Cycling today versus 43 yers ago?

[Mark Novack]

Hello,
Today, we have live rock, bacterial mixes, and we use that to start our tank cycling. 43 years ago, when I had my first tank, I added water tap water, conditioner, salted it, decorated it and let it sit for 6-8 weeks and it was cycled and ready for a fish. Two weeks later I filled it to capacity with three more fish. It had an undergravel filter and a hang on back filter floss/carbon box. It had a beautiful head of bleached acropora and two North Carolina river bed rocks that resembled the South Korean Southern coastal rock formations. I bleached the river rocks for 24 hours in pure Chlorox and rinsed those non-porous rivers rocks all summer long, changing the water in the bucket everyday. I was 13 and I understood rinsing thoroughly the way I did it.

Granted, with coral reef systems we need a more varied bacterial/algae foundation, but how did spontaneous, self activating cycling work with only time and no additives? Where did those little nitrosomas and nitrobacters come from?

Thanks,
Mark

 

[stephj03]

Gut microbiome of the fish you added.

 

[Grumblez]

Some nitryfing bacteria present is freshwater can survive in saltwater that's one potential source.

 

[Mark Novack]

Gut bacteria no. The tank cycled before the fish. Water supply? Nitrosamonas and nitrobacter are two principle bacteria in water treatment plants but whether or not they inhabit the water supply and pass through the chlorination phase is questionable. Using distilled or RODI water won't change things either. It will cycle regardless. The mystery remains.

 

[damsels are not mean]

Nitrifying bacteria are all in the air, the ground, parts of your house probably too. That's why. It's like mold spores. All they need is somewhere to land.

 

[damsels are not mean]

Although you'd think the saltwater species would have trouble being omnipresent in the same way.

 

[Mark Novack]

There is no remarkable difference between salt and fresh water nitrifyers. The marine nitrobacters will double their populations much faster in low salinity.

 

[monkeyCmonkeyDo]

Do you get amnoina with the bottle products?
D

 

[bruno3047]

Some nitryfing bacteria present is freshwater can survive in saltwater that's one potential source.

This is true. In my present tank I soaked my dry rock for about three months in a tub filled with tapwater. Put the rocks into the tank and ran all my filters for a few weeks with tap water. Drained the freshwater, and added salt water along with Dr. Tim’s ammonia to .2 PPM, according to instructions. Next day ammonia was at zero. Repeated for three consecutive days with the same result. Somehow, nitrifying bacteria had colonized my dry rock and apparently, the tapwater didn’t totally kill them, and neither did the salt water.

 

[bruno3047]

My first tank was in 1979. A 29 gallon saltwater with an under gravel filter. Tried-and-true method for cycling at that time was to put a few damsels into the tank, and feed them. Unfortunately, you would have to watch them suffer through the cycle. I distinctly remember my first sacrificial fish were three tiny domino damsels. Only two made it. I felt terrible during that whole process. That was the one and only time I used sacrificial damsels to cycle. From then on I just dumped a load of fish food into the tank and waited. Until I discovered Dr. Tim’s ammonia.

 

[bruno3047]

.

 

[bruno3047]

Test.

 

[Hot2na]

1975- 29 gal tank...nektonics UGF , silent giant air pump on each airlift for max output.. Go to local canal, catch 100 killies. put in tank to "supercycle" it...after a few dead killies and some bad smell..remove all killies and treat with copper to kill any parasites that may have come in on the killies ...Think this sounds ridiculous ? Major LFS in the area did this on all tanks in their store and their tanks were thriving....1970's , what can I say ?

 

[bruno3047]

1975- 29 gal tank...nektonics UGF , silent giant air pump on each airlift for max output.. Go to local canal, catch 100 killies. put in tank to "supercycle" it...after a few dead killies and some bad smell..remove all killies and treat with copper to kill any parasites that may have come in on the killies ...Think this sounds ridiculous ? Major LFS in the area did this on all tanks in their store and their tanks were thriving....1970's , what can I say ?

Wait. Don’t tell me. Then you took the killies down to the local pond with your spinning rod and caught a bunch of largemouth bass. That’s what my brother and I used to do.

 

[Hot2na]

Wait. Don’t tell me. Then you took the killies down to the local pond with your spinning rod and caught a bunch of largemouth bass. That’s what my brother and I used to do.

they were saltwater killies , not minnows, as we call bait fish around here..

 

[bruno3047]

My brother and I used to catch killies in a killie net down at the creek/inlet under the Bayonne Bridge when high tide would bring water in. The inlet would then be full of them. We would take those killies to the pond and use them for bait to catch bass. Really wasn’t any other bait fish around in Staten Island. Definitely no minnows. Someone told me that the killies were actually brackish water fish because the creek was a runoff creek from rainwater that would get mixed with the salt water at high tide. At low tide, the killies would congregate at the mouth of the creek where the water was brackish and then come inland at high tide to feed on mosquito larva and such. We used bread for bait in the killie nets.

 

[Mark Novack]

A little bit of reading and yes, it turns out that these are everywhere in minute quantities. Live or live dormant, once in a more or less stable environment for 18 hours (wet), they reproduce. The deepest and dryest reading about this subject was from waste water treatment articles and not marine biology. There is a tremendous amount of info.

I have seen tanks cycled with mollies. Salt, brackish, fresh, they love it all as long as its nice and hard. They love the rocks that come out of the local tap.