Tank Un-cycled Help please

[William Mumford]

Your right- I should have said 'his tests were incorrect', that I wasnt in 'his house', and that I didnt know what 'he' was adding or subtracting.

As to the rest - I think I was answering your question when you asked me 'how could I know?' If you didnt want the answer why did you ask me. To clarify - the reason I know it had to be an error is that it cannot take 8 months to cycle a tank - unless there is a mistake in testing - or adding something that can affect the cycle.

Good call. Thank you for answering and helping me become a better reefer. Mnfish1 for reefer of the year huge help and great member. He can tell ammonia levels by eye test and will test your tank for you.

 

[MnFish1]

Good call. Thank you for answering and helping me become a better reefer. Mnfish1 for reefer of the year huge help and great member. He can tell ammonia levels by eye test and will test your tank for you.

Thanks for the nomination

 

[mta_morrow]

Thanks for the nomination

I second the nomination!

 

[Ryan9316]

Well you guys were partially right, the level of free ammonia seems low (I read it as alert) according to the badge, this is after a 90% water change yesterday however, and zero feeding. After those measures it should definitely be zero were it fully cycled, so what gives?

 

[brandon429]

thats a non digital, non seneye reading so we still think it doesnt factor. tank=cycled.

the testing back and forth never ends, we either adhere to test based cycling or we dont dont you love reefing options.

final takeaway: you can start, or continue waiting for the badges to allow it.
proofing without badges:

buy six snails and put them in, in a non cycled tank they're dead by the morning and the tank smells. but if you put them in and they dont die, then we've cycle umped successfully number #1021 and this didnt change my stance on today's ammonia testing issues for the hobby. those are handy for indicating dead fish/giant amounts.

only seneye and the digital meters can be trusted. if you get one of those, no ammonia to the thousandths.

 

[Ryan9316]

thats a non digital, non seneye reading so we still think it doesnt factor. tank=cycled.

the testing back and forth never ends, we either adhere to test based cycling or we dont dont you love reefing options.

final takeaway: you can start, or continue waiting for the badges to allow it.
proofing without badges:

buy six snails and put them in, in a non cycled tank they're dead by the morning and the tank smells. but if you put them in and they dont die, then we've cycle umped successfully number #1021 and this didnt change my stance on today's ammonia testing issues for the hobby. those are handy for indicating dead fish/giant amounts.

only seneye and the digital meters can be trusted. if you get one of those, no ammonia to the hundred-thousandths.

I have three trochus snails and they are fine. So why are the corals suffering?

 

[brandon429]

if there are coral issues, its independent of cycling, but those snails are a great bio indicator of nitrifiers how cool you already have some! they'd rot overnite and stink/die if there wasnt cycle bac already fully, completely, not getting better in 12 more mos in place.

on coral challenge threads we have any number of irritants going on etc. you aren't running gfo or phosphate uptaking media right?

what about feeding, how have you been feeding the corals

 

[Ryan9316]

I stopped all feeding, I removed the rowaphos yesterday. As for feeding before I detected ammonia I was doing 1x weekly reef roids (targeted) and acropower.

 

[brandon429]

theres the coral issue. due to hesitation on cycling the withholding began~ resume full reefing wo further delay. begin feeding etc and either ignore the testers or discard them.

with those items restored, you might see a little more algae in the future but can put that back if needed. the reason I named those as common coral irritants, is they are.

your tank now needs a month of being treated great to rebound.

 

[Ryan9316]

theres the coral issue. due to hesitation on cycling the withholding began~ resume full reefing wo further delay. begin feeding etc and either ignore the testers or discard them.

with those items restored, you might see a little more algae in the future but can put that back if needed. the reason I named those as common coral irritants, is they are.

your tank now needs a month of being treated great to rebound.

Well, I don't think that is correct, but since I'm not as experienced I'm going to follow your instructions.

I broadcast fed a light amount of reef roids and feed the fish gut loaded mysis. I put in half a cap of acropower, even though I only have to Acro's left =(. I'll update the thread as things progress

 

[brandon429]

Consider this work thread we just closed out

Nuvo 10 Crash?

Hi everybody, new member and my first post so I hope this is the right place; I need help with my nuvo 10 ASAP! To begin, this nuvo 10 was set up about 3 months ago, cycled and all (came over from freshwater so not that much of a newbie). Easy coral was not added until a month ago and fish 3...

www.reef2reef.com

Watch for these patterns:

-Hesitation vs acting
-Thorough vs partial
-Willing to repeat method as needed vs unwilling
-before pic, starting pic, vs the last update today
-the degree of insult his tank went through. Literally no care for weeks, twice over, we bring it back both times.

If you ever think your reef is in trouble, that method above is cpr it will bring the tank back, we show.

 

[W1ngz]

Those badges can sometimes take 24 hours to report correctly. The one I recently put in my quarantine tank was just a tiny bit green when I first got it, and that was on a clean tank with fresh water and no fish yet.

I was a bit confused at first, but decided to take the advice I throw around here like candy - obeserve, wait and see what happens. It was yellow when I got home from work the next day.

 

[Ed Hutchings]

I surely don't think psycho babble sounding posts do anyone any good. But I'm a no one. I have no cool badges by my name.

To be quite direct, you have a really small reef tank and you're making huge wholesale changes and it's just unhappy. Simple as that. Stop screwing with it. Simple as that. Let it runs its course. It may get worse before it gets better. Its reefing. Nothing happens quickly except failure.

