Saltwater cycle possible stuck

N

Nikki-lynne

New member
Hey guys, I am new to saltwater tanks but have been doing freshwater tanks for the past 3 years. I have a 30 gallon tank on day 15. The tank has about 40 pounds of sand that came with Bacteria packets, and dry live rock. Of course with filter and heater with power heads.
I’m currently doing a fish less cycle with fish food. My Ammonia has been staying between 1-2ppm. On day 6 I saw a small bit of nitrites at 0.25ppm, but since then I haven’t seen any nitrites and no nitrates either. I have dose Seachem stability as per instructions to help with the cycle.
Am I just being impatient or is something going wrong with my cycle. I’ve been using API testing (I’ve read about how they aren’t great but currently I don’t have any other options right now) even used a strip test to see if my liquid testing kit was the issue. Both are showing the same parameters.
 
What filter are you using?

Do you have a Local Fish Store (“LFS”)? A lot of times they offer water testing.

I’ve never used API because, IMO, they’re those and strips just aren’t very accurate. I prefer Salifert or Hanna Checkers.
 
I don’t have a LFS close to me, the closest one is 3.5 hours away. The only LFS close to me are apart of Pet value and I don’t trust them to properly check it.
I’m running a canister filter right now, eventually I’m going to be transiting to sump later.
I’ve never had issues with API and the people I know who run saltwater use API too. I want to eventually use Hanna for all my testers.
 
gotcha on the LFS and test kits.

What’s in the canister filter? What type of media.
 
it’s an fluval 307, I just cleaned it and replaced the media. So bio rings, carbon, biomax+ foam, bio foam max pad, and foam block
 
I’m thinking your cycle is done. While I do not believe Stability was tested, @Dr. Reef conducted tests on numerous brands of bottled bacteria and found that the constant in them was they were typically completed in about 10 days (I can’t find the thread currently on it).

@brandon429 may also be able to help elaborate on this a little more.
 
Wouldn't hurt to add 5 to 10 pounds of liverock shipped in water to the mix. I am just not patient enough to wait for dry rock
 
my opinion on this cycle with its unique variables:

this is a contact time cycle vs a 2ppm spike aka Dr Tims instructions approach.

The same ends, same bioload processing ability happens with either approach but the timescale moves differently. one single feeding will still cycle a tank but it'll take a month or close to it

Advanced feeding and bottle bac can get it ready quicker than api would ever agree, as well.

This bottle bac added instantly carries bioload.

Says it right on the label, people dose bac and add clowns on day one the last 20 years and those fish aren't harmed: that's a low load test for concentrated bacteria.

and anyone who'll seneye verify the claim will see what Dr. Reef saw in his posted lengthy experiments: ammonia control right off the bat in nearly all cases when most brands of bottle bac are added. Stability was part of his 100 page bottle bac study on r2r

it tested just fine.

day ten is a core date because that's enough time for dosed bacteria to *implant* and not be peeled off surfaces during normal tank cleaning.

so if you add dosed bacteria to a new dry tank and then in 12 hours you do a 100% water change, you're back to uncycled.

But on or before day ten, those dosed bacteria are implanted onto surfaces and they're reproducing. they can't be peeled off by six 100% water changes back to back with a one hour air delay between each change- no joke. They're on and attached. And strong. the feed added is enough to sustain bacterial we never have to dose to 2ppm if we can wait a little while to start.

as mentioned above by day ten *all* printed cycling charts from books (Those aren't contaminated by api color guesses) show ability to control ammonia by day ten and that's what we track in marine cycling. Nitrite and nitrate are now unimportant to know because neither are harmful presences in the reef tank. nitrite matters in freshwater or hyposalinity reef quarantines, low chloride setups, but not display reefing.

To see why nitrite no longer factors at all in display reefing, and cycling too, search out anything Randy Holmes Farley has stated about nitrite in the last 27 yrs online no joke it's been that long.

Nitrate can be zero in cycled tanks... why bother assessing it during a cycle. Zero means nothing about the cycle.

