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Well you know I advocate less than once a day when we see nitrites, so you'll see no argument from me.

Personally - rather than make the equilibrium part of our experiment panel (especially because I worry that's a lot to ask of people, monetarily) I'd rather study the differences in their source water by NOT adding equilibrium.

Or are you just suggesting things we would advise in our eventual cycling article? Because I totally agree with that. Equilibrium, plant fertilizer, what? We think it's equilibrium that has the "key" things?

I think I should get started right away on the distilled water buckets with and without equilibrium. I suppose we are waiting for our test subjects to complete their tests anyway before we have an article, though. But nonetheless I have three buckets with three matching filters just awaiting the tests that I in particular should run.

Everything you have said I agree with, except for if you were suggesting we have our test participants use equilibrium, because I don't want to lose any participants by making things excessively complicated for them or require them to spend extra money. I think we make all other things equal and use it as an opportunity to study different source waters. If you don't agree with this, is there some way to get equilibrium to them? Any idea the country of our various participants? I suppose I could send some out but only to US people. International shipping is quite spendy (I know, I do it for a living)

Aqua chem, what do you think of all of this, or do you think we are headed down the wrong path?

This is goodnight for me. It's 4AM... See you in 8 hours. Lucky for me the kids are spending the night tonight at grandma and grandpa's and won't be knocking at 8... At least I'm such a night owl Caliban or we would always be two ships passing in the night and rarely be able to discuss anything :p

I would test nitrites starting day 7, OR as soon as they see ammonia drop, whichever is sooner
 
threnjen said:
Well you know I advocate less than once a day when we see nitrites, so you'll see no argument from me.

Personally - rather than make the equilibrium part of our experiment panel (especially because I worry that's a lot to ask of people, monetarily) I'd rather study the differences in their source water by NOT adding equilibrium.

Or are you just suggesting things we would advise in our eventual cycling article? Because I totally agree with that. Equilibrium, plant fertilizer, what? We think it's equilibrium that has the "key" things?

I think I should get started right away on the distilled water buckets with and without equilibrium. I suppose we are waiting for our test subjects to complete their tests anyway before we have an article, though. But nonetheless I have three buckets with three matching filters just awaiting the tests that I in particular should run.

Everything you have said I agree with, except for if you were suggesting we have our test participants use equilibrium, because I don't want to lose any participants by making things excessively complicated for them or require them to spend extra money. I think we make all other things equal and use it as an opportunity to study different source waters. If you don't agree with this, is there some way to get equilibrium to them? Any idea the country of our various participants? I suppose I could send some out but only to US people. International shipping is quite spendy (I know, I do it for a living)

Aqua chem, what do you think of all of this, or do you think we are headed down the wrong path?

This is goodnight for me. It's 4AM... See you in 8 hours. Lucky for me the kids are spending the night tonight at grandma and grandpa's and won't be knocking at 8... At least I'm such a night owl Caliban or we would always be two ships passing in the night and rarely be able to discuss anything :p

I would test nitrites starting day 7, OR as soon as they see ammonia drop, whichever is sooner
Click to expand...


No I was suggesting equilibrium for the end cycling instructions not for the tests. Are you still going to add fish food? As we believe phosphate is the key I would add fish food to both buckets and replenish to only one. If both buckets cycle equally in nutrient depleted water we can assume the necessity to use equilibrium is not an important factor and it is indeed phosphate that is the key. If the bucket with only phosphate fails then it confirms that the nutrients are important

We need to ensure all buckets cycle with no problems including the ones with R/O water.

Maybe it's fate you are a vampire. Lol
 
I did realize overnight that I am probably being unnecessarily stubborn about the "dosing back up every day" thing.

I mean... aqua chem is right and eventually the nitrite eaters will catch up, and the whole point IS to clear in 24 hours. So obviously at some point it will do just that.

However, the reason I think it's NOT so necessary is that in the beginning when you keep dosing the ammonia back up to 4 (or 5) over and over, you do create that nitrite backlog for the nitrite eaters to work on. without seeing a graph I can't be sure, but maybe the amount of backlog you create roughly corresponds to a 4ppm/day dosing.

