@RoanokeReef agreed the back and forth is hard to follow without context.
Eli = the same person as Aquabiomics, the industry-changing company that does DNA testing of the water in our reef tanks to determine bacterial status
Where you are reading "Eli" throughout the thread, that was AB's avatar before the company was built which is now called Aquabiomics. Eli is AB.
I am against testing for ammonia, nitrite and nitrate in reef tank cycling due to the problems listed above using conventional means (see post #158)
All the work I do, to show that Eli's statement wasn't correct in my opinion, is testless cycling--the opposite of what Eli recommended and the opposite of what Randy recommends regarding ammonia testing.
I cycle reef tanks on this site/other sites/without any testing and with a completely pure track record of safety, that's the #1 outcome nobody would have predicted would be possible if we were solely using just the old rules of cycling
those rules say you have to test to know if/ when a reef tank cycle is ready
But the new rules allow me to get the results I have on file and all future results without testing. We need places on the web that allow cyclers to consider better, freer options to get the job done
we do not have to test for ammonia, nitrite and nitrate to cycle a reef tank any longer
there are still objective measures we use for each reef to get the cycle ready, it's just not coming from test kits for ammonia, nitrite and nitrate.
we are using either visual cues on the rocks or from the tank description, or, for surfaces that don't have visual cues but still can be cycled we count the # of days the tank has been running to derive the cycle close date. The known completion timeframes come from well known cycle studies posted by people like Dr. Reef, or every cycling chart ever put into a book (10 days to ammonia dropping and not coming back up)
A hopeful impact to readers is they're able to save lots of money on reef tank cycles, and still be certain when the cycle is done using alternate means of verification, and they can aim all their concerns and efforts into disease prevention/management which is the real killer of our fish,
bad cycles are not killing fish anywhere in reefing, on any forum.
Since Eli didn't write that on his first post, and he's the microbiologist here, it left me wondering why
People who sell anything in this hobby to readers have the highest bar to write the most sound information, so he's in my focus for a long time, especially as his Ted talks build up.
no test cycling sure does work, and we don't get to hear back from him on the follow up explanation as to why it's working so far.
There has to be a balance for people that sell things to us in this hobby, something has to keep what they say in check so readers can have fair information to determine who they should pay for services and who they should not pay.
Why is it that when I search out Eli/Aquabiomics info I see the MACNA talks, I see the podcasts, the articles, the ads written about his testing services, the total buy-in from any reader about his services, but I can't see this thread?
Assessing fish disease risk % based on pathogen/ clades returned per sample is part of what aquabiomics sells
But I don't see this thread, from the #1 person I'd trust to tell me about captive marine fish disease and DNA testing:
Do you believe AB for-charge testing is a way to identify presence of uronema in a reef tank? one drop of water, or a few, a couple swabs representing .0001% of a reef tanks biome is valid? How are we ensured the other unsampled portions don’t have the pathogen? I noticed that paying...
www.reef2reef.com
I think providing a balance of information on the utility of reef tank testing for microbes has its benefits. Any reader can see I'm formulating my opinions about AB testing from events here, from Randy's assessments about it in threads at the emergence of this tech within our hobby and from Jay's responses. I don't claim to understand enough about DNA sampling to exclude their opinions from the factor.
If Jay isn't relying on it to run his disease assessments and rescues, if I don't need aquabiomics testing to cycle any reef tank that will post for the job, if Randy isn't sold that sampling an ultra- small % of a reef tanks biota is a reliable indicator of its complete biota, where can searchers find that information balance?
In web threads, on cool sites who let nerds do what they do freely and much appreciated.
The main crew on this site who like to post in cycle threads have been doing so, and quite harshly lol, for ten years straight. Threads like these are what we do.
