How to unstick any seemingly stuck cycle

[Cricketnut13]

My Digital test results from 4/9.

I am already at ~8 weeks of a Dr Tims cycle (with a double dose due to “fear” of stall 2 weeks ago).

Constant reading of ~2ppm ammonia since day 6..

Thoughts?? - 480L system so 100% water change means nearly a whole bag of salt.

 

[brandon429]

Moving from private message troubleshooting to here/live

points we have discussed so far:

-that the ammonia above only goes to tenths level max low range, that makes the test like API not like seneye which reads to hundredths and thousandths and indicates true unique measure among ammonia test kits. Still it’s nice to have a new ammonia kit to see for once in the thread ***we have to apply TAN factoring to any stated read from this meter so after TAN conversion it reads .2 which now puts it in range of every Red Sea post on our thread. We know that level above isnt nh3 report or the meter would go out further than tenths ppm. It’s an nh4 report and not very accurate it seems, based on patterns from our thread.



-that the meter hasn’t left 2.0 is suspect on the meter not the cycle - this is a standard Dr. Tims cycle fed three times with ammonium chloride (we would have only fed once, packing in so much ammonia a common kit can’t discern the metabolites from the free form is a problem that using old cycling approaches creates, one feed is enough and is practical for non seneye kits to work with)


**not one time ever has a cycle tracked on seneye failed to lower and stuck at a high mark like this, the test kit above is in full suspect for being inaccurate even if it’s a costly meter. This tank and it’s bacteria and feed and wait time matches every item ready reef we have collected.




- agreed no water change here it’s too costly we can solve for keeping the current water


- we don’t know if prime has been dosed here, tbd


- we are trying to find a working reef tank to run the tests on, it needs to say zero on a running reef as we know from seneye they run in the thousandths ppm not the tenths or hundredths. If it does say zero on a test display that doesn’t mean above is two ppm as we still aren’t dealing with seneye here and we don’t know if misread compounds like prime have been used, or if metabolites from large ammonia doses have messed up sensitivity. Just because the pic shows 2.0 does not mean we have the first outlier system in 20 pages, it means we still have twenty pages of non seneye testing to work against.


- @Hudsonfo your tank timing + bottle bac outcome on prior page is like this one here, and you ran seneye and it passed at this time interval, that will be a handy benchmark for this tank we are working

a pic to show surface area at work here

 

[JCCook07]

Two week update:

After a couple hermits and a chromis for a week with no issues, I went ahead and picked up a Wyoming white clownfish pair, couple more hermits and some turbo snails to get rid of the green algae starting to pop up all over my rocks.

The fish are awesome darting around the tank getting along with each other. I noticed one of the first crabs I had got wasn't moving and then his shell flipped over. It stayed like that for a day, my wife pulled him out and said the smell was horrible. First casualty. Got him out in time checked parameters, the tank is still doing very well. Water is super clear with 0 ammonia 0 nitrite and roughly 2ppm nitrate. The 3 remaining hermits are doing well, the snails absolutely are doing a number on the algae on the rocks. I don't think the rocks were that clean in the store when I got them.

Added a GSP coral today, just because they are hardy and I imagine it will cover the back wall of my tank with some color. I dipped the GSP in reef dip so its pretty ticked off at the moment. Everything is rocking along pretty well for a tank that I would have thought was in a stuck cycle!

 

[brandon429]

The water is so clear the tank looks empty that’s the payoff, the goal, the goods! Thank you for updates

 

[brandon429]

@Cricketnut13

wanted to add this: I predict 100% if you add fish they live, act and swim normally. It isnt possible to be uncycled at this interval, even if your bottle bac was dead. we have examples of feed only (like your ammonia dosing) but no bottle bac added, they cycle in one month. you're double

forego the test calibration headache is the recommend, you're set based on # of days underwater and that test kit above isn't your accepted ammonia reference, the clean happy fish feeding normally every day in the cycled tank are the proof. if you're determined to calibrate that kit we can, you can easily just move some rocks into a five gallon test bucket and we can calibrate proof them like Alex did on page one of our thread here.

