Cycling an Aquarium

[Katrina71]

Why do some fish stores say its ok to add fish right away to a new tank with live rock and certain ocean water after adding a bottle of bacteria? Is that because of the bacteria in a bottle?

Yes. They also want to make a sale or it's ignorance. It can work. Can. I suggest slow to avoid any headaches.

 

[Keen4]

Yes. They also want to make a sale or it's ignorance. It can work. Can. I suggest slow to avoid any headaches.

I agree- Even though someone tells you they've been doing this hobby for 50 years, consider the source. Store owner? Sales Person? I dont regret listening to this person because in that mistake I learned and am still learning so much. AND spent a ton! lol

 

[brandon429]

Team


i have these questions after watching that video, and it ties into what the fish store told you

1. how did all those reefs get cycled completely by the start date of the convention, nobody had time to wait they had to make it work...nobody was allowed to bring their tanks in 30 days early

2. are the tanks there doing well or in decline since they didn’t take 30 days to cycle, are their fish looking ok ? Corals too? Let’s say the convention agrees to run for sixty days vs one week, can the systems make it the extra time?

3. how do forum cycle rules line up with how they start reef convention reefs, are we in step, or totally opposite?

how is what your the lfs said different than those rooms of reefs?

its not that skipping a cycle altogether is wrong, bad, or can’t work for two hundred reef tanks all in the same room. It’s fish disease we are concerned about...we are years past cycling challenges and into planning for healthy long term fish care as the next horizon.

*verifying ammonia moves down from an initial dose to one or two ppm is how to verify, before proceeding. By not requiring hard zero, most test kits will work to indicate the presence of nitrifying bac. The mere movement down from the initial measure is proof of cycle completion whether by dosed bottle bac, or live rock transfer skip cycles. Fish-in cycling doesn’t harm fish with ammonia, or they’d die. There is no ‘irritation’ possible, free ammonia is so lethal it kills your fish if your system can’t handle it. ***at no point, in any cycle, does ammonia hover at an irritating level, all seneye cycle monitors show. As soon as it shows a motion down on API, it’s in the thousandths ppm in actuality, on a seneye***

I wanted to show the practical application of what the LFS said. Live rock doesn’t need any bottle bac, actually, it just moves to another tank (or convention) and it’s ready. Bottle bac is for dry rock cycling. the ripoff wasnt fish in cycling it was that they got you to invest in the same bacteria three times vs just one time (live rock had all we needed, but live sand was sold along with bottle bac)

 

[Brew12]

I just checked, and as soon as I put the second dropper in it turns dark red indicating over 5 nitrites. I don't know if I should ignore that and check nitrates (which I have been told doesn't measure properly if there are nitrites), or if I should just go ahead and add another dose of ammonia. My understanding is that nitrites don't matter, so I'm not sure I understand why I should not redose ammonia

Nitrites are not nearly as toxic to marine fish as they are to fresh water fish but they still matter. I wouldn't worry about lower levels of nitrites but I would never put a fish in a system with more than a few PPM and preferably less than 1 ppm.
You are establishing a biological filtration system and part of that system is converting nitrite to nitrate. If you let nitrites get too high it may slow the rate the needed bacteria reproduce. I know this happens with ammonia processing bacteria when ammonia gets too high so it is possible that it also happens with nitrite processing bacteria. That is the main reason I wouldn't add more ammonia at this point.

Why do some fish stores say its ok to add fish right away to a new tank with live rock and certain ocean water after adding a bottle of bacteria? Is that because of the bacteria in a bottle?

If you have good quality live rock you don't even need bacteria in a bottle. I keep some rock in my sump. I could take that rock out, put it in a 20g aquarium and add fish and coral that day. It would be just fine. The rocks are your filters so if they are working in one system there isn't any reason to think they would work differently because you change their locations.
Unfortunately, not all "live rock" is the same. If there aren't fish swimming in the bins with the live rock, or the live rock isn't plumbed into a system with fish in it, I wouldn't trust it. Putting rock in a bin with water doesn't make it "live".

 

[Keen4]

Nitrites are not nearly as toxic to marine fish as they are to fresh water fish but they still matter. I wouldn't worry about lower levels of nitrites but I would never put a fish in a system with more than a few PPM and preferably less than 1 ppm.
You are establishing a biological filtration system and part of that system is converting nitrite to nitrate. If you let nitrites get too high it may slow the rate the needed bacteria reproduce. I know this happens with ammonia processing bacteria when ammonia gets too high so it is possible that it also happens with nitrite processing bacteria. That is the main reason I wouldn't add more ammonia at this point.


