Today on the BRS 160 we are going to cycle this tank!
Hey guys my name is Ryan, welcome to another week of the BRS 160 where every week we do
our best to help you guys, members of the reefing community enjoy your tanks and find
new ways to explore the hobby.
We do that by following the set up and progression of this one hundred and sixty gallon reef
tank.
This week we are going to talk about biological filtration and the nitrogen cycle.
This starts with a real understanding of what ammonia is, where it comes from and why it’s
toxic.
We will explore the methods of using bacteria to convert this highly toxic ammonia into
safer nitrite and nitrate as well as the final stage of nitrogen gas where it can leave the
tank for good.
We will also share all of the most common ways to get bacteria to populate a new tank
and start the nitrogen cycle to make it safe for your fish as well as some different testing
methods and share how we are going to cycle this tank.
Ammonia is the result of fish and other organisms in the tank consuming large volumes of nitrogen
that they really don't need for biological function so they get rid of it in the form
of ammonia.
Most organisms in the tank are going to excrete ammonia into the water but the largest source
is what’s released by the fish’s gills.
The gills act like a membrane which allows the high levels of free ammonia within the
gills to pass through into the tank water which has very little ammonia.
This is also precisely the reason why ammonia in the tank is so toxic to the fish.
For the fish to free themselves of the ammonia the surrounding water has to contain very
low levels of ammonia to begin with.
If the tank has high levels it makes it difficult for fish to pass the ammonia through their
gills.
In fact at high enough levels the opposite might even start to happen were ammonia transfers
from the tank water into the fish through their gills.
At this point bad things are about to happen in the tank.
Outside of biological processes and fish food, Ammonia can also enter the tank though tap
water treated with chloramines which is chlorine mixed with ammonia.
Many salt mixes and additives have small amounts from ammonia left over from their refinement
process.
This is particularly true if you if you are attempting to use low grade DIY additives.
Ammonia comes in two forms: NH 3 which is free ammonia and the most toxic as well as
NH4 which is ammonium.
Ammonium has less of a negative impact but both are a concern with marine fish.
The NH3 and NH 4 are in a constant state of changing between each other millions or even
billions of times every second.
How much of the ammonia in the tank that exists as NH3 free ammonia is dependent on the PH
pf the tank.
Luckily at PH’s common in aquariums most of the ammonia in the tank exists as NH4 ammonium
which is less dangerous.
Thing about ammonia is we all know is likely the most common toxic substance in the tank
and there is a constant source of this toxic substance added every day.
Even knowing that very few reefers monitor or consider this as a possible cause when
they are having trouble with the tank, even when corals and fish are dying.
More or less most of us just close our eyes and assume the bacteria are always doing their
job and can handle whatever happens in the tank.
This probably isn’t the best assumption we could make.
In reality the chain effect ammonia can have on the tank is likely one the leading causes
of a tank crashes.
Any organism dyeing in the tank or a large accidental addition of food can easily cause
an ammonia spike which can stress and kill other tank inhabitants.
This can unravel fast with some pretty devastating consciences because each death adds more ammonia
and compounds the problem.
Even smaller unnoticeable spikes can easily stress the fish and make them more susceptible
to illness.
When something goes wrong most of us are more likely to consider the how reef safe some
random piece of plastic we put in the tank is, are we using the right salt, did I use
the right silicone for the tank, or mysterious things like old tank syndrome as the cause
but very rarely does anyone consider the health of their biological filtration which they
rely solely upon to consistently remove a very toxic substance.
That doesn't mean that an ammonia spike is the cause of all the tank crashes out there
or illness outbreaks but it absolutely belongs in the conversation when you have an issue
like this.
One thing to keep in mind is your tanks biological filtration is completely dependent on the
size of bacterial pollution and the size of that population is completely dependent on
the amount of food being ammonia that is consistently added to the tank.
So if you start adding a significantly more ammonia it might take a bit for the bacterial
population to expand the population to compensate.
So any rapid increase off the addition of ammonia will likely overwhelm the current
bacteria population and cause an ammonia spike in the tank.
Common causes could be a significant increase of fish or foods to the tank.
Many macro algae consume ammonia directly so removing a huge swath of algae from your
fuge could possibly increase ammonia.
Obviously something large dyeing in the tank could cause this.
A contaminate or environmental issue could impact the bacteria population as well.
For those of you who use some type of ammonia removal filtration media, if you don't change
it out before it is exhausted you could see a big spike and why we don’t recommend reefers
use that type of media in most situations.
So all that said I have to admit I am one of the people who historically never really
considered ammonia much and certainly very rarely tested for it.
I think I can give few pretty solid reasons for that.