 

[brandon429]

Does that mean you think his cycle is done

It was nonspecific as an action plan / couldn't be sure

The major theme is whether cycle is finished or not, by advising hands off do you agree the cycle is done? In five pages was wondering if more than two think that. The OP wants to know why feeding his tank seemed to cause an ammonia spike

 

[reefiniteasy]

its whatever gallonage of water you are able to manipulate fully, if required, and not in parts. if a system is so big that you can't hardly access that water for a rip clean, or the bottom most rocks for scraping out brush algae, then we've chosen the wrong size tank at least for guaranteed safe running. his willingness to access this tank so far means its the right size imo.

When I started my classroom BioCube so many people suggested going bigger. It’ll be easier they said. The quote above makes me feel good, that I made the right choice in choosing the size I did. And so far we have been successful. We’ll see how that changes when we add coral.

Also, what is exporting?

 

[brandon429]

Just cleaning and water changes, exporting the cloudy waste that we compile over time. The OPs tank here may not need any such deep cleaning, but the point was that should he be in doubt of his tanks status, he can just clean it out and change the water and it’s no harm.

Being thorough isn’t bad, we brought back a tank about to die using thorough cleaning above. Occasional thorough cleaning is life extending, it’s tank intervention if desired.

In our big thread called the sand rinse thread, hundreds of people want to be able to move their tanks home to home and not die

And when they post getting ready to move, there is nothing wrong with their tank. Nothing is wrong with the tank to warrant a full water change and sandbed rinse to total clarity, but we still take it apart and rinse out/export all the waste, and then they set up the tank at new home with no loss. For twenty four pages

If we were having them move the sand and current water over unrinsed, we would have losses mixed in with ongoing invasions of cyano-not the case. Home move work threads are one way of inspecting what happens if a hundred reefs do one specific set of moves...cleaning moves. we can extract out own patterns from the collection.


So if your tank starts to veer off course, you don’t have to take weeks and months to guide it back. By owning an accessible tank and by knowing how forced restarts work, you have the ability to knock it back into line at will using your current rocks and sand and two hours work all at once. No need to concern over cleaning or feeding causing loss of filtration bac, because patterns show no losses. A nano owner can change out all the water to reset it if needed. it is not a rule in reefing that we just ride our water column out to the very end...we can change course and perk it up if needed.

 

[Ed Hutchings]

My opinion is a massive cleaning and massive water changes are the complete opposite of what he should do. I think that's contributing to the problem not helping it.

 

[MnFish1]

My opinion is a massive cleaning and massive water changes are the complete opposite of what he should do. I think that's contributing to the problem not helping it.

I am not sure whether massive cleaning will help or not (I tend to agree with you)- After re-reading through this - I'm not sure which 'problem' we're talking about. Is the 'high ammonia', is it 'corals not doing well', is it 'the tank is 'un-cycled' is it something else?

I know you don't like 'psychobabble posts' (didn't understand that) so - I'll just say - Its really helpful for example - in your post above to explain your opinion but also 'why' you have that opinion. That way people know what you're talking about - Not meant to criticize you - just trying to figure out what you're trying to say.

 

[Ed Hutchings]

I am not sure whether massive cleaning will help or not (I tend to agree with you)- After re-reading through this - I'm not sure which 'problem' we're talking about. Is the 'high ammonia', is it 'corals not doing well', is it 'the tank is 'un-cycled' is it something else?

I know you don't like 'psychobabble posts' (didn't understand that) so - I'll just say - Its really helpful for example - in your post above to explain your opinion but also 'why' you have that opinion. That way people know what you're talking about - Not meant to criticize you - just trying to figure out what you're trying to say.

The psycho babble comment wasn't directed towards you. I'll leave it at that.

What I'm trying to say is, one of the most important aspects of successful reef keeping is consistency. Our inhabitants, more than anything, want consistency. Water quality goes without saying, but it needs to be consistent.

The title of the thread is "tank uncycled itself". One poster commented they can't uncycle themselves. If we can all agree that the term "cycle" or "cycled" more precisely, being used here generally is understood to mean the point at which an aquarium's biological process has found equilibrium, then we must all agree wholesale changes to the system would critically disturb that balance. Therefore, the system hasn't uncylced itself, it has been uncycled by the keeper.

Because a tank has been "cycled" does not make it mature. They are 2 different things. The only thing that will mature a tank is time. Simple as that.

 

[brandon429]

Have you clicked on our work threads that show opposite of what you wrote, succinctly


It is generally accepted that reefs self correct over time, I’m not pushing the safe zone am just saying there are times to intervene, you listed none. We listed many, by going where the work is needed.

Official Sand Rinse and Tank Transfer thread

If you are reading this thread to cure a tank invasion from a link I sent you, we do not need to identify your type of invasion here we do not need you to test anything at anytime regarding nitrate, phosphate etc Above all, we do not need to see a microscope slide picture of your invasion at...

www.reef2reef.com

there’s some work of the opposite approach.

*dont think we are mutually exclusive, creative types in there have pre cleaned the tank for longevity (hands on, opposite of your advice) then re applied biodiversity like refugium charger kits to instantly diversify

Then they don’t have to reclean, we try to find balanced options for dealing with tank access.


The tank does not have, and didn’t have, free ammonia. It never uncycled. We’re just debating tank care options now