If you have good quality live rock you don't even need bacteria in a bottle. I keep some rock in my sump. I could take that rock out, put it in a 20g aquarium and add fish and coral that day. It would be just fine. The rocks are your filters so if they are working in one system there isn't any reason to think they would work differently because you change their locations.
Unfortunately, not all "live rock" is the same. If there aren't fish swimming in the bins with the live rock, or the live rock isn't plumbed into a system with fish in it, I wouldn't trust it. Putting rock in a bin with water doesn't make it "live".

Wow now that makes perfect sense!!! But it will still cycle like a new tank won't it?

 

[Brew12]

Wow now that makes perfect sense!!! But it will still cycle like a new tank won't it?

It is almost impossible to prevent a tank from cycling. You could take dry rock, fresh mixed salt water, add an ammonia source (even a few pinches of dried food) and the tank will cycle. It just takes longer.

Will a tank with high nitrite still cycle? Within reason, yes. At some point I'm sure you could stall the cycle but you would probably need to add a pure nitrite source to do it and I have no idea what that number would be.
With ammonia I've seen where getting above 10ppm will slow a cycle. Above 5ppm and a less optimal strain of bacteria may do most of the growing. I consider between 1ppm and 2ppm ammonia a sweet spot. I haven't seen enough research done on the nitrite processing bacteria to know the impacts.

Nitrite processing bacteria tend to be the slowest to develop. With nitrites as your bottleneck, you may as well wait them out. Adding more ammonia at this point would be like adding more cars to a backed up highway just because the onramp is clear. It won't help anything and could only cause more problems imo.

 

[drknudsenx2]

It is almost impossible to prevent a tank from cycling. You could take dry rock, fresh mixed salt water, add an ammonia source (even a few pinches of dried food) and the tank will cycle. It just takes longer.

Will a tank with high nitrite still cycle? Within reason, yes. At some point I'm sure you could stall the cycle but you would probably need to add a pure nitrite source to do it and I have no idea what that number would be.
With ammonia I've seen where getting above 10ppm will slow a cycle. Above 5ppm and a less optimal strain of bacteria may do most of the growing. I consider between 1ppm and 2ppm ammonia a sweet spot. I haven't seen enough research done on the nitrite processing bacteria to know the impacts.

Nitrite processing bacteria tend to be the slowest to develop. With nitrites as your bottleneck, you may as well wait them out. Adding more ammonia at this point would be like adding more cars to a backed up highway just because the onramp is clear. It won't help anything and could only cause more problems imo.

These have been great explanations. Iwill just wait it out! Thanks a ton.

 

[drknudsenx2]

2 weeks later and I still have not seen a decrease in nitrites- still reading over 5 mg/L.
is this accurate, or could my Sera test be faulty?

 

[Brew12]

2 weeks later and I still have not seen a decrease in nitrites- still reading over 5 mg/L.
is this accurate, or could my Sera test be faulty?

It's possible to still be that high, especially if you had a very large ammonia source. I'm not familiar with that nitrite test so no opinion on if it could be bad.

 

[WvAquatics]

Ok I think this is a place to post this question rather than a new thread so here goes.

I am about to start filling my 120g. It will take a week to fill with work and mixing salt before adding it to the aquarium. At that point I will be turning on sump and pumps and heaters. I have 90lbs of dry rock in the tank and sump. I have ammonia that I can add to start cycle. So that I have under control.

I plan to add 10-20 lbs of live kp rock. What will happen if I add rock to the tank that has ammonia. Will it kill everything from live rock?

Then I plan to qt my first fish how do I hold the cycle with live rock? Do u dose low ammonia to feed bacteria?

 

[Brew12]

Ok I think this is a place to post this question rather than a new thread so here goes.

I am about to start filling my 120g. It will take a week to fill with work and mixing salt before adding it to the aquarium. At that point I will be turning on sump and pumps and heaters. I have 90lbs of dry rock in the tank and sump. I have ammonia that I can add to start cycle. So that I have under control.

I plan to add 10-20 lbs of live kp rock. What will happen if I add rock to the tank that has ammonia. Will it kill everything from live rock?

Then I plan to qt my first fish how do I hold the cycle with live rock? Do u dose low ammonia to feed bacteria?