That will show your surfaces ready if you want to do the modeling work for the cycle in a smaller setup, but, the main benefit of our thread is pattern and anyone meeting your arrangement criteria has been cycled and verified before here more than once, I say go for it. add life, it lives. a cuc will live because the water is clean, not poisoned. new corals added will open vs close up tight. I think the test kit is far off the mark for nh3, forgeo its use in cycling. benchmark it against calcium and alk tests to see if it lines up on those parameters.

here a specific work thread that governs your tank cycle. this is feed only, no bottle bac added took 1 month to cycle, not two, yours has had double prep time plus bottle bac that always passes fish-in cycle testing on seneye. Dr. Tim's is strong fast bacteria. this is how we gauge expected timing in tanks like yours.

Build Thread - My SPS Waterbox Peninsula Mini 15

Hi all. Long time member (I think I joined right around when R2R started or took off years ago) but got out of the hobby for about 6 years and now I am back! I don't see many build threads for the PM 15 (mostly the 25) so thought I'd share my journey here. This post will be a bit behind...

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a cycling chart for stuck 2.0 ammonia has never been written, they're all dropped by day ten.
I wanted you to see we aren't flippantly claiming every cycle in the world is done when its not, its that the sole determinant among four completed checkpoints can't be a non seneye kit, that's the heart of the problem not the cycle.
The ethical start date for your reef Cricket was a month ago

 

[NicolasToro]

Hi, everyone.

Im on day 11 of my new 65 gallons tank cycle.
Im a little confused with the readings im getting from my Salifert tests for ammonia, nitrite and nitrates.
On day one I seeded the tank with dr Tims one and only and added ammonium chloride as described in the instructions.
On day 2 added a Brightwell export biobrick seeded for 24 hours with microbacter7.
On day 3 repeated the ammonium chloride same on day 6.
Today is day 11 and been stuck in a 1.5 ammonia reading for 5 days.
i also added a small piece of life rock from my current nano that's been running for more than a year.



Any advice on what should I do next?
Thanks.

 

[brandon429]

Thanks for posting we can fix this easily. Can u post a pic of the tank we want to see how much of the playing field the skip cycle rock portion takes up in the scape


With ammonia adjusted as nh3 per kit instructions vs nh4 i bet it’s lower than the above stated levels, those are pre conversion nh4 numbers. We wouldn’t factor the nitrite and nitrate at all so we are already in progress fixing this cycle. 11 days is the consistent ready date we use on these types of cycles, most of them are fine after doing a big water change to export the mixed wastewater and what’s left behind is the working filter, the test kits mislead on status.


can you post a pic of your ammonia test, the actual vial and comparison card we can approximate the nh3 off that too.

 

[NicolasToro]

Thanks for posting we can fix this easily. Can u post a pic of the tank we want to see how much of the playing field the skip cycle rock portion takes up in the scape


re report the ammonia as nh3 per kit instructions i bet it’s lower than the above stated levels, those are pre conversion nh4 numbers. We wouldn’t factor the nitrite and nitrate at all so we are already in progress fixing this cycle. With nh3- ammonia updates we will be set, and the live rock portion was just icing on the cake. 11 days is the consistent ready date we use on these types of cycles.


can you post a pic of your ammonia test, the actual vial and comparison card we can approximate the nh3 off that too.

Hello Brandon, thanks for the reply.

Here are some pics of the display and sump.
All dry rock in the display and the Brightwell Brick with the small cycled rock in the sump.

Lights had been off the whole time and the skimmer is still braking in so overflowing and going a little crazy.

Also a pic of a NH3 test I just did.



Sorry for the upside down images, new to the forum and don't know how to fix it.

 

[brandon429]

that does not hurt at all, its perfect. the tank will absolutely run fine with bioload, change as much was as practical because we try to start cleaner than normal, but what you add will not die that's for sure.


you have added seeded bricks, that's helping. plus that system is high degree of rocks and sand, meeting the timeframe from a cycling chart for the ammonia control date.

That's a clean test kit shown above. after tan conversion its .15 ammonia vs 1.5 so that 10x drop even though the kit is still overreading.

