Dr Tims fishless cycle

[Enzodog]

Hello, I have set up a 29 biocube salt water tank. Started with dry rock and live sand. Two weeks in and used Dr Tims bacteria and ammonia. Question is on his video stated don’t add more ammonia til reads 0 and nitrites 0. Well ammonia is 0 but nitrites high, so do I add ammonia or not? Some Articles here say don’t worry about nitrites and system will finish in month anyways. Just trying to figure out if I should add more ammonia for bacteria. Only added twice so far and takes about 48 hrs to go to 0.thanks for answering, did read articles on site but most deal with live rock and I am staring from scratch.

 

[Brian Kennedy]

I used this.

Fishless Cycling | DrTim's Aquatics

Everything you need for successful Fishless Cycling DrTim’s Aquatics best-selling product, One & Only Live Nitrifying Bacteria is the ultimate nitrifying bacteria for use in fishless cycling. Now you can put an end to “New Tank Syndrome” forever. DrTim’s Aquatics offers complete, step-by-step...

www.drtimsaquatics.com

 

[brandon429]

Whether you re dose ammonia or not will not matter, once was enough.

 

[IslandLifeReef]

Hello, I have set up a 29 biocube salt water tank. Started with dry rock and live sand. Two weeks in and used Dr Tims bacteria and ammonia. Question is on his video stated don’t add more ammonia til reads 0 and nitrites 0. Well ammonia is 0 but nitrites high, so do I add ammonia or not? Some Articles here say don’t worry about nitrites and system will finish in month anyways. Just trying to figure out if I should add more ammonia for bacteria. Only added twice so far and takes about 48 hrs to go to 0.thanks for answering, did read articles on site but most deal with live rock and I am staring from scratch.

The best advice is to follow the directions of the method you are using. Don't become impatient. If Dr. Tims says to wait until both nitrite and ammonia are 0 before dosing again, then wait. Your bacteria will be fine.

 

[Enzodog]

Thanks, just what I was looking for

 

[lapin]

The more ammonia (food) you add the more bacteria will grow.
So the question becomes how much bacteria do you need?
The first bacteria to grow will be the ones that process ammonia into nitrite.
The second bacteria will be the ones that process nitrite into nitrate.
While you have nitrite your nitrate measurement will not be correct.
High nitrate and light will be food for alage.
This is why we change out 75% or more water after the cycle is done, before adding fish.

 

[brandon429]

Bio-spira works great

I just started a new tank a little over a week ago. I started with all dry rock and new sand. I added a bottle of Bio-Spira and put fish and coral the same day. Never saw any ammonia and fish and coral seem healthy.

www.reef2reef.com

That thread is handy to show that succession of bacteria has no real consequence in reefing, we can't stall or stop cycles with minor changes we make during cycles.

Nitrites don't stop us from processing ammonia, though that's been stated as a consequence lately. Similar sources also said tank water doesn't hold nitrifers, yet aquabiomics page mentions opposite findings. These basic disagreements mean there are more than one valid opinion source for how reef tank cycling works.

And when we can find consequence, failure to keep fish or initial bioload alive, we find the real boundaries of what cycling requires.

Today's fish-in cycling shatters the stated notions about consequence of bacterial succession in cycling, or not enough time or too much ammonia/nitrite
only control of ammonia matters.

His whole dry rock set began, with feed and huge fish and anemone, day 1. It ran for ~twelve days or so on a single jolt of bottle bac, the the painted on rock bac kicked in/filled out the rest. No succession of bac mattered.

 

[Thaxxx]

I would love to see what the differance in time to cycle a tank would be using one of the bottled products VS. just feeding something like shrimp to decay in the tank. Of course you would have to have the 2 tanks with idenical specifications, filtering etc.

 

[brandon429]

Agreed, that's something everyone speculates about including me but nobody has bothered to test. Four or five of the most basic questions about marine bacteria have not been measured or remarked upon, even by people who write cycling articles.

Article gold data: things that have not been measured regarding bacteria in reefing

So each day on every forum on the web there are questions about bacteria and what they require, don't require, tolerate and will not tolerate. And 99% of the answers are unmeasured, they're recirculated info for decades regarding marine cycle/filtration aerobes and they're not measured using...

www.reef2reef.com

 

[mfinn]

I would love to see what the differance in time to cycle a tank would be using one of the bottled products VS. just feeding something like shrimp to decay in the tank. Of course you would have to have the 2 tanks with idenical specifications, filtering etc.

I did the shrimp in the tank with dry rock once.
It took about 8-9 weeks.
Did the last 3 tanks I setup using Dr.Tims am. and bacteria. Took about 2-2-1/2 weeks.

 

[brandon429]

Hey that's neat to see above, where shrimp + setup/assembly contamination was your only nitrifiers source. Old threads show our guessing to be 90 days ish

That's still a bit modern though, the targeted feeding of ammonia via degredation

I'm keenly interested in revisiting bare skeleton dry start 80s before everyone was all moneran woke lol

How long does a fully unassisted setup..dry stuff and saltwater, have to sit in order to self-contaminate into a cycled system? they used to bring up tanks in the 80s never thinking they had to feed bac, bac were given better resourcing credit in those days

*what we do nowadays to speed up is legit, what caught my eye was the total shift into the notion of mankind controlling hydrated bacteria by what they feed or withhold...bac are seen as weak nowadays, no resource ability. We've lost sight of their basic abilities in the hobby.