I wouldn't add any live rock unless your ammonia was under 2ppm, and preferably under 1ppm. If you are sure that the live rock is actually good I wouldn't bother adding any ammonia. 10 pounds of live rock will support lightly feeding a few smaller fish very safely.

 

[WvAquatics]

I wouldn't add any live rock unless your ammonia was under 2ppm, and preferably under 1ppm. If you are sure that the live rock is actually good I wouldn't bother adding any ammonia. 10 pounds of live rock will support lightly feeding a few smaller fish very safely.

And then how to you keep bacteria alive while fish are in qt for 4 weeks?

 

[brandon429]

By keeping them wet. Bac have been self feeding long before us, aquarists invented the notion of starving wet bac

bottle bac salesmen invented the notion of a stalled cycle, buy more bac.


within 20 days of associated contact with kp rock in shared tank water, all dry surfaces will pass their own cycle testing alone

no bottle bac no ammonia needed here. Ammonia to any degree burns live rock animals we pay top dollar for, I agree ~1 ppm is safe but zero ppm is ideal, we don’t burn real live rock with ammonia bc bac don’t need us for anything but water. Since this is the web lol a pinch of food will suffice, there’s no way an aquarist will get any rest with the notion of starved bac at stake


kp rock/any live rock has inherent, internal waste and detritus stores built up/ organics which would allow unlimited fallow phasing alone. Combined with constant daily feed input via natural contamination sources we r set

 

[WvAquatics]

Thank you @Brew12 and @brandon429 . That's what I was puzzled about. So either cycle dry rock or use live rock and just let it sit with maybe a few ghost feedings while fish in qt

 

[Brew12]

Thank you @Brew12 and @brandon429 . That's what I was puzzled about. So either cycle dry rock or use live rock and just let it sit with maybe a few ghost feedings while fish in qt

I wouldn't even bother with the ghost feedings. I don't see a reason for it if you have 10+ pounds of good quality live rock. If you aren't sure about the quality of the live rock, it may be worth adding a little ammonia to give it a test. Otherwise, just keep it wet to make sure nothing else that is alive on it dies off and causes issues. Anything else is just making a mess imo.

 

[brandon429]

agreed a small confirmation test wont hurt. there is a subsection of reefing where the practitioners actually dose AChloride into full running sps reefs

blasterman told me about this about ten yrs ago I didnt believe him/googled y its true/amazing. makes sense if not at toxic levels that burn but just levels that are converted like any other bioload waste in the system. turns into fine feed for the system rather quickly as a supplement, we wouldnt want the consistent 1-2 ppm sustained levels for cycling though if we've paid top dollar for rocks submerged.

 

[Brew12]

agreed a small confirmation test wont hurt. there is a subsection of reefing where the practitioners actually dose AChloride into full running sps reefs

blasterman told me about this about ten yrs ago I didnt believe him/googled y its true/amazing. makes sense if not at toxic levels that burn but just levels that are converted like any other bioload waste in the system. turns into fine feed for the system rather quickly as a supplement, we wouldnt want the consistent 1-2 ppm sustained levels for cycling though if we've paid top dollar for rocks submerged.

If I didn't have an oxidator adding H2O2 I would consider dosing bleach into my system at low levels to help break down organics faster. I don't see a problem with that as long as you monitor ORP.

 

[brandon429]

yes agreed. once a time too I didnt believe that was possible/then a bunch of people fed up with dinos created yet another subsection where they do that, and win. they dose it under toxicity levels and burn the hound out of the offenders, corals tolerate what they tolerate. it really has been done alot though it blows my mind still

 

[Brew12]

yes agreed. once a time too I didnt believe that was possible/then a bunch of people fed up with dinos created yet another subsection where they do that, and win. they dose it under toxicity levels and burn the hound out of the offenders, corals tolerate what they tolerate. it really has been done alot though it blows my mind still

I don't think it burns the dino's. The higher ORP from the oxidizers in bleach (or H2O2) breaks down organic waste faster, making it easier to remove, and removes a food source for the dino's. Corals should benefit from the cleaner water. It's a win win.

 

[ifunk]

Hi everyone,
I began cycling a 130 gallon tank with Caribsea Liferock on March 30 and was wondering if these parameters made sense... I had expected nitrate to go higher. I've never done a water change on this tank and only have filter floss and biofiltration going.
I've been dosing bacteria since day 1. (Dr. Tims One and Only, Aquavitro Seed, and MicroBacter7... not all at once)
I'm using Red Sea Marine Care test kit.
Any insight? Thanks!