How to unstick any seemingly stuck cycle

[islandstonashville]

I used Dr. Tim’s Bacteria and Ammonia. Yes Day 9, I was already anxious because my nitrites were high. But then I bumped on this post.

Here’s my tank today. Let’s see how this go. I’ll keep you updated.

 

[brandon429]

That's the most fitting example of a reef tank I'd ever hope to see posted here plus those readings from the kit

The contrast is exactly what we study, the patterning, why are delicate reef animals always acting not burnt in systems api says will melt down any minute now. If you will update over time your tank status even out to second year as it's meant to be, we'd appreciate it. Long term implications of nitrite positivity are the skeptic's current fixation, so let's begin collecting long term feedback on fish and invert health over time.

When I read then reread Randy's nitrite chemistry material i get no hint at all about a long term concern. What i read is, testing for it will just give you nightmares unjustified for reef tanks lol

If that was a freshwater cycle reading above, we'd be in concern mode

But not for reefs, thanks to chloride channel blocking.

 

[islandstonashville]

48 hours with livestocks. They’re still doing great. looks healthy to me. Here’s my parameters for today.

And the livestocks.

 

[islandstonashville]

The tank and the livestocks still looking good.

These are the parameters for today. Day 4 I believe.

 

[Jacharr]

Hello Everyone,

Been reading through pages of this thread as like so many thought my cycle had stalled or i had used "Dead BB".

After some advice on next steps for my system, based on my reading from this thread i think i may need to do that 100% water change but just want to get some confirmation from this community before i do, as all i have been told in the past is never to do a water change until the cycle is complete.

My Tank;

1200L System 8 x 2 x 2.5FT + 5 foot sump with heaps of biological media.

Started the cycle 35 days ago - Fishless with liquid ammonia and bottled benifcal bacteria

Adding 2-3 drops of ammonia every 3 day.

API Test reading today;

Ammonia - 1.0PPM - This has slowly increased from a initial reading of 0.25ppm
Nitrates - 0.00 - Never shown a reading
Nirties - 0.00 - Never shown a reading
PH - 8.0

Thank you community for assistance in hopfully getting my system up and running and stopping me from pulling my hair out with daily testing showing no improvment

 

[Dburr1014]

Hello Everyone,

Been reading through pages of this thread as like so many thought my cycle had stalled or i had used "Dead BB".

After some advice on next steps for my system, based on my reading from this thread i think i may need to do that 100% water change but just want to get some confirmation from this community before i do, as all i have been told in the past is never to do a water change until the cycle is complete.

My Tank;

1200L System 8 x 2 x 2.5FT + 5 foot sump with heaps of biological media.

Started the cycle 35 days ago - Fishless with liquid ammonia and bottled benifcal bacteria

Adding 2-3 drops of ammonia every 3 day.

API Test reading today;

Ammonia - 1.0PPM - This has slowly increased from a initial reading of 0.25ppm
Nitrates - 0.00 - Never shown a reading
Nirties - 0.00 - Never shown a reading
PH - 8.0

Thank you community for assistance in hopfully getting my system up and running and stopping me from pulling my hair out with daily testing showing no improvment

What test kits?
Have you added ammonia to read 2 ppm then check the next day? What I mean is, you said you add everyday but you want to add, then check the next day.
I'm sure you are done. 35 days is way too long. 2-3 drops in that size is not very much.

 

[Jacharr]

What test kits?
Have you added ammonia to read 2 ppm then check the next day? What I mean is, you said you add everyday but you want to add, then check the next day.
I'm sure you are done. 35 days is way too long. 2-3 drops in that size is not very much.

Hey,

API Test kits.

Intial readding of ammonia was .25ppm and now reading 1ppm.

Intially 20 drops was added to get that reading and i have just been adding 2-3 drops every few days to ensure there is food for the BB.

 

[brandon429]

I’m agreeing with DBurr it’s done and no water change needed at all: you did a good job by NOT spiking the ammonia sky high like so many do. If you put fish in there, and never test for ammonia ever again, the tank runs perfectly.

incidentals: that rock doesn’t look bone white new. Some or all of it seems to have live rock characteristics/ pigments/ algae or diatoms and those rocks were skip cycle rocks if so, ready on day one.

if those are painted rocks that showed up dry and have been in water over a month + bottle bac+ feeding they’re still cycled anyway.

your post is -perfect- for our thread because you can’t not be cycled, and what any non digital test kit says won’t take precedent over the rule of submersion timing we’ve established here.


