Updated cycling science trends in 2023

[brandon429]

Xabo, if we search out Dr. Reefs bottle bac thread its one hundred pages of study involving how long common bottle bac mixes require to adhere to surfaces.

fritz if I’m not wrong was the fastest: adheres to surfaces and is immune to 100% water changes in about two days. Your cycle is done for two reasons: you’re past two days and even if this was day one it’s active right from the bottle, as bacteria are in suspension. How you choose to manage nitrate isnt related to cycling now, it’s related to how you want to reef. You can’t do anything to harm your cycle, and those few fish in a huge dilution like that would have survived anyway even without any bacteria, I’d fully bet.

 

[brandon429]

Yoyoyo I honestly struggle to imagine what level of bioload it would take to overcome fifteen pounds of cured live rock…I can’t imagine any starting bioload in reefing would overcome it unless the rock was tucked away in a sump where wastewater contact is delayed and the fish loading up top in an empty display was packed in queen angelfish, something significant. in the display, right where waste is produced that coralline live rock will eat that ammonia right up.

 

[carguy4471]

Ok. I may have some information on why the tests read so differently. I have consulted with the better half who is an actual organic chemist. This is all way over my head.

Possible explaination:

In regards to the API test: bottle number 2 that you use during the test contains sodium hydroxide. This will deprotonate ammonium converting it into ammonia. NH4 to NH3. This may explain a higher reading than an electronic version that does not use a chemical reaction to gather it’s data.

My takeaway: IF ammonium is not toxic to fish and only ammonia is (I believe this is true as ammonium cannot cross the cell membrane and is said to be 100x less toxic than ammonia) then the theory that these manual test kits have been misleading us seems solid.

I think I’m onboard. If the manual test kits are converting non toxic NH4 into additional NH3 by the elements they have put in the kit it would stand to reason your reading may be elevated.

 

[brandon429]

Thank you for that chemistry input it really adds depth to our material

I rarely get agreement on the matter as chemists also have ways of validating the non digital test kits to state they are accurate in several threads, I’m not a chemist I’m a pattern observer so my responses state things I feel other people can validate with google or forum searches

for example, why is it that all cycle doubt threads, and I mean all of them we can find using any search tool, are never seneye owners using a calibrated and correctly setup machine?


seneye owners who take time to prepare slides correctly with the pre soak, and trim the mechanisms into range by benchmarking the machine on a running reef tank post their logs online for us all to see. Ammonia control is same day for any post I’ve seen, going back about five years now since they really caught on. A massive disparity is online we can search. Try and search out reef tank cycles that used non digital ammonia tests, *see the peer posts about how long ammonia control was stated to require: two weeks to a month for about twenty years logged online. That disparity in emerging seneye logs / ammonia control within 48 hours maximum + twenty years web posts online for non digital kits/ammonia control required a month/ sets us up for inspecting past claims about cycling and where paradigms went wrong


I then factor symptomatology

we know free ammonia is plain dangerous to respiring organisms at the cellular level; liver failure in higher organisms leads to clear, defined symptoms and no dog or cat in liver failure acts normal, feeds normally, has normal energy levels - the condition is completely symptomatic in all cases, organisms can’t handle ammonia backup.

contrast that with an easy google search on stalled cycles with fish present, there must literally be 400K threads searchable on the matter. They’re all alarms based on an Api or Red Sea test kit and completely missing symptoms in fish, or delicate lysmata cleaner shrimp that will never tolerate bad reef water, yet the reefing public fully unfactors lack of symptoms across the board.


they follow the test kit without question, and buy more bottled bacteria to replace perceived dead bottled bacteria

The cycle is dead because Red Sea says so, even though my tank is three months old with fish the entire time…feeding, swimming, hosting in the open/healthy anemone I bought in the first month after adding bottle bacteria we know to instantly handle ammonia.

the fish disease forum is an excellent place to look up what ammonia poisoning looks like in marine fish within quarantine systems that truly lack surface area. Jay lists increased Gill movement, severe red coloration of gills, flashing against objects or hovering at the top for air (aerotaxis) or laying down at the bottom sideways…clear obvious symptoms we’d expect for delicate organisms


but as soon as we move to display tank stalled cycles literally any thread we can search is symptomless for the animals present

updated cycling science wants to dig into this clear standout disparity and the groupthink that promulgates it.