Starting with test kits are a pain to do, most ammonia kits are often hard to read,
not accurate down to a useful level and you need to have a non-expired one around at the
time you are concerned about the tank which is fairly rare.
All this leads to very few people really producing accurate ammonia readings correlated to any
tank events and likely why it isn't part of a larger conversation.
There is a somewhat recent exception to that rule with the Seneye monitor which does a
variety of things but one of them is fairly unique with monitoring free ammonia spiting
it out on your computer or coupled with the server sending you alerts to your phone as
well as sending you email alerts.
I have a lot of alerts set up on my apex aquarium controller to tell me if something is going
wrong with the tank like PH, temperature, water level, ORP, leaks all kinds of stuff
which I find super valuable but all that that is very different than telling me my ammonia
is rising which is basically telling me fish are dyeing or at series risk and something
should be done quick to save the tank.
I think as the Seneye becomes more widely used and reefers have useable trackable data
we might see the conversation about ammonia and the reef tank change a bit.
Ok so now that we got a good handle on the dangers of ammonia I’m going to say in most
cases it is super easy to set up a biological filtration system which is capable of rapidly
expanding and contracting its population and quickly converting ammonia into much safer
elements.
Really all we need to do is provide proper habitat for the beneficial bacteria to thrive
which is a warm well oxygenated area with a lot of surface area.
This is most commonly achieved with sand and live rock in the tank.
Sometimes supplemented with rock or other filtration media like this marine pure in
the sump.
The bacteria that live on these surfaces produce energy for their biological function by oxidizing
the ammonia in the much safer form of nitrogen for the reef tank being nitrite.
Bacteria then also convert the nitrite into nitrate which is even safer and at low to
average levels not really considered toxic at all.
However over time the nitrate will accumulate in the tank and will either serve as a nutrient
that feeds algae growth or at higher levels will irritate fish and corals.
Removing nitrate and other undesirable nutrients is the primary reason why most reefers do
water changes.
So where does this bacteria come from and how do we get this cycle started in the tank?
The bacteria come from basically anywhere and there really isn't much you could do to
stop it from populating the tank.
That’s why so many reefers are comfortable using dry dead rock to start with and just
letting the bacteria populate on its own over the course of a few to several weeks depending
on the style of rock.
If you would like it to happen faster there is a plethora of ways to do that.
First one is by starting with wet live rock which is presumably covered in this bacteria
and the starting population is able to multiply itself much faster.
There are also a ton of bacteria additives out there.
Biospira is one the team here at BRS uses frequently with new tanks and dry rock.
Red sea has a cool kit with bacteria, food, and some other additives to get a tank off
to a good start.
Two little fishes, Bright well and KZ also have some bacteria options for cycling a tank.
To start growing the population of bacteria in the tank you need a nitrogen food source.
Reefers at one point used to just throw in hardy fish like a damsel, feed him and let
the process start on its own primarily with the ammonia released from the damsel’s gills.
Most people now consider that process to be pretty cruel and don’t do that any longer
You can also cycle a tank with what many people refer to as phantom feeding which is just
adding a small amount of food to a fish less tank every day and let it decay to create
ammonia.
This is obviously much more humane but will take substantially longer.
With the bacterial additives there are two primary approaches to this.
With a product like Biospira the main approach is to dose the tank with a large volume of
bacteria and add a fish and its gills as the nitrogen source to feed those bacteria.
I have seen a lot of success with this method and I personally have never seen negative
effects from the fish or ammonia spikes I can see with a typical test kit but both are
not really ideal ways of monitoring this.
There has been a new wave of products which combine the approach of bacterial additives
and a more sophisticated form of phantom feeding and doesn't require a live fish.
The Redsea reef mature pro contains a bottle of bacteria as well as a bottle which essentially
serves as bacteria food and you add the food over a period of time to feed the bacteria
to make the tank safe for the fish.
Bright well also has a version of this with the faster-M and micro bacter seven overall
this is bacterial additive combined with refined phantom feeding probably one of the better
ways to cycle a tank and make it safe for your first fish.
Big question everyone has is how long does it take to build up the bacterial population
and make it safe for that first fish as well as the ones following?
There is no clear answer to that other than when there is no ammonia or nitrite in the
tank which indicates the bacterial populations have risen and properly processing the ammonia
in the tank.
This means you need to test for these elements.
Outside of that you are just guessing.
It should take a few to several weeks depending on the tank, rock and style of cycling selected.
After that I would say a good rule of thumb is to never more than double the fish or food
load in a single month and if you are good reefer monitor ammonia after your livestock
additions or changes in feedings.