I am 100% sure if you put in ten fish, ten fish will live fine in this certainly cycled tank. The reason I wouldn’t put in ten fish has to do with disease vectoring and nothing to do with filtration. It could carry twenty fish right now.

*the fact your ammonia seems to increase simply means nothing. Two days ago someone posting 1.0 ammonia api on a full running reef stocked with fish and corals was also concerned about their cycle, but how we interpret those kits means nothing. At day 30+ any common cycle arrangement is done, no matter if they used a little too much or a little too few bacteria, or whether or not they fed a little or a lot, that waiting timeframe evens all cycles out by this time. We do the big water change only on the tanks where the keepers felt they had to hit 2 ppm ammonia five times over. Yours is a perfect way to cycle a big tank because no final large water change is needed, just reef.


plop in some corals and a clean up crew, some shrimps to watch, all perfect starters. I didn’t even ask what brand of bac you used. It could have been tank cleaning bacteria vs cycling bacteria: doesn’t matter. It all evens out given this long of a ramp up.

 

[Jacharr]

I’m agreeing with DBurr it’s done and no water change needed at all: you did a good job by NOT spiking the ammonia sky high like so many do. If you put fish in there, and never test for ammonia ever again, the tank runs perfectly.

incidentals: that rock doesn’t look bone white new. Some or all of it seems to have live rock characteristics/ pigments/ algae or diatoms and those rocks were skip cycle rocks if so, ready on day one.

if those are painted rocks that showed up dry and have been in water over a month + bottle bac+ feeding they’re still cycled anyway.

your post is -perfect- for our thread because you can’t not be cycled, and what any non digital test kit says won’t take precedent over the rule of submersion timing we’ve established here.


I am 100% sure if you put in ten fish, ten fish will live fine in this certainly cycled tank. The reason I wouldn’t put in ten fish has to do with disease vectoring and nothing to do with filtration. It could carry twenty fish right now.

Thanks for your input @brandon429.

Rocks are painted and were not wet but the tank does have some diatoms which you can just make out from the photo.

I have not been ghost feeding but just adding a small amount of liquid ammonia every fews days.

Excited and will just trust you advice and the results of so many others here and pick up some fish on the weekend.

Thanks again!

 

[brandon429]

Excellent please update with pics of the fish and acclimate them well: try not to float the bag opened in the top of the tank for hours

we had one aquarist doing that on nano reef.com and his acclimation was stressing the hound out of fish and killing them because they sat in a rolled back bag of old tank water hours waiting to be released into the new tank. Ammonia builds up in the holding bag, not the tank.

They thought the tank cycle must be bad and killing the fish. I sent a message to the poster and had him compare his salinity to the petco tanks where he was getting his clownfish…it was close enough he could just net in the next round of fish right out of the transport bag which he did and worked fine. Acclimate carefully and it will work.

*visual benthic cues noted. Any reef tank that has sat long enough fed and with water and lighting to develop new matted growths like diatoms or cyano or a sprig of hair algae is cycled.


though this rule seems disagreeable to old school cycling adherents, visual cue confirmation of cycling is something we’ve been using here since page one. Once we verify # of days waited any incidental new growths we can see pop up are side confirmations of ammonia control ability. These organisms we can see by rule show up *after* the workhorse ammonia oxidizing bacteria we can’t see.


if anyone who owns a seneye wants to test this claim and build up any cycle to the degree of new tank growths and then test for common ammonia control and it doesn’t pass, post your data here and I’ll pay you a PayPal bounty $ relative to the degree your data is impressive.

 

[brandon429]

Specific date timing for your tank based on bacteria used:

if you used Dr. Tims, Biopsira or Fritz cycling bac the tank could safely carry fish day one, and within a week all those strains would be fully locked onto surfaces where a full water change could not remove them, a true locked in cycle (per Dr. Reefs 110 page bottle bac thread study)


if you used mb7 or other bacteria we think runs a little slower on cycling then I would have assigned day 30 as the maximum wait time and could be moved up to the date any new benthic diatom growths were noted.