reefers by and large absolutely refute the fifty year old cycling charts that show universally ammonia takes at max ten days to control, and it doesn’t rise up afterwards. We took that liberty of simply eschewing documented fact about what bacteria in water do even though wastewater management and several other industries know this inherent timing to be real and accurate: non digital test kits mislead us into this assumption

 

[carguy4471]

I'm completely on board Brandon. I got to listen to how "silly" API is for using sodium hydroxide in their test kit. I was drawn diagrams of chemical reactions. I was told what things "should" have been used instead to create a better test kit. It was a fun conversation that I struggled to understand, lol. I got the jist though. I am absolutely dumbfounded that by asking 1 chemist about these test kits we, or I, have learned we may have been doing it wrong for a long time.

I am absolutely certain that when my tank gets fired up I will not be measuring Ammonia with a manual test kit.

But where do we take this knowledge? Can we still utilize the test kit to watch for Nitrite to drop? Does Nitrite matter? Is seeing the Nitrite drop still a good sign that your tank can now process out waste? IS the API Nitrite test kit accurate? Is their Nitrate test kit accurate?

Where do the hanna checkers fall into the conversation? Do they largely line up with the seneye on Ammonia? Are they also more accurate than manual test kits for other elements?

So many more questions about all of this now. But I am very excited to know I wont be waiting 4 or more weeks for my tank to cycle!!!

 

[Subsea]

I actually have a conspiracy that that's why these big online reefing companies are pushing dry rock so hard. It's not about sustainability in the oceans. Especially when it's man made aquaculture leases that are taking rock from the land and marinating it at the lease site for months or years. How does that harm the ocean? It dont! They've probably seen a correlation in their sales compared from when everyone was buying ocean rock from their brick and mortar LFS.

They probably LOVE when reefers. Especially new reefers. Are plagued with year 1 and 2 problems with dry rock. Look how many products and gidgets and gadgets it allows them to sell to remedy the problems that the sterile "pest free" environment they promote is creating. I got news....most dem pests are going to br coming right back in your tank via CUC, frags and fish. You can dip all you want but you ain't killing them eggs.

Ok put it in Qt for weeks or months. What you gonna do? Throw all the frags away that you just bought that are now compromised and break down your QT and re-cycle and assemble because a pest made it via a frag? Are there people actually doing this? I applause you if so. I'm lazy and uneducated about reefing. So there is that I admit.
Every tank that I have seen that left me in awe because of its beauty had some kind of pest or algae problem. They just manage it.


What they don't tell you about those glistening beautiful 10 and 20 thousand dollar systems they feature. Is that they're probably plumbed into matured systems and or have a sump filled with aged media or mature live rock. Which is why they can start with dry white rock and sand and at month 8 have it filled with expensive fuzzy sticks that their buddy *insert massive coral dealer* gave them for free for a plug in the video. Then you come here and see countless builds of regular people trying to emulate those videos and have the laundry list of problems. Every day. It never fails. Of course there are the reef gods on here who could go outside and fetch some ditch water from a sewer plant set up a tank and in 2 months be growing out a homewrecker frag. I'm talking about the normal pleabians in the community like myself.

Look at the tanks that WWC start up when they do feature videos. They build the setup and pack it with 5 grand in coral almost immediately. I watched one where they have rock that's literally locked in a caged area behind bars im. Not kidding......youll never be able to buy any of that rock its not for sale. I believe that rock is a huge part of their success. Not the 100s and 1000s of dollars of remedies their buddies company is trying to sell you.

Rant officially over

You should get poet laureate status for your rant.

 

[brandon429]

@carguy4471

am seeking buy in from the board chemists too / a tough lot


It’s that we no longer need test kits at all to cycle your tank.

You can describe any approach you’ll take here, before it’s even built, and I can tell you the date it will carry fish using the means we use in the how to unstick any cycle thread.