***this isn't a digital ammonia kit any way its sliced. We have tracked several digital seneye cycles to day 11, in that much surface area not even using the live rock portion, yours is ready. If I had to guess your actual nh3 levels off seneye it would be high thousandths ppm...our thread exists showing all these cycles starting earlier than their test kits would allow solely because timing, and what seneye says on tanks in stark pattern, applies to your tank even if a non seneye test kit does not agree. at other times in these posts the aquarists have input things like Prime water conditioner without stating it; that will cause false positives on red sea and on api

you may not have used prime, but those reasons are among several reasons the tests don't read well when seneye is tested right on the same water sample. If you change any degree of water for new, to start as clean as possible, anything you add is going to swim and feed normal because the tank has been bottle bac cycled out to ten days.

what your test kits read after adding animals still won't matter, only seneye wouldn't mislead us and we dont need to buy one, we can predict the nh3 levels off your number of days underwater, known boosts, and degree of surface area and current.
add some life to the tank and keep us updated not with the ammonia reading, but the tank pics.

after a few days running the water will be clear, the fish acting normal, that's your proof and that final pic after a few days with fish or animals you had planned is right in line with how we proof ready tanks on prior pages, its about the ability to carry animals safely / not about getting zero on that red sea ammonia kit.

 

[brandon429]

the live rock added isn't a large degree of help considering all the other active surfaces/earned by the 2x types of bacteria added. that live rock is adding new bacteria into the mix though at a rapid rapid rate, too fast for your red sea to indicate the degree of change in place.

its helpful to know that at no time, not one single time, has anyone with a seneye on day 11 in a display reef with surface area like that reported any ammonia above hundredths ppm nh3 and that was on non tuned meters out of the box. after trimming, they all report thousandths ppm nh3 by this date. Both hundredths ppm nh3 and thousandths ppm nh3 are safe levels to proceed.

Conversely, knowing that, I've never seen a red sea indicate a cycle was ready by day ten, not a single one. our whole thread is cycles ready by page ten, and then they update days later with fish to prove it was ready, no fish died or even acted unhappy.

red sea loses the free ammonia indication battle when paired against seneye. its hard to believe their kits aren't that accurate, but consider all prior pages here/mostly red sea false reads.

in tightly controlled chemistry experiments that dont use open topped reef tanks with high surface area, red sea might be very controllable. We introduce variables here in display reefing that only seneye seems to report accurately tank to tank, without much variation at all.

 

[NicolasToro]

Glad to hear everything is going how it should, first time cycling a reef this way and don't want to hurt any animal. Specially because im transferring my livestock from my current setup.
Will do a WC tomorrow and start stocking slowly. After that ill post the progress.

Thank you for all this information.

 

[brandon429]

Agreed, do a partial transfer and we track that out 48 hours, any non cycled tank will go cloudy with the first fish added. Any tank cycled will have totally clear water and normal fish after two days.

its best not to do all at once, a small proof is best then we can merge the rest. When you do move the rest after the first few days we can move it over slowly and watch for clean clear water as you build up the new setup


Dr. Tims has never let us down on day eleven, heck most people add fish along with it on day one and seneye shows those tracking just fine as well, the zero-wait jobs

 

[mpatient]

@brandon429 - In the last 3 days I have started cycling my Waterbox Frag 165.5. I seeded it with 35lbs of 3 year old Carib Sea LifeRock from my current tank, 40lbs of CSLR that has been cycling in a Brute for about a month, and 40lbs of CSLR straight out of the box. I also added a large sponge to the new sump that that has been in my old sump for about 2 months. Topped off with a 8oz of Turbo900. I dosed yesterday with Dr. Tim's ammonia to 2ppm. Today I tested using Salifert. Ammonia is at zero and nitrites are high at 4.

During previous cycles, I can read the ammonia, then comes the nitrites, so kinda of not sure what to do next since I seemed to have gone straight to nitrite. Should I dose ammonia again or wait a few days and test again? I am in no rush, but just don't want to mess anything up by my actions or inactions. Thanks!

 

[brandon429]

Yours is even easier, thanks tons for this posting momentum for sure


thats a pure skip cycle reef you built, old cycling rules do not apply.

ALL old cycling rules, including the ones from Dr. Tim talks and videos, are designed around total dry rock cycling.