*we agree dead bottles of bacteria are possible. Dan_P has specifically seen them in his myriad cycle testing setups.


the reason we don’t mention it here nor fret nor test for proofing is due to ratio numbers: ive never seen a display reef fail to cycle since I’ve been reefing. The day someone here with a tank older than ten days after adding cycling bottle bac can’t handle some fish bioload and they die is the day we can seriously wonder if we’ve just been lucky for thirty pages.


display tanks tend to have copious dilution and starting bioloads tend to be low. We can scan the pages here for pics, not even reading posts, and seeing about half the tank entrants posting opening tank pics with visual cues notes. Displays tend to have multiple cycle-reinforcing characters in play such as #of days waited after feeding that variables simply align. If we had lost one or two starting bioloads here we would be pre verifying each start date. 32 pages of carried happy bioloads means we aren’t likely to encounter a true stalled cycled in the upcoming 30 pages.


for example, here’s a feed-only cycle carrying fish at day 30. Zero bottle bac, zero added. Feed and time only:

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...

www.reef2reef.com

see how if howabout me added dead Dr. Tims on day one, and still fed and waited to day 30, it’s still cycled? Above is a direct working example of times dead bottle bac wouldn’t matter one bit. The only thing deader than dead bacteria is dosing no bacteria at all.

 

[brandon429]

HELP - Tank was cycled, now its not?

My first tank. Tank set up on 4/26/22, used Dr. Tims & Ammonia. Added 2 Clownfish on day 38 (had been reading 0 Ammonia & Nitrite for 2 weeks). Did my big water change before adding the fish. Probably 4-5 days of the clowns in the tank I noticed 1 had a small bump on his gil/side of face. Fast...

humble.fish

interforum cycle fix example.


Team, make your call here. I sent a message to the poster so I don’t have to disagree up top in the thread


can a cycle get undone after being set in, while carrying life in the tank over two months after starting with animals (and he waited 30 days in cycle before adding animals, that’s three months of cycle prep with Dr Tims)


so if his six dollar nitrate test kit says zero nitrate, does that mean his cycle just got undone?? How well do non digital nitrate kits line up with each other in test comparison threads? When someone posts a parameter they measured we accept that as uncontested fact, no peeling the onion for details?

 

[Dburr1014]

I believe a cycle can be undone if no life is present or, I should say, there is no input. No input=dying bacteria=dead cycle.

 

[brandon429]

thats good I want diverse opinions here. That falls under experiments Im willing to pay bounties on if that pans out true, relative to the quality of proof

gotta be on seneye though for obvious reasons. calibrated seneye not just one out of the box...slides prepped, ran for a week on a cycled reef to show true baseline in the known cycled condition, then run basic ammonia control tests on a five gallon bucket reef of marco rocks, a cheap heater and a cheap powerhead. cycle it up normally w dr tims and flake food and time


then starve it X months and do a common ammonia loading test on the calibrated seneye. If it ever uncycles and can be shown I'll pay up a paypal bounty, say a hundred bucks to the first person able to demonstrate true cycle starvation.

 

[brandon429]

here's why I put a little fun bounty on it: the inverse study

a completely 100% unassisted cycle that self created in 4 mos. demo'd on api, quite clearly able to process ammonia.

it seems one that was blast fed and had hyperconcentrated bacteria sure can't go back to sterile...surfaces underwater get fed via natural contamination means in the home they're running in

perhaps a positive pressure microbiology lab could keep one sterile, not a home though/


it's not been formally studied. it's worth a little incentive to get real digital data on the matter, it's uncharted territory.

MSteven's posts

Bacteria in a bottle, Myth or Fact

I have never seen that documented in twenty years of daily online reefing. Unassisted cycling happens sooner than your time frame, tbd, but I'd have bet the farm it'd take ninety days. I'm so happy to see that Cycling charts were written for freshwater You're providing data for a saltwater...

www.reef2reef.com

despite the trolling, I'm convinced. It lines up with all known rules of cycle biology, after all in the 80s 100% of our freshwater setups were unassisted cycles using no live materials. tap water, dechlor, 30 days, cycled, no dosers no ammonia no feed. literally the home did it


reefs are the same, it takes longer and the original strains that can move ammonia in the first 4 months are replaced by actual marine strains of permanent nitrifier bacteria as soon as reef additions start/ fish or coral imports.


a good experiment will have 2 or 3 prepped buckets of rocks.


they're stagger-tested. once you hit one with ammonia to test oxidation rebound time, that set is ruined for the test bc they were fed directly.


the other two buckets can be +2 mos staggered out for starvation testing.