Ammonia is what counts in marine cycling and it doesn't have to be tested for, or else all cycling charts we could look up from published materials wouldn't all have the ammonia line dropping by day ten. One axis of a cycle chart is a timescale

you can solve cycling puzzles with that axis it doesn't have to be the parameter one, especially if api is the available tool.

it's not that the tank is underfed in my opinion, it's that this low consistent level of ammonia coming from protein degradation isn't helpful to assess by api testing.

Give it 14 total days of wait, more than enough, then begin reefing without any testing at all for the reasons mentioned.

To give a specific start date to a cycle vs an open- ended wait is the change from old to new cycling science.

I have an actively running 50 page thread at reef2reef of tank after tank after tank using time based cycling and stocking by day ten, it's going to be the same pattern by page 100 too.

The reason to change cycling approaches is because the old system fails our fish in two ways:

1. Zero mention of disease preps. Disease unrelated to cycling kills fish, nobody's fish die during cycling anymore (how many deaths are in this very new tank thread if we read 50 back? Zero?) Old cycling science fails by misinforming readers on the real risk to their fish, they claim it's the stuck cycle. It's crypto and brooklynella and uronema and flukes et al. By specifically not telling new tankers what to care about, old cycling science kills fish we now aim to preserve

2. Heavy focus on believing any reading from any test kit in any context. Zero ammonia is a firm rule from old cycling science. This creates a hyperfocus on eliminating ammonia and never teaches that disease preps are what we must care about: old cycling science can't fathom and won't validate time- based cycles.


The reason we do testless predictive cycling is so we can know exactly when any reef tank will be ready based on its starting arrangement. We then study a fish disease protocol and that alone determines when fish go in, and in what order.
 
Took me over a month to cycle my 120g using dr. Tims one and only plus his ammonia. Complete waste of time and money. Contacted them and ended up getting blown off.

Whenever starting with "dead" rock and sand, the cycle always has taken me longer. Now add a couple actual live rocks in the mix and possibly add some live sand. That cycle just got seriously shorter. I cycled my last 90g tank this way and cycle was complete in under 2 weeks.
 
I predict that in that cycle assessment above, your ammonia test has a 95% chance of being red sea or api.

I predict 150% that no animal deaths resulted from seeming to take so long, and that solely a non digital test kit where we subjectively rate a color chart was the basis for claiming the length of time to readiness.

Last prediction: all three cycling parameters were factored to gage completion (the nitrite arc down is over twenty days timing though we don't test for it any longer in updated cycling science) and the prediction is that no disease preps were factored into assessing the tank as ready for fish

How much of that is accurate/ if something died during the start attempt that would be atypical and worth verifying to help carve cycling predictability.

Agreed any live rock added to the display will skip the cycle and be able to run any basic bioload added. I myself won't use anything but total skip cycle coralline live rock. I pay my lfs well enough they give me their good nfs stuff :)

If it's in a pet store it's for sale, I know the sign on the tank says it isn't though. That is to stop the usual inquiries heh
 
brandon429 said:
I predict that in that cycle assessment above, your ammonia test has a 95% chance of being red sea or api.

I predict 150% that no animal deaths resulted from seeming to take so long, and that solely a non digital test kit where we subjectively rate a color chart was the basis for claiming the length of time to readiness.

Last prediction: all three cycling parameters were factored to gage completion (the nitrite arc down is over twenty days timing though we don't test for it any longer in updated cycling science) and the prediction is that no disease preps were factored into assessing the tank as ready for fish

How much of that is accurate/ if something died during the start attempt that would be atypical and worth verifying to help carve cycling predictability.

Agreed any live rock added to the display will skip the cycle and be able to run any basic bioload added. I myself won't use anything but total skip cycle coralline live rock. I pay my lfs well enough they give me their good nfs stuff :)

If it's in a pet store it's for sale, I know the sign on the tank says it isn't though. That is to stop the usual inquiries he
Click to expand...
Everything in this tank was dead and all live rock bleached. Followed his instructions exactly. I also believe the ammonia is dosed too high if following the bottle. I never used this bacteria in a bottle method before. Don't know why I even chose to try it this time. Over 20 years and I have always cycled using live rock and sand seeded. Had always gone perfect for me and taken no time at all to be fish ready.

