How to unstick any seemingly stuck cycle

[mweber]

ok perfect its certain to work

like to thank the all seeing eye that is google for all its listening done for ads by every word uttered lol

its been worth it if AI now sends cycle work

Brandon,
I rechecked my numbers this morning and the Ammonium shows 0.2, 1 ppm for Nitrite and 20 ppm for Nitrate.
I did a 32 gallon water change and it really didn't make much of a difference after retesting.

Is the amount of Nitrate not too high to add my coral to this system? I did a test on my Reefer 350 just to be sure and all numbers were zero across the board as one would expect.

 

[brandon429]

that nitrate is only an algae issue its not going to affect coral, and if it wasn't a digital reading its a broad approximation among testers anyway going off intertest comparison threads among brands

we think the reason blanks read zero is because there isn't any active oxidation to over report, merely the time and other details are fitting here and the nitrate is a handy confirmation of the machinery turning/eating up free ammonia. its ready to add some life you'd like

*if you are transporting over a bunch of corals from existing into a new system then I must link Tuffloud's big expensive work thread so that nutrient controls can be considered...having nothing to do with cycling but with keeping corals not bleached in a new rock system vs the mature ones they come from:

Connecting Established Reef To New Tank

EDIT: In conclusion, if using the method I did - connecting an established reef to a new system with dry rock (clean), I recommend the following: 1. Dose your new tank prior to connecting to your old tank with NO3 and PO4 enough to raise to your established tank levels. 2. Take your skimmer...

www.reef2reef.com

you having elevated nitrate helps the matter, vs it being too low, per his findings on moving corals into a brand new rock system

 

[Cell]

Presence of nitrite is going to inflate your nitrate reading. The 0.2 ammonia is likely a false positive from I'm guessing your API ammonia test.

 

[brandon429]

we still accept any nitrite as wheels in motion but not cause enough to stop a start date he he

now if we got spiked green ammonia, twelve days wait after bac, zero nitrite zero nitrate we might have us a stuck one

its also working out well to seek out # of days as a pattern across posts, Ive yet to come across a system that couldn't keep life after waiting/dosing for the # of days off a chart for ammonia control or meeting the dates on the bottle bac label, they always seem to work by then. and then the ten thousand fish-in cycles amassing everyday in forums is making nice patterns for instant nh3 control before the other params are ever given time to manifest

 

[mweber]

we still accept any nitrite as wheels in motion but not cause enough to stop a start date he he

now if we got spiked green ammonia, twelve days wait after bac, zero nitrite zero nitrate we might have us a stuck one

its also working out well to seek out # of days as a pattern across posts, Ive yet to come across a system that couldn't keep life after waiting/dosing for the # of days off a chart for ammonia control or meeting the dates on the bottle bac label, they always seem to work by then. and then the ten thousand fish-in cycles amassing everyday in forums is making nice patterns for instant nh3 control before the other params are ever given time to manifest

Corals are happy.
Fish are happy.
After six months, my anemone has finally hosted my clown fish!
Go figure.
lol.

 

[mweber]

Mind you, everything is a freaking mess but it’s been a long day and so we will get everything cleaned up and sorted out in the next few days.

 

[brandon429]

Team

is this cycle incomplete going off the rules in this thread?
is there any tank on earth that isn’t ready after three months with fish in it?

Elevated Ammonia

My 60g fish-only with dry rock has been running for two months now, and completed its cycle over a month ago. But lately the ammonia has crept up to .1 in the past few days. I have been feeding the five fish two light meals per day, and am trying to get a pod population going so I feed daily...

www.reef2reef.com

ammonia misreads causing false purchases live time. In another thread updated he is buying more bottled bac and more filtration, old cycling rules extract money from us and put it into retail purchases. Our reefs are unsafe in this condition; reacting to every misread leads to param chasing and instability and unenjoyment. He has been reefing in fear of ammonia since the end of summer, but our thread is about finding confidence using updated rules.

ammonia is so predictable in every case that to not own a test for it at all, and instead rely on surface area rules and cycling charts will be more accurate. We simply do not have reliable and accurate ammonia tests available in 2020. but we can send a Tesla around the solar system and track its presence in the cosmos on a website; priorities

 

[brandon429]

@ReefRusty how’s your new tank doing

 

[ReefRusty]

@ReefRusty how’s your new tank doing

Sent you a msg but looking good I believe, dosed more AC on 27th tested tonight 24hrs after and reading 0.5 or 0.25 hard to read on salifert test kits. Nitrate is now reading 5ppm has gone up from 2.5
Salinity 1.026 temp 25.8 degrees (78.4)

 

[brandon429]

Hey can u resend something is missing w it/ no go

 

[ReefRusty]

Hey can u resend something is missing w it/ no go

?? Unsend ?? Am I missing something here? Confused

 

[brandon429]

It didn’t get through, try resending it. Must have stuck in the system somehow

 

[ReefRusty]

It didn’t get through, try resending it. Must have stuck in the system somehow

Try that?

