PLEASE Help

[SaltwaterWorld1780]

live rock-did that come from another running aquarium or from a bin in the pet shop marked live rock? did it have any pods or attached living items, algae etc?

the shrimp and all additions since then are designed for dry rock cycling, but then again sometimes live rock doesnt mean the same to everyone



moving rocks among homes never, ever undoes a cycle. only being dry undoes a cycle. trying to figure out if these rocks were wet when you brought them home

Three medium live rocks were from my 55 gallon saltwater tank, then in a bucket for a few days, aerated. Then moved into the 200 gallon. All fish that were in the 200 are in the 55 gallon with the 200 gallon water.

 

[brandon429]

excellent. that is a skip cycle setup. nitrate is a mix of testing drift (you can search out nitrate test comparison threads that show a 50 ppm spread between two kinds on the same sample) and even if its accurate nitrate, the extra items added for the bac are degrading and pumping that nitrate up.

those items werent needed, nor the bottle bac, since you just moved rocks among tanks. it didnt hurt to add them either, just a bit of extra $

there is no degree of nitrate that will kill your filtration bacteria. the extra nitrate is only an algae feed concern.

 

[brandon429]

also, transferring water did move lots of bacteria. millions of colonies. We can find plenty of places online that say no bac is in the water, but thats just not the case its disgustingly full of bacteria.

tank water/open hand wound/infections that can range from annoying to vibrio loss of your hand, they have millions of bacteria and filter bac are mixed in.

every item connected with your fish tank including the wall standing behind it is covered in filtration bacteria. how long they live after vectoring to non wet surfaces ranges.

Marine tanks always have sediment or floc or planktors or floating bits in the water, always.

bac ride those rafts and seed place to place, so transferring water is transferring bacteria always.

Consider all the aquariums set up and big meets and marine conventions. all of them are just wet rock moves, unless someone is demoing bottle bac on dry rock setups.

You dont have to mix the two; bottle bac industry likes when we pay them cash 'just in case'

wet rock never loses its bac, ever, and can move without paying anyone - helps to know for future reference.

bottle bac is only for dealing with totally dry surfaces. anything formerly in a reef keeps all its filter bac as long as it stays wet, even if you stop feeding them for years (they get food via natural means like they did before our hobby was around)

it is impossible to starve filter bacteria by withholding feed or ammonia, no matter how many years you want to test the claim the surfaces will always pass ammonia oxidation any time you want to see if they've been self feeding. we have a three year test already on file

The microbiology of reef tank cycling.

You can skip your cycle. Ive been reefing online for twenty years and have never waited one second for a tank to cycle, because I buy rocks that are already cycled and move them home. Here's two: https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/octo-high-end-sps-skip-cycle-build.713256/...

www.reef2reef.com

 

[vetteguy53081]

Add chemi pure blue which slowly reduce nitrates. Also an algae scrubber wil maintain low nitrate for you as will Bio Beads.

 

[SaltwaterWorld1780]

also, transferring water did move lots of bacteria. millions of colonies. We can find plenty of places online that say no bac is in the water, but thats just not the case its disgustingly full of bacteria.

tank water/open hand wound/infections that can range from annoying to vibrio loss of your hand, they have millions of bacteria and filter bac are mixed in.

every item connected with your fish tank including the wall standing behind it is covered in filtration bacteria. how long they live after vectoring to non wet surfaces ranges.

Marine tanks always have sediment or floc or planktors or floating bits in the water, always.

bac ride those rafts and seed place to place, so transferring water is transferring bacteria always.

Consider all the aquariums set up and big meets and marine conventions. all of them are just wet rock moves, unless someone is demoing bottle bac on dry rock setups.

You dont have to mix the two; bottle bac industry likes when we pay them cash 'just in case'

wet rock never loses its bac, ever, and can move without paying anyone - helps to know for future reference.

bottle bac is only for dealing with totally dry surfaces. anything formerly in a reef keeps all its filter bac as long as it stays wet, even if you stop feeding them for years (they get food via natural means like they did before our hobby was around)

it is impossible to starve filter bacteria by withholding feed or ammonia, no matter how many years you want to test the claim the surfaces will always pass ammonia oxidation any time you want to see if they've been self feeding. we have a three year test already on file

The microbiology of reef tank cycling.