This time around, ammonia levels stayed really high and did nothing for about 3 1/2 weeks. Way past their time frame and what they advertise. It wasn't until I did a 50%ish water change about another week later to lower ammonia, add some established rock and sand, just like i have always done and cycled the tank in about 2 weeks. Ammonia levels at 1st were with api, even though I think they are crap and never accurate. My salifert kits and hanna reagents had all been years past expiration from being in storage for about 5 years. Anyhow... i tested ammonia levels with API, then salifert and finally with hanna. Nitrite was tested with salifert and Nitrate with hanna also.

No fish death that could possibly be lead to fish tank since all the new fish have velvet or have already died within 1 week of addition. If they had not had gotten velvet, they would still all be happy and healthy... yet I do not contribute this to dr. Tims one and only rip off. I would contribute that from converting back to my old tried and true ways of cycling my tanks.

Not everybody has a positive experience using those bottled bacteria product's. Some people might, but for me it was simply a scam and the company didn't care. Instead they got defensive with excuses and trying to find reasons why it was my fault. I should have known better and stuck to my old methods, but after reading so much and this being the first tank that I actually was starting with rock that had been "cooked" bleached or sterilized, whatever people want to call it. I figured the bacteria might actually help since no place around me has actual live rock available and yea it could have been ordered, but I already had over 175-200lbs of clean rock to use.

Plain and simple, my opinion will stay the same. Maybe it would have differed if the company cared enough to help correct a possible issue.
 
One of the most interesting things that took me twenty years to notice was that I've never seen a cycle fail where fish died yet it's the #1 stated risk in all reefing training, the stalled cycle. Everything we do is aimed at preventing that consequence

but it's never manifested isn't that amazing

It's a word of mouth warning only, but nobody's ever seen it happen personally and to me that's fascinating. To make that statement I'm assuming not one reader here now or in the future is going to link a thread they were in where the cycle stalled and fish died

Not just a test reading, but the fish died as they will in uncycled tanks. We can't just set up a dry sand dry rock nano, add synthetic mixed saltwater, three clowns, a hawkfish and two decent sized anemones - it'll be dead in likely under 36 hours.

but why is it when we make literally any attempt at cycling, things work out on a predictable scale regarding lethality

Isn't that fascinating, what accomplishes that stark dichotomy in outcome? Whatever it is, that's truth in cycling.

try searching one out on Google using typical terms. Ignore any search returns with me yapping on them and look for pure examples where fish died convincingly of ammonia poisoning from the stall.


for the 2 examples you can find from 2016 lol aren't we just pinning every occasional fish loss on ammonia? Rapid acclimation can't be in play, ever? What about genetic malady an inherent risk to any life form, heart attack fish can't exist? Even with those risks take notice in the search that all posts labeled stalled cycle are:

-Not a seneye calibrated from a running tank initially, never that causing the readout (100% of calibrated seneye cycles are under control pretty much by day 1 much less day ten)

-a test inference of fail vs animal loss as the thread title. The thread title is about a readout yet the tank looks and functions normally... what was added, lived

- no symptoms from any animal for ammonia poisoning

- are routinely deemed stalled based on nitrite and nitrate assessments

That predictability made me hungry to know the truth in cycling just because it's not agreed upon yet.

it'll be agreed upon when everyone owns accurate digital nh3 meters

What I enjoy doing is laying down written predictions about what people will see, and by when, when the day comes we're all actually reporting good truthful numbers in cycling, maybe by 2059 lol



I claim the reason all these animals act normally in all posts other than nonpattern occasional losses not readily attributed to ammonia noncontrol is because farming functional bacteria in heated inoculated and fed saltwater is easy vs hard and technical

Want to see something unique in reefing

Look at this pattern thread I built at reef 2 reef on the next post

We're site friendly now it's OK to share science links, check out what we produced there but let's discuss it here


So I spent five years collecting solely multiple years old tanks, never new ones, that reported stalled cycles meeting 100% of the criteria above ascribed to new tanks

We can see truths in cycling using bulk patterns from others outcomes, we don't need any testing to see if someone's tank lived or died

And when 100% of all reefs in question live vs die, that tells us things about their parameters even if their test kits can't be trusted.


