Turbo Start help

[officialreefbros]

Hey. This is my 1st time using turbo start. Is it normal to have such a high Nitrate spike this fast? I use the algaebarn cycle kit with the Nitrocycle. It was 1oz turbo start for my 20 gallon thank. Should I let it keep going or should I do a large water change now?

 

[reefrubble]

Hi newbiereefs,

I would suggest that you hold off on doing any water changes for a few more weeks, unless you already have livestock, in which case please let me know and I'll give help you out on how to determine when to do them and how much to change at once. Assuming you do not have any livestock and have a protein skimmer running, you will want to wait until at least the 2 week mark, however, waiting longer may be beneficial depending at what your water parameter tests are reading at the 2 week mark. If you do not have a protein skimmer running, I would advise doing a water change at the 2-3 week mark depending on what your waters parameter tests read.

Whether you already placed livestock in the tank or not, I recommend making a trip to your local Petco and picking up an Instant Ocean 250 mL BIO-Spira bottle (the large bottle) from Petco and emptying the entire contents of the bottle in by adding half of the bottle at once the day you buy it and the rest the day after. Fritz-Zyme TurboStart 900 is great and I have used it in the past, however I have discovered that it occasionally needs to be repeated a week or two after initial dosing due to test results starting to read high in all three parameters. When I have done as I described with BIO-Spira, I have had a perfect track record of near immediate cycling without issues later down the road. Its incredible stuff.

No matter what, no water changes you do for right now should be "large." Any water changes you do should be no more than 1/3 of the entire tank volume.

If you have not added any livestock yet, I would highly suggest not adding any yet until parameters have gone to cycled levels and stayed consistently reading at those levels for at least a few days. If you do add livestock at that point, it should be minimal.

If you have already added livestock, no judgement here! We've all done it (many of us more than once) and all have learned a lot from starting our tanks that way.

I hope this helps!

 

[Spare time]

Hey. This is my 1st time using turbo start. Is it normal to have such a high Nitrate spike this fast? I use the algaebarn cycle kit with the Nitrocycle. It was 1oz turbo start for my 20 gallon thank. Should I let it keep going or should I do a large water change now?

I think 1ppm ammonia = 3.4ppm nitrate

 

[officialreefbros]

I think 1ppm ammonia = 3.4ppm nitrate

Could it be something with the Test? I heard API isn't the most accurate and the numbers don't seem to add up. The 20ml for the 20gallons should be around the 3ppm according to their website, so if all that got processed I should only be around 10.2, but I still have some Nitrite left. It claims for the 5 day cycle, so could I be near the end of that? If so should I just WC to drop the Nitrates?

Hi newbiereefs,

I would suggest that you hold off on doing any water changes for a few more weeks, unless you already have livestock, in which case please let me know and I'll give help you out on how to determine when to do them and how much to change at once. Assuming you do not have any livestock and have a protein skimmer running, you will want to wait until at least the 2 week mark, however, waiting longer may be beneficial depending at what your water parameter tests are reading at the 2 week mark. If you do not have a protein skimmer running, I would advise doing a water change at the 2-3 week mark depending on what your waters parameter tests read.

Whether you already placed livestock in the tank or not, I recommend making a trip to your local Petco and picking up an Instant Ocean 250 mL BIO-Spira bottle (the large bottle) from Petco and emptying the entire contents of the bottle in by adding half of the bottle at once the day you buy it and the rest the day after. Fritz-Zyme TurboStart 900 is great and I have used it in the past, however I have discovered that it occasionally needs to be repeated a week or two after initial dosing due to test results starting to read high in all three parameters. When I have done as I described with BIO-Spira, I have had a perfect track record of near immediate cycling without issues later down the road. Its incredible stuff.

No matter what, no water changes you do for right now should be "large." Any water changes you do should be no more than 1/3 of the entire tank volume.

If you have not added any livestock yet, I would highly suggest not adding any yet until parameters have gone to cycled levels and stayed consistently reading at those levels for at least a few days. If you do add livestock at that point, it should be minimal.

If you have already added livestock, no judgement here! We've all done it (many of us more than once) and all have learned a lot from starting our tanks that way.

I hope this helps!

Thanks! So far I only added the nitrocycle and fitz, but have copepods sitting and waiting to go in (hopefully they will stay alive). my plan was to add them in and dose phyto to try to kick the tank off with a large number of pods. The numbers just don't seem to add up. Would high Nitrates kill off the bacteria? Shouldn't I be good just off of the single-dose? I read a lot of times there is a 2nd mini cycle due to the bacteria being inactive after the 1st cycle and when the routine fish poop happens it kicks up.

 

[reefrubble]

Of course! A second mini nitrogen cycle occurring is definitely not normal or desirable. In fact, it can considerably prolong the time your tank takes to mature. That is the reason I advise adding BIO-Spira because it avoids any of this altogether. Getting ammonia levels to zero will be essential for the copepods, however they should fare better in elevated nitrite and nitrate levels. Adding Phytoplankton, like you plan on doing, will also certainly help get the copepod population up and running once you introduce them.

Drop a like if this helps!

 

[Adrift]

Bio -Spira has always been my go to starter.

 

[aSaltyKlown]

Are you dosing ammonia? You are good to go to add the pods or livestock. The API kit notoriously reads .5 and you may be waiting months for it to read 0 if at all. Nitrite is not a concern at this level.

Curious as to why more bottled bac would be needed? When using bottled bac, you are able to add at least one fish after adding the bac. This is why you pay for it. The bacteria will be able to handle the load of a single fish maybe two. Is it safe to wait? Yes, but not needed. The only purpose of waiting for weeks is when you do not use any form of bottled bac and cycle naturally by using shrimp or ghost feeding.