 

[brandon429]

False stuck cycle. All false stuck cycles keep showing the same patterns from any example we pull. there are no stuck cycles we fix them all the same way.

High ammonia

I have a 26 gal bow front with about a 10 gal sump one clown fish a few snails (2 turbos and 3 nassarius) a Pom Pom Xenia and a hammer coral the tank has been running since March first fish in July coral in aug. I only feed a tiny pinch of micro pellets twice a day only enough that can be eaten...

www.reef2reef.com

 

[KevPool]

Alrighty Then.... @brandon429 my mad scientist friend the full system is up and running as of last night thought I would seek you out on this one.

System Stats: display tank 1 (DT1), display tank 2 (DT2), sump, refugium.

DT1 60 gal cube:
Substrate: CaribSea Arag-Alive Hawaiian Black - 20lb live sand.
Rock: mix of new Dry rock and some old dead rock 70-80 lbs.
Temp: 78
Salinity: 1.026
PH: 8.0
Ammonia: 0.4
Nitrite: 0.2
Nitrate: 10.0
Alk 7.5.
start date: Dec, 27, 2020.
Test date: Dec, 30, 2020.


DT2 58 gal
Substrate: CaribSea Arag-Alive Fiji Pink Sand live sand.
Rock: half n half Dry rock & AquaForest pink rock 60 lbs.
Temp: 78
Salinity: 1.026
PH: 8.0
Ammonia: 0.4
Nitrite: 0.2
Nitrate: 10.0
Alk 7.0
Start date: Dec, 31, 2020
Test date: Jan, 1, 2021

Sump: 70 gal
Media: 2 gal of Marine Pure spheres.
Skimmer Octo Classic 110-S (not running yet)
Media Reactor: SpectraPure GFO - Carbon (not hooked up yet).
PhosBan Reactor 550 (not hooked up yet).
Pump: Sincce ADV 9.0 2500 gph.
Adding a secondary pump for reactors soon.

Refugium: 22 gal
nothing in it yet other then some media, Marine pure brick 8"x8"x1"

Well I have not added any bottled bacteria here or ammonia it shows a good start of cycling. my thoughts are the live sand and used dead rock kickstarted my cycle as well as the media that I have been cooking up in that pail for the last couple months has done a decent job here,

So what would be your suggestions here on moving forward? Since I consider you the Cycle Guru I thought I would ask your advice before I start dumping in bottled bacteria or ammonia.

Also Happy New Year Bud

 

[brandon429]

It would be neat to see if it can move down ammonia at some point faster than the collective thought of the day would allow

We know it will work by day 30 but the fun is seeing if prior- made sources got ready faster than expected, very sharp setups there with clean plumbing in just a few months they'll transform nicely

 

[brandon429]

Working on ten pages of false stuck cycles.

Newbie Reefer - First Cycle - Some Questions

Hey all, I’m not sure if this thread was better posted here or the chemistry forum so I apologize in advance if it’s not in the right place. So I finished my 90g build earlier this month and started cycling on the 8th. I decided to use Red Sea’s Reef Mature Starter Kit and I have some...

www.reef2reef.com

tests said it was stalled. Now has fish and cuc. In spite of tests...

-has diatom growth, any visual new growths in a cycling reef indicate completion. Filter bacteria set up well before visual growths we can see.

-we called the cycle complete after the first reported ammonia drop, which met the timeframe from a cycle chart for ammonia, and the instructions on the bottle bac.


*this particular cycling approach required several small caveats to complete such as not using live rock in combination with the bacteria (false claim, nothing happens if we do) and their cycle approach mentions water changes stalling a cycle, none of that happens for anyone’s cycle because we can’t stop water bacteria from doing what they do in a tank of water and feed and attachment points.

a reef cycle is always going to complete on time, without stall, relative to the types of boosters used as they all have associated known completion timeframes.

 

[TJAVOREK]

Hi everyone, looking for any help or suggestions. This is the first time I am doing a bottle bac cycle as my last tank was 15 yrs ago and you just put in live rock and a starter fish lol. I used the Microbacter starter kit:

Microbacter Dry Rock Bacteria Starter Kit

Everything needed for fishless cycling a new system with Dry Rock is in this kit! This kit is designed to be used with unseeded dry rock such as Marco Rock or artificial live rock replacements. Plain dry sand is recommended instead of so called 'live sand' which may have been seeded with...