In my opinion this is the progression of cycling science into certainty and away from cautious hesitation. I’m not using anything different in testless cycling than what sellers at a reef tank convention use to align all those instant reefs for the show on its predetermined start date. Ammonia control is all that matters, we no longer need to factor nitrite and nitrate in a reef tank cycle at all for these reasons:

it’s not like some cycles stall and some complete, they’re all completed for basic ammonia control by day ten if there’s sufficient surface area / rock in system to house bacteria. There is no two weeks to one month requirement for basic ammonia control after using common cycling bacteria from a bottle and there are no cycling charts written for that delay.

nitrite has no bearing in reef tank cycling, don’t own the kit it’s a waste of money for reasons Randy Holmes Farley has posted if we search out any thread response on nitrite since he’s been on the board. Nitrite cannot stall a reef tank cycle though we were told by Dr. Tim that it can and does. I do not know why he’d say that, I am only left with truth and motivation gaps in that assertion. Don’t factor nitrite in any reef tank display cycle.


what I am certain of regarding Dr. Tims Macna talk on cycling is I’ve found thousands and thousands of dollars in linkable threads where cyclers see nitrite and buy another round of his bacteria. It sounds mean, but the fact remains I can link forty + threads of this happening, you can imagine my problem with a bottle bac maker stating anything that goes against Randy’s clear writing while selling copious extra bottle bac. I have a problem with that conflict. No sellers are allowed to make cycling rules is my takeaway

nitrate doesn’t factor because as we speak 200 reef tanks here are posting zero nitrate and dosing some, to prevent dinos. A zero nitrate tank has nothing to do with being cycled or not. The only thing we have to earnestly concern over for your planned build is fish disease preps from the fish forum.


old cycling science requires zero ammonia, zero nitrite and some registered nitrate or it says a cycle is stalled and fish disease is never ever part of an old cycling science discussion, this is harming our hobby by unfactoring known disease issues in today’s fish stocks and by creating a hyperfocus on the one parameter that handles itself just fine by day ten of any common arrangement people copy off one another to cycle a display tank. I want board chemists to begin to relay updated findings when they do cycle troubleshoots and until then my sales job isn’t done.

 

[brandon429]

@Subsea your profession in wastewater I think is a helpful backing for new cycling science. You’ve seen the extreme degrees of ammonia and nitrite it would take in a production facility to render a basic cycling chart as inaccurate: reef aquarists simply never attain those levels even with common mistakes and variations they impart to the cycle.

you are the last person on the board I’d ever expect to post an ammonia alert help post for your established reef, I feel that you and I both know permanent ammonia control is inherent aside from fish kills where rotting carcasses overcome basic controls. If you’ve seen other instances where reef tank aquarists truly lose ammonia control before a fish kill we are interested to see those examples.


my theory is that wastewater engineers and seneye owners are never, ever going to be in a state of concern over their tank’s ability to set up a cycle quickly and maintain one as long as water is present. Everyone else will be locked in doubt until a new rule set guides reef tank cycling.

 

[carguy4471]

@brandon429

By this new theory that we have our nitrifying bacteria present and ready for a bioload by day 10, what can we impart into the conversation about the population of nitrifying bacteria?

Would the standard wisdom of adding bioload slowly to allow the population of nitrifying bacteria to grow still remain true? Or is using bottle bac accelerating this timeline in some manner as well?

As an aside, if we need a chemist to chime in on the discussion at any point I'm happy to get one involved. I never thought having a high level chemist in the house would come in handy.

 

[brandon429]

I believe that an unassisted cycle, simply dry surfaces submerged in water + open- ended wait won't be ready by day ten but nobody does that type.

All cycles we can find online are either bottle bac cycles, feed- only cycles like this one below, a thirty day wait since we did it testless, or they're live rock imports of established bacteria on rock.

No bottle bac, 100% repeatable testless cycle using only fish food, done by a predetermined date vs open- ended wait:

Build Thread - My SPS Waterbox Peninsula Mini 15

Hi all. Long time member (I think I joined right around when R2R started or took off years ago) but got out of the hobby for about 6 years and now I am back! I don't see many build threads for the PM 15 (mostly the 25) so thought I'd share my journey here. This post will be a bit behind...

www.reef2reef.com

Feed only cycles are ~2% of all display cycles

Bottle bac cycles are about 75% of cycles, and some form of live rock transfer comprises the rest.

Of that copied group, all calibrated seneye posts show nearly immediate ammonia control in bottle bac and live rock skip cycles and all ammonia alert posts are from non digital test kit owners within that group.

