when required for more than 10 yrs with no digital instrumentation.

Even when system is nitrogen starved, Cynobacteria perform nitrogen fixation to produce ammonia.

Nitrogen fixation - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Nitrogen fixation is a chemical process by which molecular nitrogen (N
2), with a strong triple covalent bond, in the air is converted into ammonia (NH
3) or related nitrogenous compounds, typically in soil or aquatic systems

 

[brandon429]

Excellent. We always hyperfocus on bacteria but there are plants and monerans and other helpers all vying for free ammonia to metabolize

It will never be unused in a reef tank no more than a gold bar we leave on the sidewalk untended will be there after a few hours.