I guess I just envision that it takes a day or two off of the cycle to not keep building the nitrites up, but without graphing a perfect plot of numbers, it's not like we can know.
AND since we now know that nitrites won't stall the cycle, this backlog shouldn't be of real concern.
 
I'm kind of disgusted with myself. Last night my 10g hospital tank became "available" :)() So i broke it down, nuked it, and then moved most of the stuff from my cycling bucket to it (driftwood, gravel, sponge filter). Left a HOB in the cycling bucket. So I basically split the material up in my casual experiment, which was kind of stupid.
I remind myself that this is specifically what I was cycling it for, but it was not quite complete and surely I could have waited a few more days for complete data. I can't just assume that I took out 1/2 of the bacteria.
 
threnjen said:
I'm sorry but it makes me grumpy for you to say "Literally, they all do." when that is demonstrably false.

I checked only 4 places after I read that statement by you to see what their instructions are. 1 of them has a copy of our forum's instructions (at theplantedtank.net). The other 3 do not advocate continuously dosing 4ppm ammonia.

The Fishless Cycle
The Fishless Cycle - Aquarium Forum
Cycling an Aquarium — Seriously Fish
Click to expand...


What I said is that we weren't the only site that advocated continuous dosage, 4 ppm or not. All those do as well:

From source #1:
"You should began to very soon see nitrites, perhaps after only dosing the tank once or twice. When that happens, now only add ammonia of one/half of your original dose when you started. Ammonia is only redosed when previous dose has dropped to 0 and only one time a day."

Source #2:
"Test your ammonia levels at least once every 24 hours. Once they begin to drop add the appropriate amount of ammonia to bring the levels back up to 3-5ppm.

Now that the ammonia levels have begun to drop it is time to pull out your nitrite test kit and begin monitoring both the ammonia and nitrite levels. Again testing should be done at least once every 24 hours. Keep dosing ammonia to maintain adequate levels (3-5ppm).

At some point your nitrites will peak at around 5ppm. At this time I recommend cutting your ammonia dosage by 50% and reduce the frequency of dosing to every other day.


Source #3:
Each day at the same time you need to test the ammonia reading and then add only enough to raise this back to 5ppm, not by a further 5 ppm. For the first few days you may not notice any movement, especially if you didn’t have a source of bacteria at the start. Once the ammonia starts to drop between readings you can test for nitrIte.

When the nitrIte level begins to rise sharply there is no need to top the ammonia up to 5 ppm every day. Instead aim for a level of 2-3ppm as this will help speed up the growth of the Nitrospira sp. colonies. Nitrospira sp. is much slower to multiply than Nitrosomonas sp. and you’ll find that the nitrIte stays high for much longer than the ammonia did. However once it does start to fall it falls very quickly.




My point was that most directions tell you to continuously redose ammonia, if not to 4 ppm than to a lesser concentration, but there will be an accumulation in all cases. 4 ppm is a pretty arbitrary beyond the initial dosage.
 
I think it's best to unequivocally state what specifically you're testing and how you're testing it. You should probably pick only one variable for the first round, and then worry about how you're going to control for everything else and fashion your endpoints to properly test your hypothesis.
 
I believe that our only variable at this point is going to be the source water.
We don't have control over the tank size or filters that people use, but we will homogenize all other aspects of the test as much as possible.


Just as an example of the frustrating issues when we all don't agree on what to do:
http://www.aquariumadvice.com/forums/f15/why-isnt-my-cycled-done-291882-6.html
everything was fine for the Op but then she got 17 different sets of instructions (exaggeration) and now is hopelessly confused again.
 
Okay now that I've sorta read through the thread (I skimmed a little, so don't slap me too hard if I missed something)

So the goal is to write a new updated fishless cycling guide?

I can tell you that very few, if any, of the guides that you find on various forums are totally independent. Most glean from one another, and some copy directly. Many forum posters frequent multiple forums, or did in the past, so a lot of information overlaps from one to the other.