The reason a ramp up of bioload isn't needed is due to sheer ability of bottle bac not even adhered to surfaces to carry an entire reef, if a ramp up was needed, indicating too-few bacteria at the start, these threads wouldn't be possible:

Bio-spira works great

I just started a new tank a little over a week ago. I started with all dry rock and new sand. I added a bottle of Bio-Spira and put fish and coral the same day. Never saw any ammonia and fish and coral seem healthy.

www.reef2reef.com

That's the most reef life I've ever seen started day one with bottle bac. Shatters the notion of delayed ammonia control or symptomless burning of animals, that's a three hundred dollar anemone + 6 decent size fish and corals and cuc and feed and waste all on day one. The rock was dry.

It means when dealing in the big three ways people cycle, we don't need to ramp up more bacteria we need to ramp up disease preps to handle the excellent inherent control reef tanks develop so quickly for ammonia waste

 

[brandon429]

This post isn't to keep rehashing my work threads its just to show which one I'm drawing inference from

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

Regarding ramp up and ramp down of bacteria, look at that reverse engineer study. We can take any reef on the internet, remove its sandbed and by rule that's a tremendous amount of surface area, keep the same bioload, reduce even some display rocks, and the existing bacteria on rocks instantly step up to process more. Nitrification isn't fixed rate requiring more numbers of bacteria, its speed can quickly modulate up using existing numbers to handle more waste presentation.

All seneye audits of the sand removal and rinse methods are passes, none are ammonia control fails

 

[brandon429]

Old cycling science (we're always contrasting with old cycling science) specifically purveys the notion that nitrification rates are fixed, can't modulate to faster or slower, depend on the # of cells vs the engagement level of AOB and old cycling science 100% says that thread above isn't possible.

by design, we specifically gave no system there for eight years any ramp up time for new bacteria. that was a test of updated cycling science from it's inception.

you can see we do rinses to cause perfect tank transfers, control all cycles, do upgrades and bed swaps but the undercurrent there again is testless cycling. that's fifty pages/2 mil in approximate reef jobs without any testing or the addition of bottled bacteria. it's the harshest possible treatment for a $15K sps reef, to take it apart and wash out the sandbed with tap water, but there it is page after page.

Live rock bacteria are enough for all displays. all displays are using orders beyond the amount of live rock needed to handle even a large reef bioload, says all seneye testing. these key terms tie in the theory + the performance aspect on file of new cycling science in my opinion.


*Dr. Tim is who told me about bacterial nitrification modulation vs needing number of new cells added, it's from him I'll find the quote shortly. he was posting in Dr. Reefs bottle bac thread with us for a while. page 6 approximately.


people may very well have been tap water rinsing dry or live sand in prep for a new tank before that thread, but nobody was tap rinsing out full running reef tanks, as remote outbound job work coaching, the world was trained purely on old cycling science up to the start of that sand rinse thread. Old cycling science can only use it's own reef tank at home as an example, it cannot pull from the searchable group of other reefs because seneye posts therein, and bioload carry outcomes on file when the rule said that wasn't possible, undoes it's claims.

 

[brandon429]

here are Dr. Tim's comments, see page 6


I linked page 5 for one reason, look at that first post by Eli.

Aquabiomics, the company that dna measures bacteria in reef tanks, is Eli. Isn't bottle bac efficacy a strange thing to take a stance against, considering the outcome of the thread and today's business venture in verifying reef tank bacteria

Bacteria in a bottle, Myth or Fact

lol with all these successful comments and experience, do we still really need to test lol. Emphatically yes, it needs to be tested. Because the great majority of posts supporting the notion that these products do something are not logically sound. If you add a bottle to your tank, and are...

www.reef2reef.com

web posts have absolutely fascinating trending, science, market influence and predictions can be made about the hobby and about what will happen in people's reef tanks solely off web forum post material the last 20 years.


Dr. Tim discusses on page six onward, the ways and means free bacteria get into our tank and whether or not they need to increase in number to handle instantly increased bioloading.

a second handy use for that thread is it shows plainly why fish-in cycles aren't burning fish at all, in a very well controlled API ammonia setup using very very good controls. There are six people on the planet I trust when they relay an API reading, Dr. Reef is one, Taricha is one, Dan P is one...they know how to control and account for the sensitivities on those kits that wind up as misreads for the masses.

 

[carguy4471]

That's a lot to read, but I'm nipping away at it as time allows. Good stuff!