www.bulkreefsupply.com

Ammonia to 2ppm and XLM added on 12/30/20. I read through a lot of this thread and the connected ones and I think I am experiencing the issue where the Red Sea test isn't able to show 0 ammonia. Should I be concerned that Nirtite seems to be climbing, I know Nitrite isn't that important or harmful but the XLM directions say both Ammonia and Nitrite should be 0 and I am being paranoid. My last three days of cycle are listed below as well as pictures from the tests on Day 12 and a picture of an Ammonia Badge I placed in the sump which is showing 0 Ammonia. Any thoughts or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Cycle Day 10
PH: 8.2
Ammonia: 0.4
Nitrite: 0.5
Nitrate: 10

Cycle Day 11
PH: 8.2
Ammonia: 0.4
Nitrite: 0.5
Nitrate: 10

Cycle Day 12
PH: 8.2
Ammonia: 0.2 - 0.4
Nitrite: 1
Nitrate: 10

 

[brandon429]

thanks tons for posting

The issue with bottle bac directions is they don’t account for constant misreads, which is any cycling param not from a calibrated digital read.

we have no way to meet their directions with today’s tools


our angle here is that for the last twenty years the hobby decided to attribute bacteria as the weak ones and not the test kits...so forum cycles take 30-90 days and MACNA cycles were instantly ready for decades, to sell us products used to skip cycles


we use known wait times plus minor clues such as some nitrite, some nitrate, to prove added bacteria weren’t dead - those are active footprints for nitrification.

so for our thread what we’ve done is reference work threads that charted out bottle bac brands using accurate kits, setting known timelines for completion and by extension no bottle bac takes longer than a cycling chart shows to complete, they're all thirty days maximum duration to finish. Most brands of bottle bac are ready in three days, or sooner, it’s why fish-in cycling doesn’t kill fish the bottle bac is fairly good nowadays

At the end of any given cycle (a pre chosen time underwater, not a test kit reading) we change water, add life and begin without consulting the test kits. Our thread is unique in that we don’t believe their readings, they are only approximations.


if you are in doubt of where the cycle is, simply let the current mix stew and in thirty days (you are already ten days wait) change for new water. If you have rocks and sand then it’s all cycled, and cannot fail to be. For anyone, cycles don’t fail to complete on at least this date.


this particular brand has been taking close to thirty days anyway to reliably move ammonia when people ran the three part ammonia test from page one. You can easily run that method on the ammonia kit (a series of three pictures) on a suspected completion date, or you can just ride out the current mix to day thirty and change water, you’ll be done regardless of what any kit says.


if you want to make use of purchases/bottle bac that allows a faster start than 30 days then the calibrated ammonia test from page one is the only way we know to make the ammonia kits work, to show the up/down motion. The brands of fritz, biospira and dr Tims are known to be ready in a few days after dosing, that fast they’re stuck to all surfaces per Dr. Reefs bottle bac comparison thread. This brand here you are using works, but it’s slowest

If you waited till day twenty total and changed water, I’m certain you can begin and that your test kits are likely to indicate a stall, as a misreport. So if we were taking your new reef to MACNA using that exact combo, we‘d pre cycle rocks for twenty days, to be ready on start date, some nitrate will prove your bottle was active vs killed mix, and we wouldn’t use the tests further we’d use twenty days duration as the closure. Plus big water change.


That’s how we make a dry start reef ready on time for MACNA, we could start twenty days early then we just move wet rocks up there and back home without using the tests other than initial glance at nitrate to prove activity.

 

[Garf]

Hi everyone, looking for any help or suggestions. This is the first time I am doing a bottle bac cycle as my last tank was 15 yrs ago and you just put in live rock and a starter fish lol. I used the Microbacter starter kit:

Microbacter Dry Rock Bacteria Starter Kit

Everything needed for fishless cycling a new system with Dry Rock is in this kit! This kit is designed to be used with unseeded dry rock such as Marco Rock or artificial live rock replacements. Plain dry sand is recommended instead of so called 'live sand' which may have been seeded with...

www.bulkreefsupply.com

Ammonia to 2ppm and XLM added on 12/30/20. I read through a lot of this thread and the connected ones and I think I am experiencing the issue where the Red Sea test isn't able to show 0 ammonia. Should I be concerned that Nirtite seems to be climbing, I know Nitrite isn't that important or harmful but the XLM directions say both Ammonia and Nitrite should be 0 and I am being paranoid. My last three days of cycle are listed below as well as pictures from the tests on Day 12 and a picture of an Ammonia Badge I placed in the sump which is showing 0 Ammonia. Any thoughts or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Cycle Day 10
PH: 8.2
Ammonia: 0.4
Nitrite: 0.5
Nitrate: 10

Cycle Day 11
PH: 8.2
Ammonia: 0.4
Nitrite: 0.5
Nitrate: 10

Cycle Day 12
PH: 8.2
Ammonia: 0.2 - 0.4
Nitrite: 1
Nitrate: 10

I would wait. Nitrite should never be increasing in a cycled tank, but you know that already.