The 4ppm thing (I believe) comes from a recommendation by Dr. Hovanec at the one and only site faq.

The big issue I think will be figuring out what actually needs to be changed in a new guide, simple is good. I think that water changes are smart in a stall situation. The reasoning is simple: 1) it's cheap and easy to do. 2) It reduces the concentration of a certain agent that is stalling the cycle (unlikely) 3) It replenishes trace nutrients and even some macros and 4) no harm, no foul. Doing a water change may or may not help anything, but it's not going to hurt anything either.

That said, I'm not a big fan of fishless cycling, and I think fish-in is the best way to go in FW tanks, so I admit I have a bias to the process in general.
 
Ruddy app has crashed twice so this post is short :)

What causes a stall in your experience?

Low ph/ kh,
High nitrites? +20ppm?
Low phosphate?

A few updates or tweaks to the guide may help as this question seems to get posted a lot (or they don't know what to look for and are jumping the gun)?
 
jetajockey said:
Okay now that I've sorta read through the thread (I skimmed a little, so don't slap me too hard if I missed something)

So the goal is to write a new updated fishless cycling guide?

I can tell you that very few, if any, of the guides that you find on various forums are totally independent. Most glean from one another, and some copy directly. Many forum posters frequent multiple forums, or did in the past, so a lot of information overlaps from one to the other.

The 4ppm thing (I believe) comes from a recommendation by Dr. Hovanec at the one and only site faq.

The big issue I think will be figuring out what actually needs to be changed in a new guide, simple is good. I think that water changes are smart in a stall situation. The reasoning is simple: 1) it's cheap and easy to do. 2) It reduces the concentration of a certain agent that is stalling the cycle (unlikely) 3) It replenishes trace nutrients and even some macros and 4) no harm, no foul. Doing a water change may or may not help anything, but it's not going to hurt anything either.

That said, I'm not a big fan of fishless cycling, and I think fish-in is the best way to go in FW tanks, so I admit I have a bias to the process in general.
Click to expand...


Hello jetajockey

I like yourself, prefer to do it fish in. Myself and threnjen have found some interesting things on this topic also. Things you may already know and I would like to ask some questions regarding this. At a later date though :) I thought your fish in article was excellent and I did send you a pm but you may not have received it.

Anyway, I have not been a member if this site for very long and certainly do not have as much experience as some on here. As I said, I have never done a fishless cycle but there is no denying that there is a pattern emerging on the freshwater getting started thread that is seeing people who we believe to be following the sticky and having problems. Too many in my opinion. So our goal was to try and investigate why people were have problems. Of course in order to do this we had to read ALOT. Our research has taken down many different routes and we have learned some things that there are misconceptions that need addressing. Things that may be common knowledge to the more experienced but are being banded around the forums as truths that could be causing fishless cycling noobs to become frustrated.

We are no down to the possibility of people's tap water not containing enough nutrients to support bacteria growth. A cycle in R/O water as suggested in previous posts could help us understand this more?

Any concerns or ideas would much be appreciated. Our goal is to help people who may be discouraged by this and lead them to abandon altogether. I believe that if people have taken the time to try and understand the nitrogen cycle and the fishless cycle then these are people who are serious about should be encourage to continue, it may not be the guide itself that is causing problems but we feel this is something long overdue that required looking at.
 
Delapool said:
Ruddy app has crashed twice so this post is short :)

What causes a stall in your experience?

Low ph/ kh,
High nitrites? +20ppm?
Low phosphate?

A few updates or tweaks to the guide may help as this question seems to get posted a lot (or they don't know what to look for and are jumping the gun)?
Click to expand...


What we believe to be true so far is that high levels of nitrite/ammonia at the levels we use in our aquarium do nothing to stall the cycle.

As long as pH remains about 6.5 then the cycle will not stall.