 

[carguy4471]

@brandon429

If I am piecing all of this together, on my upcoming tank I can use live sand w/ dry rock and some Fritz and drop fish in the tank in 72 hours? Is that about the jist?

I will have a Seneye in the tank after reading all of this.

 

[xabo]

You can drop fish in the same day/night.

 

[carguy4471]

You can drop fish in the same day/night.

This is fantastic! BUT.... since I sure do consider myself a new reefer (have only had two tanks up less than a year... a few years ago). Would you recommend an ammonia dose or two for verification of ammonia reduction, and as good practice to ensure said new reefer is properly reading params with new equipment? I feel like my comfort level would be higher moving forward if I had seen a dose of ammonia vanish. I am thrilled that I wont have to look at a fallow tank for 4 or more weeks!!!

 

[brandon429]

Dr. Reef does exactly that with his very expensive prepped fish for sale: he uses fritz skip cycling.

risk caveat: a small number of bottles are inactive via production error or holding variations, you can see in Dr Reef's thread. the % is so small I've never factored it one single time in any fish-in cycle. it won't be like you're adding in ten fish first go, in a decent size tank a few small starter fish aren't a load test even with weakened or 90% dead bottle bac. the living 10% catch up just fine.

I would enjoy having that seneye as the backup for sure~

key details: out of the box it has to be tuned, the slides have to be prepped and you need to have it read correctly on a running reef display before using it to make cycling calls. An untuned seneye is no different than trying to play a non tuned guitar. the slide prep alone is tedious, there are multiple settings on the app that have to be in line this is why we calibrate it before using it as cycle proofs. a tuned seneye will read .00x ppm nh3 on 99% of all running reef tanks, thousandths ppm not hundredths or tenths.

this test instantly skips all disease protocol and puts you at an 80% predicted loss rate of fish in the first several months unless they're prepped before adding.

and if you add them first, that means all your incoming frags and CUC and hardscape changes have to pass through 45 day fallow before going into your reef, or buying prepped fish was all for nothing. you will need to run two simultaneous tanks to keep up biosecurity.


you are better off using your new quick cycle for corals than fish, stock the tank first, then go fallow on the whole tank for 45 days, then add fish. You'd be adding fish months or a year from now if you want true disease planning, unless you plan to keep a separate sub reef going to use as pass-through fallow.

skipping preps won't work. it will only seem like it works temporarily. two small clownfish skipped prep are likely to be ok/those are tough we can see in hundreds of nano builds but any speciation beyond that simple mix is doomed to get an outbreak, it's the #1 trend we see in cycles today-delayed disease onset not avoidable.

 

[brandon429]

**once you have a tuned and verified seneye, make sure to run it on a known cycled reef at the start and keep those logs to attach to findings, then you can reasonably set .05 ppm nh3 as the upper limit of acceptable safety provided you benched it at .00x before the cycling test was ran.

anything above .05 ppm nh3 is ammonia noncontrol.

**we had a seneye benchmark out as .04 nh3 on that prior-mentioned API vs seneye thread*

his packed little nano reef was over a year old, certainly cycled, and it showed .04 on his seneye/

we didn't bother tuning it via the trim setting to .004 simply because .04 as a reference was good enough, his stuff wasn't dying, and we wanted to see the difference in baseline from the suspected completed cycle tank. it was the change between the two tanks we valued seeing vs just ensuring the main display calibration put it in the .00x's

the suspected cycle tank was the one producing the dark green API test but seneye ran on that system also showed .04, that's why we deemed it a misread on api's part. that's too darn green to be .04:

seneyes are very very good at indicating change and raises and resolve rates, given the interaction between pH and temp/the things that affect the nh3 accuracy the bottom line reading may not be perfect. able to measure small differences between a known cycled tank and a suspect cycled tank is it's gold ability.

 

[xabo]

This is fantastic! BUT.... since I sure do consider myself a new reefer (have only had two tanks up less than a year... a few years ago). Would you recommend an ammonia dose or two for verification of ammonia reduction, and as good practice to ensure said new reefer is properly reading params with new equipment? I feel like my comfort level would be higher moving forward if I had seen a dose of ammonia vanish. I am thrilled that I wont have to look at a fallow tank for 4 or more weeks!!!

I didn't......but you should do what makes you comfortable. I have 3 Tangs that were in a holding bin w/a air stone for about 2 weeks and felt I needed to move them.