35 pounds of live rock from a cured system runs any bioload in reefing, the other rocks don’t matter if they’re live or not, moving wet rocks among tanks is this thread below because the bacteria do not die when we move tanks. No bottle bac was required here, and we don’t test for nitrite due to reasons listed on page one.

your ammonia readings need TAN conversion at minimum to be right, and they need to be seneye if we are to mind what they say. Non digital test kits usually always over read on live rock skip cycle setups, it’s where everyone’s doubt about API comes from: live rock systems usually run .25 on api due to this nearly constant over reporting and lack of TAN conversion in reported numbers (from post one, page one here)

100% sure you had zero wait time, yours was a wet rock skip cycle check out all these tanks like yours:

A thread tracking pure skip cycle instant reefs, no bottle bac

This is a testless cycling thread, we don't want ammonia testing here for any job if possible, because we are teaching reefers/readers that moving live rocks system to system does not restart the cycle: many in our community don't understand that rule and feel that any tank being setup simply...

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[brandon429]

Nobody in cycling has taken time to delineate cycles using the new ways people approach reefing, it’s not always dry rock cycles


we have:

1. total skip cycles above. No bottle bac, no ammonia, no testing, just transfer rocks to new tank and reef. All marine conventions are using this method.

2. dry rocks, the classic dry rock cycle we all argue on whether cycles can stall or fail by day ten, you can see our thread here is mostly these dry rock cycles. They do get ammonia and bottle bac added.


3. kp aquatics curing cycles. They’re mailing you rocks with so many animals you’d expect to lose some, so no ammonia is added, no bottle bac, but they leak ammonia a few days as these ocean attachments die off.



Nothing can be more opposite than dry rock cycling vs. kp aquatics cure wait cycling, yet all written cycling material doesn’t tell us that. It merely trains us to buy bacteria, though two of those common three ways above specifically don’t use extra bacteria the wet rocks bring it in fully and two of the three methods would not be dosed with ammonia.

we as hobbyists will never get the fair accurate picture about reef tank cycling until a MACNA speaker tells us about the distinct cycling methods, and even their talk will not be complete until all their data comes from seneye in comparison to what common api and Red Sea and salifert said on the same cycling setups.


we need to be formally introduced to the fact seneye proves all these cycles are ready much quicker than we ever knew.

 

[brandon429]

Cycle Levels Help

Can someone help me make sense of these levels? Am I way off on reading them? Could I be color blind? Who knows. Thanks in advance. To me, it looks like I should be able to do the Ammonia 2ppm 24 hour test soon. Also, Salifert ammonia test is garbage in my experience so far.

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if a velvet fish died inside a matured reef, nobody would doubt the cycle. fish get velvet, they die, it has nothing to do with a sixty dollar Fritz cycle, the fastest cycling bac one could buy.



when we truly look at clues there, his tank met the updated rules for fish readiness, they paid for the best bac and it works. sometimes velvet wins, velvet has nothing to do with cycling



fish-in cycling doesn’t harm fish by ammonia: page one post one. We’ve spent twenty pages proving this. In twenty pages and 100 reefs a clown or damsel indeed might die of velvet, even during a fish-in cycle.

the pattern we show is safety, the outlier was a velvet case.

bottle bac works immediately when added, see any seneye test on the matter. From page one post one here, we apply TAN conversion to his stated ammonia levels, look at the number of days underwater, factor how long Fritz takes to adhere to surfaces (1-2 days max)

 

[brandon429]

New Cycle - Seneye vs API

Hello All, Have just started to cycle a new DD ReefPro 900. Am using Fritzzyme Fishless food and Turbo Start and am 2 days in. I have dosed twice with Fishless food on the back of the seneye readings which are as follows: But the API result seems to be showing a different story. I`ve seen a...

www.reef2reef.com

that is the best cycling thread of 2021. We should study it more, apply its known timing to every reef this thread will ever see. Every tenet of new cycling science is being tested there live time with recent updates today.


all aquariums assessed here from page 1-20 are fully explained in the thread above, it’s one of the most important cycling threads


if he owned api only, where would we be

 

[NicolasToro]

Quick update on the build.
After Brandon feedback i did a 20% WC and added a turbo snail to be sure everythings safe and going ok in the tank. The snail did ok so i transfered my clowns, everything normal and acting happy (adjusting to the new enviorement and a little shy as i expected).
Now after 12 days since my original post i have the two clowns, one rbta, frogspawn, hammer, pocillopora, styllopora, and candy cane doing just fine.
Didnt got much of an ugly phase, actually no diatoms, dynos, nothing. Now im afraid i can get a huge algae bloom and go downhill fast.
the reason i started stocking the tank with corals is based on a reefbuilders article i read stating theres no point on waiting months before adding corals for a number of reasons and it made sense to me.
Thanks again for this new insight on cycling and fingers crossed so it keeps going smooth.

