here's the exact breakdown
your chart above reinforces updated cycling science because of the day ten initial ammonia drop. this means given your type of cycle, most all reef tanks will be done by day ten
regardless of what test kits vary in readouts person to person
that tenth day drop data plot is the umpire by which we gauge test kits, it's not that the test kit determined the actual cycling date. if your chart above showed any longer than that initial drop date, I would have known you were dealing with a misreading test kit or a misinterpretation of the reading on the kit.
it doesn't matter how low it actually dropped, that's your nondigital test kit limitation regarding how deep the trough is. on a seneye that drop would be substantial, and even faster than day ten.
it means we can predict the ready date of any reef tank cycle before the tank is even built: it'll be done by day ten wait if we've used any common approach for cycling.
what makes it updated cycling science vs old is that we know you don't have to redose ammonia after that initial drop, to create a second peak and trough, but if you do that's no big deal.
we know that every successive spike of ammonia inputs factors that make your subsequent nondigital test kits even less likely to reach zero, thereby false-stalling out hundreds of cycles beyond the simple first drop by day ten.
all you have to do is a change of water and you're cycled, past that date. and don't forget, implantation dates per brand of bottle bac have already been studied, it's here in Dr. Reef's bottle bac thread:
Call me old school, back in the day we placed a deli shrimp in a tank to kick start the cycle. When tank reached 1.5-2 ppm ammonia we pulled it out and waited sometimes weeks to months for bacteria to colonize and drop ammonia and nitrites down to 0 to make tank safe for livestock. With recent...
www.reef2reef.com
whats the max implantation time, for working strains there? 10 days or less
the recurring theme of every seneye cycle I've ever seen having it's initial drop by day ten, and every cycling chart I've ever seen in a book, plus your data, plus Dr Reef's massive data study, sure shows that day ten wait is a surefire bet and actually more reliable than using basic testing. the wait time is the reliable tell, not the stated levels.
why does any of this matter:
because when you know the exact date your cycle is done, you can focus on disease prevention planning / that's what's important. updated cycling science has a specific close date for a given type of cycle
old cycling science never mentions disease preps as a requirement for fish use and it can never be used to predict the cycle ready date for any reef tank. if they're using Red Sea kits, or even better API ammonia known to confuse the masses, then stated cycle dates are all over the place but not in reality.
all that came from your data chart above.
another aspect that separates new from old cycling science is what parameters to measure. we only care about ammonia now, not the other two params.
also
red sea kits measure in nh4 not nh3. to get nh3 out of a red sea ammonia kit you have to run the numbers through a little chart in the instructions that factors in pH levels, and having a tuned pH meter you can trust is mighty rare. api or red sea color tube guess kits can't measure pH well enough to use it in an nh3 equation estimate.
that's why counting the number of days a cycle has been running is the best way to cycle, it eliminates testing altogether. updated cycling science would have told you the cycle would be done by day ten, before you even built the tank. thousands of other people have already shown it. you get the same results, even if you didn't test.