 

[officialreefbros]

Are you dosing ammonia? You are good to go to add the pods or livestock. The API kit notoriously reads .5 and you may be waiting months for it to read 0 if at all. Nitrite is not a concern at this level.

Curious as to why more bottled bac would be needed? When using bottled bac, you are able to add at least one fish after adding the bac. This is why you pay for it. The bacteria will be able to handle the load of a single fish maybe two. Is it safe to wait? Yes, but not needed. The only purpose of waiting for weeks is when you do not use any form of bottled bac and cycle naturally by using shrimp or ghost feeding.

Yeah that's my confusion as well. I did the initial dose of ammonia and would like to add the phyto and pods today. Should I keep adding a little in? I'm just getting concerned with all the nitrates it is making.

 

[Azedenkae]

Could it be something with the Test?

Absolutely, and in fact it applies to most nitrate tests: . The nitrate test kit converts a small fraction to nitrite, before reading that as a proxy. So when you have nitrite present, nitrate can read erroneously high.

There is actually zero problems you have with your cycle right now. It is going perfectly fine.

 

[Jay'sReefBugs]

Just to clarify Nitro start is the ammonia source. I know what kit he's using and have had great success with it . Normally 8 day's completes the cycle in my experience with it

 

[officialreefbros]

Just to clarify Nitro start is the ammonia source. I know what kit he's using and have had great success with it . Normally 8 day's completes the cycle in my experience with it

Thanks! Did you keep adding it in at all? Or just the two, wc and go go go

 

[Jay'sReefBugs]

Thanks! Did you keep adding it in at all? Or just the two, wc and go go go

Twice ones at the start and once 2 double check ammonia consumption was happening

 

[Dan_P]

Hey. This is my 1st time using turbo start. Is it normal to have such a high Nitrate spike this fast? I use the algaebarn cycle kit with the Nitrocycle. It was 1oz turbo start for my 20 gallon thank. Should I let it keep going or should I do a large water change now?

As long as nitrite is present, the nitrate test results are meaningless. The nitrite gives a very high false positive in the nitrate test. The goal now is to monitor the NH3 level. When it is gone, the system has a healthy population of nitrifying bacteria.

Not sure why people do water change unless it is to reduce the nitrite or nitrate level before adding live stock.

 

[brandon429]

I have my cycles do the large water change because it removes doubt, not any particularly bad compounds

removes a little algae fuel too, many cyclers are inputting orders more ammonia than needed to assuage doubt in bacteria=fertilizer and we know how the uglies usually fares in the coming months of full on bright lighting right from the start.

on non digital kits we are roughly guaranteed to endure complete doubt for the entire trip leading up to adding fish without disease preps, but if there's a 100% water change at the end then they know for sure that tank is now full of safe water even if the test kits keep reading green which for sure exist. At that point the bioslicks carrying the new fish work just fine and we don't hear much about fish issues again at least for 6-8 months.

 

[brandon429]

NReefs that was a poorly veiled attempt to get you to put all concerns into disease preps and not any concern into the cycle

You will find in researching cycles we don't have any losses of fish during the cycle on this site... but all losses occur shortly thereafter and the disease forum with its daily input of help threads provides valuable pattern tracking for how long it takes the losses to manifest

The most up to date cycle trending you can receive involves fish disease preps, the cycle here is done just fine even if non digital tests give pause

The reason people concern so much over cycling is because they want a safe place to hold fish... it does no good to give cyclers a start date and then withhold vital information that kills fish in the summertime... adaptive fallow and quarantine is where longevity exists for dry start cycles/ source= all studies from the fish disease forum

turbo start has your cycle done already, its same day / max 48 hour bacteria when tracked on seneye. The tests above reflect not any degree of status about your cycle. do a water change to export concern, refill with good reef water clean and ready, and choose your disease protocol before adding fish. adding pods early on is a great idea for dry rock starts, more should do that.
(Dr Reef's bottle bac thread tracked fritz as the fastest-adhering bacteria of them all/ 1-2 day average per his posts)

 

[officialreefbros]

haha thanks! I get what you mean. I've been holding at 0.25ppm for ammonia and 2ppm for Nitrites for the past 3 days. I placed an order for 2 clowns at my LFS, and they have great reviews for fish since they dose them with copper and everyone says they have had great quality. I'm going to give it a week or two more and then do some water changes and then the little guys. Do you think it would be worth it to do a WC and d
ose some more ammonia to ensure the fritz is established? Is there a concern with having the bacteria dying off?

 

[brandon429]

The bacteria in biofilms lining the system cannot be starved now if kept wet, your cycle can’t fail now. Pretty neat to see more and more lfs pre treating fish thats really a keen response of them based on trending in the hobby

 

[officialreefbros]

Yeah definitely great to see! And since it is the 1st fish the whole tank is basically the quarantine at this point LOL Thanks for the help!

 

[Spare time]

Could it be something with the Test? I heard API isn't the most accurate and the numbers don't seem to add up. The 20ml for the 20gallons should be around the 3ppm according to their website, so if all that got processed I should only be around 10.2, but I still have some Nitrite left. It claims for the 5 day cycle, so could I be near the end of that? If so should I just WC to drop the Nitrates?

The test could be relatively wide ranging in the realistic error range, but rocks and sand take out water space so that is something to take into account

 

[officialreefbros]

That's true! It's finally showing 0 for ammonia so hopefully in the next few days nitrites will drop and I'll be ready to start!