 

[NicolasToro]

Some tank shots, water is so clear same as rocks and sand is scary.

 

[brandon429]

Nicolas

We've been dealing with medium size/large tank invasions lately, to the dismay of the owners, agreed its wise to avoid it. reefing wouldn't be the true challenge it is were some powerful variables not in play at all times, but if I had to hone down direct designs we can implement in the cycled reef based on collective 2021 challenges its these:

let's say predictably within 6 more weeks, likely sooner, some matted organism X leaves only a few whispy strands in your tank which is new and missing coralline on all surfaces (a bio rejecting growth, coralline helps in your battles by existing and chemically suppressing invasions)

rocks that are old enough to bring in coralline also bring in mico benthic creatures that eat invasions. white rock is missing both components, but its not lacking on bioload carry ability/ bacteria are set.

what the masses would do when a light invasion begins: leave there, do nothing or buy a doser. they begin indirectly, with hope.

what we'd do: use siphon hose to remove it fully, spend 2 gallons siphon water change as the price of no coralline. repeat as needed. we forced the compliant condition, not accepting alternates.

the tank isn't allowed to look different than it does now, what changes is the degree of daily/weekly work it takes to ensure the condition we demand. if you have innate reef skill and luck too, you'll hardly work to force compliance and maybe even a set of animals will do it for you

but if your variables are more like the most common % outcome among tanks, you'll expect to work more up front, price of no coralline (but you also controlled major alternate invasions by starting with dry rock, its not all bad) and you get to back off into cruise control in two years.


what the masses demands is hands off now, total tank invasion, adjust the water using the same quality test kits we've been rejecting for cycling for 15 pages here, it becomes a mess that demands a rip clean nowadays in a huge portion of large tanks left to unruly months lol.

you didn't create an untouchable rock stack, 158 pounds of Saxby-quality walling

you created liftable bommies, perfection actually regarding invasion control.

*when you get bryopsis one day on a rock, don't alter your entire tank's chemistry like the masses do + allow it to become a beard on the rock.

we would lift out that rock and perform dental surgery on it, sitting on the kitchen counter. it would then be a reef tooth we gardened with metal rasping, it would look perfect, it could be set back in and the tank params always set to what grows corals vs what starves algae. You could use strong peroxide on the cleaned surfaces, the surfaces now missing the implanted invasion. you use the peroxide to kill tiny cells missed, but you removed the whole plant with the rasping of a knife tip, equivalent to detailed plaque scraping and not rasping someone's gums. being precision where the adherant exists.

being willing to physically access the tank in partial surgery as needed as prevention is the # thing fully invaded folks never considered. when they do a rip clean, the hidden implication is for them to file this under things you could have done week #1 of the issue, heh.

*you can break up your nine hour rip clean/price of delay into mini workloads, split up, because we know now that dry rock systems don't get a hands off cruise control until month 20, so prepare to garden. your natural choice for aquascape makes a 100% surgical easy option, I dont care if its antlered with sps you can lift it out, set on a counter, and use a knife to precision debride off Valonia abutted up under an sps.

set rock back, done. no vibrant, no chem changing all to handle what we did by surgery 10x better. it was nice of you to provide updates so I gave the invasion prevention a real focus this morning based on your pics.

we have all been taught to address invasions and challenges through the water, that causes lots of purchases and it really doesn't work as well as surgery on the counter and a tank designed for modular access.


learn the art of the rip clean, it can save a reef tank from any condition or it can prevent that condition from setting in. its the highest forum of reef surgery but it fixes and realigns any worst case scenarios, Cook does it below before things got bad, that way the reef could be enjoyed all the time vs have a 10 month explain why it looks bad to viewers phase.
Right when the rocks were going to take on mass he intercepted that condition and made the reef look perfect.

that's the key, match the effort to the tank's need at hand, don't just demand the lucky no work condition. be able to apply all ranges of control, its physical none of this is testing and precision chemistry.

Build Thread - Cook's 105 Planet Aquariums Crystaline Reef - 48x20

I've had my tank going for two years next month. I'm moving this build over from another forum, so the time stamps aren't going to reflect the original's. I will try to document the original dates as I go. It's also an opportunity to edit my build, there was so much at the beginning I didn't...

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