So the big claim in cycle training is that we trust our test kits and rate completion off them solely

But here I present a collection of tanks that are years old sps and LPS tanks with zero losses yet the posters are 100% certain their cycle failed its in the title of each collected example.

When someone makes a thread where the title is about an extended ammonia issue: you know right off the bat what's causing that post even before it's opened. = Amazing in my opinion.

You can see that if we can't use api and red sea ammonia to even track the performance of reefs running two, three five+ years how in the world can we believe them for cycling a new tank?

This thread here below is 100% test panic only. All titles are test panic there's no actual losses ever here. These are the same tanks we see when trying to search out random proofs of failed cycles, it's easy to believe a new tank can't control ammonia so we tend to instantly validate any stated reading.

But what if the reef is 5 years old, has anthias in it, and ten grand in coral, no deaths, no biological source for ammonia buildup: if the test kit says it's stalled we believe it with a passion. I present to you 100% symptomless false stalled cycles caused solely by factoring nitrite, and believing the ranging reports that comprise red sea and api testing for ammonia




That this thread exists means there's truths in cycling we don't know yet, but are apparently quite predictable anyway.


*be prepared for passion/ raw anger as usual at me in places here in the thread below/ people do NOT enjoy paradigm challenges. But this is reefing evolution in my opinion. The outcome of their panic post was predicted as soon as I posted in every example

What were the outcomes? Living tanks and no traceable cause for any loss of ammonia control.
 
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www.reef2reef.com

Sustained Ammonia spikes are misreads

The reason you think your reef tank can’t control its ammonia is due to false training from old cycling science. That and you don’t own a seneye on the tank in question: if you did, you wouldn’t ever think your ammonia was out of control...
www.reef2reef.com www.reef2reef.com

Not one tank is under years old. Those aged, running tanks.

Notice how old cycling science is opposite: it believes test kits even to the exclusion of a tank years beyond cycled.

those readings above are the same readings we ascribe to stuck cycles in new tank threads. Same concerning ammonia reading comes from a 20 day cycling tank in question, and from a 5 year perfectly- running sps reef with all healthy fish and corals: these test kits and the rules applied to interpret them are wrong, it's not the cycle varying here or in new tanks (by day ten)

Don't think I'm trying to make someone read my recurring unchanging assessment paragraphs

Skip me and just filter this pattern from the threads collected:

-Each post is an assumed ammonia noncontrol event with no cause, no symptom, and no resolution taken yet all fish all tanks lived. each tank is years old with shocking nice pics of a healthy tank. A test kit reading interpretation is the cause of every example, not a loss


This is an amazingly predictable thing in reefing. it applied to this very thread we're reading here at reefcentral.

Shouldn't any reef board's new tank forum have the most fish losses of any forum given our cycle warning training?




What does it mean if they have the least loss of any forum?

how many pages back do we have to scroll to find an ammonia- caused fish loss in a stuck cycle here?

We're being taught cycle science that's opposite of the truth is my prediction.

Tank symptomology doesn't line up with today's claimed test readings beyond day ten. One day, we'll all have good testers and when the tank looks normal and carries fish and coral, nobody's going to have an extended ammonia help thread. The phenomena will cease when quality digital nh3 testing is available cheaply to the masses.

Fish disease control will become the new central focus of reef tank cycling and ammonia concerns will drift away=prediction.
 
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Circling back to time- based cycling rules: because of the # of days running for each of these tanks, by rule they cannot lack ammonia control even if the all consulted test kit said so.

Cycling goes much better when we count the days and set readiness from objective methods.

If someone is posting about an extended ammonia problem in a reef tank, you can bet api or red sea did 98% of them. Hanna digital slips in some occasionally, but again that's not an nh3 reader it's an nh4 that requires some guesstimating to postulate nh3 levels and it also has a half ppm error rate +/- which is huge compared to a seneye's .00x nh3 readout.


Nobody who owns a calibrated seneye ever, ever fears ammonia. They see it's always varying slightly, never zero, and always in control.
 
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