So figured I'd do a follow up on this in case it helps anybody.
Thanks for the insight. I imagine there is no harm in waiting 7-10 days to do the water change right? Will be pretty busy in 4-5 days.@discostew
one round of feed is plenty, we expect that much ammonia to cause non digital kits to stall in resolve for weeks on end (page one examples) but it will feed the bottle bac nicely along with carbon and nutrients from the fish feed. when fish food is not given during a cycle, standard room contamination provides enough carbon input as well as of the alternate nutrients bacteria need for cycling to be able to oxidize ammonia waste. the fish food speeds up deposition of bacteria on surfaces quickly per Dr Reef's bottle bac study thread.
at no time does any cycling reef require even a third that much ammonia, his instructions for everyone to dose that much overpowers nearly all test kits well past their ability to read accurately, and the result is a perceived stall, and then redundant sales of bottle bac in follow up.
also in play in false stall notions is the painted and stated fear from those same directions that ammonia over 5 ppm or nitrite/I forget which warning level it was/ causes a stall
and inputting 2 ppm ammonia per his rules at the start nearly guaranteed to make cyclers think its above 5 simply because the vial will be so dark they have to guess...so they buy new bottle bac thinking this addition has killed their starting cycle.
Old cycling rules are designed to cause doubt and sell orders of repeat bottle bac in my opinion. in furtherance of that notion, we don't have a single stalled cycle here in 29 pages and out in the postverse nearly every cycle appears to be stalled on the old rules, watch for new posts about it this week in forums we haven't even seen written yet. they're coming, every week are new stall cycle posts.
we are against that entire process here
not to be rule breakers but to earn one detail on every page every job that no other cycling thread lends:
a timely start date with zero losses reported.
starting with that much ammonia up front is the primary reason we elect to do water changes on an assigned date...the extra boost did not kill or stall ammonia processing, it fed the bac very well but overpowers the non digital kits with factors yet to be detailed. by doing a full water change on those ammonia blast cycles we remove any concern and replace the water table with known safe levels of ammonia water. (and then sometimes they still take a test and the kit shows high, lol, its wrong, seneye wouldnt show that see page one post #2 first link)
***it is very important @discostew that we not post test kit readings from non digital kits along the way, this cycling thread is polar opposite of any cycling thread on the web for that reason*******
we don't test for nitrite at all here
and ammonia testing we either want calibrated as Brad mentions or as digital seneye uncalibrated, post those all day long.
what we use for proofing is fish in a clear water tank--that's what sets us apart.
Your arrangement disco stew can actually carry bottle bac instantly, on day one, the minute you dosed bio spira or Dr. Tims. the huge blast of ammonia may take some time to clear, but we don't track wastewater clearing time here so it will be unfactored in your assigned start date.
5 days, lol that's how long implantation will take for your setup discostew. In five days do a 90-100% water change and you have a complete cycle left on surfaces, per Dr Reefs bottle bac thread where all the top name brands were given measured time to adhere and then he did a full water change + retest as proofing, and those brands you use are done in more like 48 hours so five days is well beyond the wait time required, you just paid for concentrated bac in a bottle and it'll work for sure.
additionally, its not possible you bought two dead bottles of bac. by adding two different brands one is certain to work in this timeframe and 99.99% of the time both bottles were functional.
Your tank will carry fish just fine in five days + a nearly complete water change, regardless of what any cheap test kits say=what we've been doing here all year
thanks for posting, can't wait to see your pics of fish in a tank or hear about them
Pre quarantined fish initially. I do want to set up a hospital tank. I was actually going to ask. I have limited space. If i were to need the hospital tank. Could i fast start it as needed? I was thinking a 10g tank. Aquaclear hob filter with sponge. Use bio spira and an ammonia badge. Could i basically do that at a moments notice and have it hold 1-2 small fish (if needed).
www.reef2reef.com
www.reef2reef.com
Tomorrow is day 10 of my cycle. Used biospira and dr Tim’s. Will hopefully do a water change this weekend. Fish aren’t ready to be placed in the tank.I cannot thank you enough for writing that. Its literally helping us stand far apart from all other cycling threads, you guys collectively as a team of cyclers have done more preps on fish disease than can be found in any cycling thread online. That's a valuable valuable post for us Disco, your tank is about to rock and roll.
agreed on the quarantine option: if you approximate the flow and surface area from any of the common qt setups in the disease forum that'll carry the corresponding fish waste reliably, those bottle bac mixes are great. allow that setup too about 10 days ish with feed in place/bottle bac then a good water change and that system will be prepped just the same
referencing info from page one about Paul B's quarantine approach and how that differs vastly from the common way: muted lighting, earth tones and real rock hiding spots...perhaps some fake plants too be sure n check the post its a rather stark comparison between his qt approach and the bright, white, pvc bare bottom setups so commonly used which are simply scarier to fish and keep them stressed moreso than the former
it shows us there are gradients to quarantine quality that exist just like reef tanks themselves have gradients of planning and quality. any trending towards Paul's setup training will result in more effective quarantine I honestly believe that.
being able to have that discussion with folks willing to combine fish disease preps directly into their cycle preps is 100% the direction we need for this post. Literally everything we do here is opposite of all other cycling threads and videos that can be found, its a joy/reward to be collecting these recurring outcomes for sure I'm thankful
Team, read this thread after reading page one/first paragraph here on our thread about disease
here's a new reefer a few weeks ago asking about cycling and getting the typical response that never agrees to prep for disease:
Cycling the tank
Hey guys!!! what's everyones thoughts on cycling the tank with a few clown fish??
cycle set (because you can't mess up a bottle bac cycle)
and now with fish:
EMERGENCY - Is this ich
Hey Guys, looking for some options/Help here if it is ich:)
I also included in that last post a link to the great debate on quarantine so you can see that the cycle umpires there above voted no, passionately, and will refuse to relay disease risk to new cyclers even though this is harming fish.
that's why we do disease preps here, as part of the cycle, because that's a trend anyone who cares about reefing can spot a mile away.
Yes. I put about 2 punches of flakes. Looking back at older posts i did not grind them. They are still present in the rear sump decomposing
www.reef2reef.com
Nice. Surprisingly the Red Sea test has shown expected trend for me Ammonia and nitrite have been zero for a few days. Nitrate went from 50 to 20 after the skimmer went on.Cycle
Going through the cycle on our new tank. Dosed Mr Tim's One and Only and 2ppm Dr Tim's ammonium chloride day 1. Now on day 3 and the ammonia has read 2ppm every day on the Red Sea kit, but now we've got our Seneye working and it says 0.086ppm (but still reads 2ppm on the Red Sea kit). Which...
Disco check that out, terrible fear comes from non digital testing and total relaxation comes from seneye.
