How long does ATM Colony take to work?

[BNanch86]

Hi, newbie here ....

Added two platinum clowns to my fluval evo 13.5 on Saturday along with the recommended dose of ATM Colony. I left the ATM colony to settle 30 mins whilst I was acclimated the fish.

I’ve tested ammonia, nitrite and nitrate everyday using the salifert test kits. My ammonia test has registered 0.25 everyday with no trace of nitrite or nitrate. It’s now Tuesday and that’s not changed ... is this the normal process?

Cheers
Ben

 

[brandon429]

yes

fish in cycle complete. even if your tester said 7 ppm, which they commonly do. you'd still be ok since the fish lived past 48 hours.

 

[brandon429]

the way you know your ammonia was never out of control, independent from the test kit, is that the fish behaved normally the entire time. they would dart about and die were it not fully controlled, ergo atm works/emerges from dormancy pretty darn fast.

so does nitrospira

so does fritz, its all very good nowadays. fish disease prevention is the new risk of fish-in cycling, controlling ammonia is so 2007. people make a huge deal out of the ammonia burn part, but that's not occurring / what is occurring is tiny little white spots about 90% of the time and then some death of fish.

 

[BNanch86]

So the tank has cycled?

 

[brandon429]

only in this way: its likely a bunch of the work is being done in suspension, floating around due to being dosed

but

Dr. Reef's bottle bac thread tests nearly all brands to be ready by day ten./ meaning on day 10 you can do a full water change and refill, and the bac are now stuck to surfaces and that's truly cycled.
you dont have to do that change, but it can endure one and that's the updated definition of being cycled/no degree of cleaning can undo.

either way you are getting the same benefits of being cycled though. able to carry fish bioload and skip the normal wait times. its a legit aspect of reefing and ten thousand people do this a month, disease risk is the true test. see the fish disease forum; its amazing how reefing is not like freshwater fish keeping where the strongest specimens from the lfs survive just fine brought home/we're opposite. they'll die.

 

[BNanch86]

So roughly 10 days?

 

[brandon429]

yep for sure. here's some of the ways we know the deposition timeframes without having to consult api tests

-Dr Reef has a 90 page thread comparing ten brands of bottle bac, this one may be in there not sure. the average longest time taken was 10 days. most pass this 100% water change proofing in 3-5 total submersion time after adding the bac and they wake up, emerge, expand, multiply or whatever they do. thats the average. Yours is approaching that with both bioload in place that would be totally dead if the tank lacked bacteria, and the bottle alone is known to plate most of them in 3-5 days. fish presence = hyperdrive so in ten days or less average your tank is cycled to the degree that any water changes won't uncycle it.

you can't have bought bad bottle bac, or the fish would be dead or showing clear signs of doom exactly like any animal enduring kidney loss will show. within 48 hours

that they're alive proofs your bottle bac as active, we wouldnt need testing to confirm any aspect of your cycle. the known deposition dates are a matter of prior tests done in work threads, now the patterns are easy to spot in other tanks.

Your tank matures best after the 6 month mark when ideal food webs are budding


but that runs independent to nh3 control which is what matters in cycling

 

[brandon429]

the right way to do fish-in cycles is a little opposite, its verifying with dosed ammonia first that the bottle bac are active, then you can add fish quickly. this verification process only takes 24 hours/overnite to see if ammonia can be reduced once dosed to a suspected skip cycle tank (due to adding bottle bac)

what we see in all forum posts however is fish + bottle bac and no need to pre-verify to the degree I cannot recall a single fail in about eight straight years now lol. The bottle bac people have it down pat.

 

[BNanch86]

Thanks for this ...

I’m just a little concerned I’ve yet to see any nitrite or nitrate as of yet. Just ammonia.

Wait it out I guess.

 

[brandon429]

its that those params arent needing to be detected. these readers are approximations only

100% biological fact all three are produced, whether we can read them ranges tester to tester.

for example
if you had a $300 seneye meter you'd see ammonia in the hundredths at worst ppm, likely thousandths owing to the behavior of your fish after this many days. we know what the upper nh3 levels are in your tank, the absolute maximums, since your fish never hovered near death. you never got above hundredths ppm and no non seneye tester is going to read that correctly, especially if its been driven down to .00x thousandths ppm which bottle bac can do, per seneye threads.

by rule these fish and their associated feed is pumping raw ammonia into the water, and by rule of living fish its being converted into all three by bacteria added. you don't want levels high enough to verify, that could kill your fish. it all runs smoothly due to bacteria originally dosed into suspension, acting like substrate bacteria. the locus of filtration shifts to the surfaces by day ten across 90% of brands.

simply waiting the required number of days will self cycle your entire reef by its current arrangement alone, even if you never ran tests again for ammonia and nitrite. people still run nitrate tests after cycling to control coral color and algae phasing.

what ammonia and nitrite is doing here is fully predictable. the nitrite actually doesnt factor, only nh3.

 

[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

a case study. instant start, cycled by suspension then by surface transition and now a maturing reef. he put the most animals in on day one ive ever seen. yours was far less risky, a couple fish nbd.

 

[BNanch86]

Thanks for that.

It was a good read. Thank you for your help