How to unstick any seemingly stuck cycle

[FindingNem0]

And I found it most interesting reading from Randy’s posts how freshwater vs saltwater are opposite cycling goals: nitrite is the important one for freshwater vs ammonia

That always fascinated me, thanks for posting

So I recently just got back into reefing, bought a waterbox 20 aio, running barebottom with bio media and rockscape. Currently day9 dosed Dr tims one and only. Once that's done cycling, I am thinking about dosing eco balance straight away. What you reckon?

 

[brandon429]

This is a testless cycling thread, we use timeframes to cycle not test kits for reasons stated in post #1
(So that we avoid all false stalls and so we can assign a predetermined completion date for all cycles vs an open- ended wait)

Based on the jobs here i recommend to not add nor buy eco balance its not needed. If you used Dr Tims nine days ago your cycle is fine and done, we wait ten days here for all these jobs. Do a water change, then you can begin reefing. Add one capful of bacteria back to the clean water then never look back on cycling again, it'll be done


Your main challenge isn't the cycle it's disease imports that come in on the first fish added without quarantine

 

[brandon429]

Can u post a pic of your setup we like to see pics to assess surface area in place during this wait time

besides the Dr Tims, what did you put in as feed? the directions state to input some feed for the bac/what was that part

 

[FindingNem0]

Can u post a pic of your setup we like to see pics to assess surface area in place during this wait time

besides the Dr Tims, what did you put in as feed? the directions state to input some feed for the bac/what was that part

I have feed the bac, Dr tims ammonia. 50 drops on first day and 3rd day another 50 drops. Slightly under the recommended dosage.

 

[brandon429]

very nice, thats plenty of surface area. whatever you add will live if the acclimation is careful/no big salinity shifts but new additions also bring in disease at a rapid pace nowadays, so be sure and check out the disease forum on the site for fallow/quarantine prep options.

 

[FindingNem0]

very nice, thats plenty of surface area. whatever you add will live if the acclimation is careful/no big salinity shifts but new additions also bring in disease at a rapid pace nowadays, so be sure and check out the disease forum on the site for fallow/quarantine prep options.

So you reckon I should setup a QT now or in the near future?

 

[brandon429]

Here's a way to not have to set one up at all, yet still have a disease plan in place

Has anyone done coral/inverts only and no fish at first?

Fish seem to be the main cause of disruption in a display tank, given the current circumstances in the hobby with pests (ich, velvet, parasites, etc.). I have been in this hobby for 18 years, and the amount of pests that are showing up lately is much more (could also be the fact that we have...

www.reef2reef.com

(point of the thread: stocking all fish last, after complete build of the coral reef part instead of adding fish as first animals, has advantages. You can fallow the entire setup for three months before adding fish, and with pre-quarantined fish from places like Dr. Reefs fish you can then add them in. The discipline it takes to add fish last is the point of that thread)

Pick any method and run the one u like. It's true doing qt at home is wisest because you control the variables vs having to trust someone else.


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Update to this thread 6/27/24



Iannerelli's reef was fully worked below via chat btw. thank you so much for posting.

logic flow for the particular tank below: he's on day four of using Fritz turbo which is a skip cycle bac mix, among the tops in reefing options along with biospira brand. Dr. Reef uses fritz turbo without testing to manage tens of thousands of fish in his giant facility, this is a few starting reef animals and no particular test for fritz ability at all. easy cycle done at the time of posting.

 

[iannarelli]

Brandon,

Sorry for the long post, but here goes:

I read through the first 20 pages of this thread, so I think I have a good idea of what you'll say, but wanted to add my data points here and get your thoughts after starting a thread about my own cycle, and then posting in the "Cycling an Aquarium" thread and then stumbling across this post.

Here are the pertinent details:
60 gallon cube, Trigger 20C sump
CaribSea South Seas Dry Rock, ~60 lbs
CaribSea Ocean Direct Sand, 20 lbs
CaribSea Arag Alive Special Grade Sand, 20 lbs
Maxspect Nano-Tech Bio-Spheres, 2.2 lbs (in sump)

Water temp is 79.0°F and salinity is 1.0261, mixed with NYOS salt.

I dosed Dr. Tim's ammonium chloride following the instructions on the bottle n Monday (6/10) night and tested an hour later and ammonia was off the charts at 8ppm (according to API). After panicking and reading a bunch of online threads, I decided to bite the bullet and add my 4oz bottle of Frytz Turbo Start 900.

The next morning (6/11), ammonia was down to 2 ppm. Over on my own cycle thread, I was given the advice to check for the presence of nitrite or nitrate as evidence the bacteria are processing the ammonia. I was able to get an API Nitrite kit next day through Amazon and already had a Hanna HR Nitrate checker, so on 6/12 I tested for everything again.

Ammonia may have been somewhere between 1 and 2 ppm. I say "may" because obviously this is just a subjective interpretation of extremely similar hues of green. Regardless, and both nitrite (API) and nitrate (Hanna and API) were 0 ppm.

Thursday (6/13), I got the same results, 1-2 ppm ammonia, 0 ppm nitrite, 0 ppm nitrate.

Based on my understanding of the data points in this thread, ammonia control will happen in 10 days with all bottled bacteria except perhaps Brighwell. And with Frytz Turbo it's closer to two days. So in theory, I should be cycled... but my question becomes where did the nitrite and nitrate go?

I saw a drastic drop in ammonia the first night, 8 ppm to 2 ppm (assuming the 8 ppm wasn't a bad result), I've perhaps witnessed a further drop in ammonia but like I said, the greens all sort of blend together when you're trying to track a smaller change that's likely less than the test kit's margin of error/tolerances. So let's conditionally say I've met one condition of being cycled.

I'm clearly past two days. And if I wait until Saturday to do anything, I would be at 5 days, and if I want until 6/20, I'd be at 10 days. So depending on how cavalier I want to be, I could say I've met another condition (time) or will very soon.

So theoretically, I should be able to go to my LFS, buy a paid of clowns, acclimate them, and come back here 24 hours later and post a picture of happy clownfish (I was cycled) or upside down clownfish (I was not cycled), thought I'd likely intervene if things looked like they were going south. My other option would be to add some more ammonium chloride to create a detectable (visually discernible) increase in ammonia, and then look for a reduction, 24 hours later. Presumably at that point there *should* be some nitrites and/or nitrates. I guess a third option is grab some fish and some more bacteria and sleep soundly at night; however, I understand the whole point of this thread is to prevent folks from superfluous purchases... (which is why I am here and not at the store buying more Turbo Start.... yet).

What gives me pause proceeding with the first option is the non-zero chance I got a dead bottle of bacteria, and not wanting to harm a living creature. It was shipped well (insulated with ice pack), and while it did arrive while I was out of town it stayed in a room temp hallway for only two days and then immediately went into my refrigerated (which all my research points to not being an issue), and it looked and smelled like Frytz and other anecdotal accounts said it would.

I did some additional ammonia testing this morning, along with some controls (didn't bother with Nitrite or Nitrate:

A, Tap Water: ~0 ppm
B, Fresh RODI Water: ~0 ppm
C, Fresh Saltwater 0 - 0.25 ppm
D, Tank Water 1: 1 ppm
E, Tank Water 2: 1 ppm

I seemingly have some evidence of the bacteria being alive: 8 ppm ammonia (if real) to 2 ppm... but also have some contradictory data with the 0 ppm nitrites and nitrates. So what would your advice be?