We also are looking in to the possibility of nutrients depletion stalling a cycle but have nothing concrete yet.
 
jetajockey said:
The big issue I think will be figuring out what actually needs to be changed in a new guide, simple is good. I think that water changes are smart in a stall situation. The reasoning is simple: 1) it's cheap and easy to do. 2) It reduces the concentration of a certain agent that is stalling the cycle (unlikely) 3) It replenishes trace nutrients and even some macros and 4) no harm, no foul. Doing a water change may or may not help anything, but it's not going to hurt anything either.
Click to expand...

I'm going to admit that, in general, I'm getting "ok" with this idea.
BUT - here's my but - I'd like to have a more clear time when this is performed.
For *me*, when "nitrites are unreadable!" is a meh reason.
I think that's why I struggle with the whole water change aspect, because I think it can be so easily skipped with a supply of phosphorous up front.
But it's not so important to me that this issue is a hill to die on :) Caliban if you are in favor of WC let's go ahead and incorporate it into the plan.
But for the sake of consistency, we should decide EXACTLY where we want it to be performed and provide parameters as such to the participants.

Also if we could keep it to 1 WC that would be nice.

Examples -
The first time the ammonia is depleted from 5ppm to 1ppm
7 days after you see nitrites appear
On day x

(it all seems arbitrary to me which is why my suggestions are arbitrary)
 
threnjen said:
I'm going to admit that, in general, I'm getting "ok" with this idea.
BUT - here's my but - I'd like to have a more clear time when this is performed.
For *me*, when "nitrites are unreadable!" is a meh reason.
I think that's why I struggle with the whole water change aspect, because I think it can be so easily skipped with a supply of phosphorous up front.
But it's not so important to me that this issue is a hill to die on :) Caliban if you are in favor of WC let's go ahead and incorporate it into the plan.
But for the sake of consistency, we should decide EXACTLY where we want it to be performed and provide parameters as such to the participants.

Also if we could keep it to 1 WC that would be nice.

Examples -
The first time the ammonia is depleted from 5ppm to 1ppm
7 days after you see nitrites appear
On day x

(it all seems arbitrary to me which is why my suggestions are arbitrary)
Click to expand...

In the spirit of keeping things simple for the newbie I do think a water change is best. I did state that if we were to recommend yhis we should keep it structured. One sounds like it would do it. A re-education of why we are doing this should be enforced. One we can prove this actually is a problem.

It may be that some peoples cycles do not need a water change because there are sufficient nutrients in their tap water to begin with but a water change should not do anything to effect the cycle so why not? Its pointless advocating water changes to peoples whos tap water nutrients are minimal to begin with. Therefore a note in instructions to people with soft water that the addition of X and X should be considered. That is of course if there is a direct corrolation between soft water and depleted nutrients.

Jen can you post a list of your tap water minerals etc so I can compare with my hard tap water please?

Sent from my SM-T210 using Aquarium Advice mobile app
 
A grain is an old unit of mass based on the average mass of one grain of wheat. The only place I think it's still used regularly is in firearms when referring to the amount of gunpowder in a bullet. For our purposes, 1 grain/gal is roughly 17 ppm or 1 dGH.




You still haven't determined what specifically you're testing. Hard water vs soft water? You need to control for everything else not being tested.
 
aqua_chem said:
A grain is an old unit of mass based on the average mass of one grain of wheat. The only place I think it's still used regularly is in firearms when referring to the amount of gunpowder in a bullet. For our purposes, 1 grain/gal is roughly 17 ppm or 1 dGH.
Click to expand...
Aha!! Thanks, I did not know this. Why on earth is my city using such an antiquated phrasing? Or is this standard. Not that it matters.


You still haven't determined what specifically you're testing. Hard water vs soft water? You need to control for everything else not being tested.
Click to expand...
I think we want to keep all parameters equal and simply study the effect of different tap water sources on the length of the cycle.

As a control test, I'm also going to perform two cycles using RO water + phosphorous and RO water + Equilibrium.

The question we want to answer, which needs to be phrased better, is how important is the source water itself to the cycle?
I'm hoping we'll be able to obtain water quality reports from all participants.

So in the end we're basically (almost) just going to have people cycle as usual, except with a more strict and rigid dosing/parameters plan than they might normally use, with very clear instructions.
 
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