Heck I'd accept API data on the matter but would pay less lol. constraints: no 24 hour rebound required due to the ten day lag time we show on page 1, post #2

and no dosing to 2 ppm either for the load test, that messes up everyone's api. MSteven tested it exactly right, barely enough ammonia to move the color one gradient darker is correct. I'd pay 1/3 bounty for solid api data showing hard stalls days after the test load.


seneye would make it so much easier though, in 15 mins the entire process could be measured accurately and charted and considering it's benched off a real reef, nobody can deny what's measured even me if it shows a starve.

 

[JohnA2484]

I’m in the same situation, my tank is 75 gallon, new cycle with no livestock in it. I have live rock and live sand. Been cycling for 3 weeks so far but 2 of those weeks have included dr Tim’s one and only. I am reading ammonia, nitrite and nitrates. I have brown stuff growing on rocks and sand. Light only on for picture purposes. Ammonia will not drop and nitrites will not drop.

 

[brandon429]

excellent and thank you for posting. It's true, you're done a while ago, before those growths on the sand showed up.

your tank can carry the maxiumum amount of fish it can carry right now, with no further wait, that's important to know.

you are free now to stock, or to search out and apply disease controls before stocking fish. if you add too many fish and some die, it won't be the filter ability causing it, the tank is cycled we can see from the tank pics (no factor at all from the api pics-they matter 0% in assessing your cycle status considering # of days underwater, visual benthic cuing and potential skip cycle live rock build)

heres the exact steps and known forecast for your reef as it sits this second:
-cycle is completed vs stuck.
-no future testing for ammonia and nitrite for the life of the tank is recommended/all prior pages show why.
-before reacting to a nitrate reading, make sure it's from a hanna digital nitrate meter high/low range based on your stocking density and age range and cleanliness level of the tank. nitrate testing is finicky, don't think for one second that kit above will agree with other kits on the same measure.


ammonia and nitrite we no longer test because your start date has elapsed already, and we don't test for ammonia and nitrite in cycled reefs as of 2022, that's updated cycling science to trust them and trust the bacteria that regulate those parameters.

we don't test for nitrate because it doesn't matter in this stage anyway, your main issue is fish disease prevention choice selection

if you skip disease preps, nitrate as read accurately or not will be the last of your concerns soon.

*notice that in no way did I ask for any parameter you had to offer, even if you showed up with hanna low range nitrate digital and it said zero, you'd still be cycled. There is no way that a test kit reading will ever matter in this thread, we are using predictive cycling markers to the side of actual testing here/reliable/all our cycles are timed perfectly and everyone is happy with the opening bioload carry. hundreds of thousands of running and cycled reef tanks report zero nitrate, it's where stump remover dosing came into vogue

being zero nitrate means zero nitrate, it doesn't mean your bacteria can't convert ammonia to nitrite. nitrate doesn't burn reef animals and it's of such non consequence in reefing I personally will never own a kit to test for it.


get digital calcium and alk testing kits if you want to test the right things correctly.

 

[brandon429]

Not stuck cycle

HELP - Tank was cycled, now its not?

My first tank. Tank set up on 4/26/22, used Dr. Tims & Ammonia. Added 2 Clownfish on day 38 (had been reading 0 Ammonia & Nitrite for 2 weeks). Did my big water change before adding the fish. Probably 4-5 days of the clowns in the tank I noticed 1 had a small bump on his gil/side of face. Fast...

humble.fish

 

[brandon429]

Cycling Problems with QT Tank in Laundry Room - Suspected QAC Contamination

First post here on R2R! … I am new to the hobby but have been reading/studying it for years. I finally have space at home to begin. I will be following up in the future with build threads for my salt water mixing station, QT tanks (invert and fish), and display tank that I’m still building...

www.reef2reef.com

This thread is important because you see where the chief chemistry correspondent of Red Sea directly lists common reef tank amino acids that cause misreads on red sea ammonia tests. All false cycle stall posts: see how these delayed clues keep lining up where the bacteria were never in doubt, it was a non digital test kit misreading?

 

[islandstonashville]

1 month has passed and here’s an update of the tank. Again thanks @brandon429 for this thread. If i didn’t read this, I would have been stucked with the old cycle method.