You can skip your cycle. Ive been reefing online for twenty years and have never waited one second for a tank to cycle, because I buy rocks that are already cycled and move them home. Here's two: https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/octo-high-end-sps-skip-cycle-build.713256/...

www.reef2reef.com

I added 20 percent of the old water and 80 percent new when I first started it. How do I fix it? Should I add more decomposing fish? Should I just let it keep cycling?

 

[brandon429]

its literally cycled no help needed. I back-edited in a link above that explains your skip cycle, even though its a long read, the end takeaway is that you are 100% cycled and only dealing with algae feed levels at this point. Per the stated nitrate test drifts, you might not even have bad nitrate levels at all. From here on out you proceed as you would any reef with high or low nitrate; it is not related to cycling its the same ability it had in the former tank. the 80% new water didn't hurt anything, even a 100% water change will not harm the cycle.

 

[SaltwaterWorld1780]

excellent. that is a skip cycle setup. nitrate is a mix of testing drift (you can search out nitrate test comparison threads that show a 50 ppm spread between two kinds on the same sample) and even if its accurate nitrate, the extra items added for the bac are degrading and pumping that nitrate up.

those items werent needed, nor the bottle bac, since you just moved rocks among tanks. it didnt hurt to add them either, just a bit of extra $

there is no degree of nitrate that will kill your filtration bacteria. the extra nitrate is only an algae feed concern.

My parameters haven’t moved for about a week (or more) so...?

 

[SaltwaterWorld1780]

My parameters haven’t moved for about a week (or more) so...?

I went to petco and they said that I was doing terrible and have no idea how I messed my cycle up, but honestly I don’t know either.

 

[brandon429]

Read my link it'll show how your cycle is done and they're cra lol

Page one of our thread is twenty misread examples, you're in that group if you have free ammonia.

If you don't you are cycled. Only ammonia is factored in updated cycling science we show

You cannot gauge a cycle accurately using red sea or api. You can only measure it luckily using those, it's impossible to stall or mess up a cycle.

 

[brandon429]

two fully pertinent rules about cycling apply to your tank:

1. you cannot undo a cycle by any degree of water changing. Literally all youve done here is change water. your rocks dont know if they're in tank 1 or tank 2, they're wet and with new 80/20 water.

2. fish will 100% die overnite when put into an uncycled tank. Yours are good. These tenets of microbiology allow us to discern cycles without testing in that thread.

 

[SaltwaterWorld1780]

two fully pertinent rules about cycling apply to your tank:

1. you cannot undo a cycle by any degree of water changing. Literally all youve done here is change water. your rocks dont know if they're in tank 1 or tank 2, they're wet and with new 80/20 water.

2. fish will 100% die overnite when put into an uncycled tank. Yours are good. These tenets of microbiology allow us to discern cycles without testing in that thread.

The fish are in the temporary tank, but how should I continue cycling the 200? Naturally cycle or should I just put more shrimp in it?

 

[brandon429]

if that 200 has rocks in it from a former tank, its already cycled. if those rocks were dry when you put them into the 200 then you have to cycle.

 

[SaltwaterWorld1780]

I just don’t know if the live rocks are still alive...? And the amount of rocks that were put in are small along with other dry rocks that were added.

 

[brandon429]

then here's a nice way to still cycle it even if unsure, from that thread:

any mix of live and dry rocks held together in water are fully activated (bac vectors onto the dry rocks just by being in the same water) within 30 days.

so regardless of what any tester says, or what you add or withhold, if live and dry rocks sit in the same water 30 days then its all cycled. Ive never seen any degree of live rock moved over fail to handle the same fish bioload even if you remove some in the new tank. Live rock is that powerful.

If you move any, where it moves to is cycled. Be sure and read the first full page of that thread for standout details

you could let any questionable cycle simply sit for 30 days, change out the water, refill, and it will carry all the fish needed. time and submersion is what cycles you don't have to worry about tester accuracy

 

[SaltwaterWorld1780]

then here's a nice way to still cycle it even if unsure, from that thread:

any mix of live and dry rocks held together in water are fully activated (bac vectors onto the dry rocks just by being in the same water) within 30 days.

so regardless of what any tester says, or what you add or withhold, if live and dry rocks sit in the same water 30 days then its all cycled. Ive never seen any degree of live rock moved over fail to handle the same fish bioload even if you remove some in the new tank. Live rock is that powerful.

If you move any, where it moves to is cycled. Be sure and read the first full page of that thread for standout details

Ok so I believe I set up about the 15-16 of October. If my tank is cycled, why would my nitrates be that high? Could it be inaccurate due to the cycle still occurring? Thanks

 

[brandon429]

on that part I gotta refer you to page one of the thread we did cover it really well right in the first post. Nitrate literally has zero factor in cycling, since we can search out 15 year old running tanks with both zero, and high nitrate. it is simply a variable species of ammonia in reefing. nitrite does not matter either per page 1

* we even use a special way of getting ammonia to read correctly, its in the final pages.

Mis testing almost ruined the true nature of bac for this hobby, we are undoing that above!

we have a way to proof check the claims too, Im aware people can make any statement on the web

the final test for cycling is that second tenet...when you do add fish, they will not die due to lack of ammonia cycling completion. The end measure for all the claims circumventing the normal cycling info are the setup tanks at the end with fish.

 

[SaltwaterWorld1780]

on that part I gotta refer you to page one of the thread we did cover it really well right in the first post. Nitrate literally has zero factor in cycling, since we can search out 15 year old running tanks with both zero, and high nitrate. it is simply a variable species of ammonia in reefing. nitrite does not matter either per page 1

* we even use a special way of getting ammonia to read correctly, its in the final pages.

Mis testing almost ruined the true nature of bac for this hobby, we are undoing that above!

we have a way to proof check the claims too, Im aware people can make any statement on the web

the final test for cycling is that second tenet...when you do add fish, they will not die due to lack of ammonia cycling completion. The end measure for all the claims circumventing the normal cycling info are the setup tanks at the end with fish.

But could the premature cycle cause the nitrates to be high or unreadable?

 

[brandon429]

The way to see it is that any nitrate reading + the known timeframe your system has been underwater is biological proof that cycling bac are there in full complement. If you were a zero nitrate measurer this thread would be even more debated. Nitrate is the endpoint but we don’t factor it in today’s cycle science because measurement accuracy varies and actual nitrate presence varies tank to tank based on factors like starting ammonia added, denitrification, fixation into living materials within the new tank etc.

neither nitrate nor nitrite levels kill fish, ergo the only part of cycling that matters is ammonia. Per every cycling chart on the web, we can name how many days it takes for ammonia to be at zero in the presence of a bioload, nitrate has nothing to do with it and the presence of nitrate wouldn’t mean your cycle is stalled and no where in reading or quick research before this thread would you see that the presence of nitrate means a cycle is stalled.

 

[SaltwaterWorld1780]

The way to see it is that any nitrate reading + the known timeframe your system has been underwater is biological proof that cycling bac are there in full complement. If you were a zero nitrate measurer this thread would be even more debated. Nitrate is the endpoint but we don’t factor it in today’s cycle science because measurement accuracy varies and actual nitrate presence varies tank to tank based on factors like starting ammonia added, denitrification, fixation into living materials within the new tank etc.

neither nitrate nor nitrite levels kill fish, ergo the only part of cycling that matters is ammonia. Per every cycling chart on the web, we can name how many days it takes for ammonia to be at zero in the presence of a bioload, nitrate has nothing to do with it and the presence of nitrate wouldn’t mean your cycle is stalled and no where in reading or quick research before this thread would you see that the presence of nitrate means a cycle is stalled.

But why would my nitrate be so high? The high lvls would surely kill fish if stress but, if I’ve had these high levels no algae blooms have occurred

 

[brandon429]

list all the sources of protein you have added to the water since the start, from that list we can discern your source of nitrate