Knowing how much everyone hates testing and how hard some of the popular ammonia kits
are to read I think the chances of most reefers testing like this over the long hall are fairly
slim.
Alternatively you could consider the Seneye monitor we mentioned earlier which displays
your ammonia in real time.
While it is more costly than a test kit there is some peace of mind just knowing for sure
when it is safe to add new live stock during the cycle process without ever having to perform
kits and adding new fish is a more .
The last piece of all this is somewhat theoretical in the essence that most of us believe we
can use bacteria to convert all the nitrate that accumulates from the cycle intro nitrogen
gas which some degree means the food you added to the tank eventually could fully processed
back into nitrogen gas where bubbles up out of the and released into the atmosphere where
is available to other organisms but most importantly is no longer in the tank.
This last step is theorized to happen in very low oxygen areas in the tank.
Like the bottom layer of a six inch deep sand bed , deep within the internal layers of your
live rock or within larger prices of filtration media like marine pure places in low flow
areas of the tank.
There is a tremendous amount of anecdotal evidence supporting this theory and in the
right implementation I personally believe it can be a component of nitrate removal from
the tank.
There are a lot elements not fully understood related to this but if this last step of the
cycle was a critical component of my tank set up I would personally either select a
low density rock like pukani which is more likely to allow significant water penetration
or attempt to use these large marine pure bricks in a low flow area of the sump.
We installed several of these marine pure blocks in the fuge area of the sump on the
BRS160 and I don't think the artificial reef rock two point one is going to have much of
an internal pore network so we should have an opportunity to see if they ultimately have
a significant impact on nitrates over time.
I personally had success with a remote deep six inch sand bed and nitrate removal once
however they are pretty ugly in the tank, require several hundred dollars and sand and
the general thought is deep sand beds up as a giant nutrient sink just waiting to explode
at some point.
A Thought process I tend to believe as well.
Time to discuss how we are going to cycle the BRS 160 and get it ready for fish.
We decided to do the safest option for our fish which we felt was the red sea reef mature
pro kit.
I will be honest this is not the cheapest or easiest way to do this and because of that
probably not the most popular but it is likely one of the best ways particularly for newer
reefers to get a tank up and running because it also address some other common issues with
new tank cycling.
There are four products included in the kit the first one bring nitro bac which is a concentrated
blend of nitrifying and denitrifying spores designed to seed the bacteria population on
your rock, sand and bio media in the tank.
Bacto-start which is a blend of nitrogen and phosphorus compounds that simulate the natural
waste compounds from an active aquarium, basically that phantom feeding we covered earlier.
There is bottle of no3 po4 -x which is designed provide a special food source for that type
of bacteria which is going to complete that last stage from nitrate to nitrogen gas.
They add this because new tanks are particularly prone to algae outbreaks.
Using a product like this keeps the nutrient levels down and combats algae outbreaks before
they have a chance to take hold.
The last bottle is called KH coralline grow.
This is a bit misleading because it doesn't contain coralline algae or anything that specific
to coralline algae.
It is more or less just an alkalinity additive.
However maintaining alkalinity is probably the single most important element for a reefer
who is actively trying to get additional coralline coverage in the tank.
I since we are using this purple reef rock two point one this really isn't a concern
to us and we will be maintaining calcium and alkalinity with different methods later.
There is a series of steps you use which last about three weeks, at which point you should
be really confident the tank is ready for fish.
I do wish they offered larger kits because I am going to need at least three of them
for the BRS160.
In conjunction with that I would advise most people pick up a test kit like the marine
care package from red sea which measure ammonia, nitrite and nitrate so you know for sure the
tank is ready for fish.
In our case we are going to do something different and install the Seneye monitor.
I have seen this thing at trade shows all over the world for years and to be honest
I didn't fully understood the value until they sent me a sample last week and the team
started to play with it and really discuss the roll of ammonia in the reef tank.
Installed on the BRS160 I expect to be able to use it closely monitor the ammonia levels
during cycle progress as well as after each major addition of livestock.
Beyond that on a long term basis it going to be able to tell me if there are ever any
issues with my biological filtration set up.
It does require that you change these small tabs out once a month at the cost of just
over ten bucks a month.
It’s easy to shy away from that concept but it is not all much different than other
consumable testing elements like reagent refills or PH probes.
End of the day if you asked me if I found a real time display and warning system based
around free ammonia or PH I think I’d have trouble selecting one over the other.
The Seneye does offer some other benefits like temperature level monitor and PH monitoring.
It also has some really cool lighting features which we will explore in detail in a few weeks
when we get into lighting.
Just to give you a quick concept of how we will use it during the lighting episodes there
are two main reasons why we light out aquariums.
First is the tank is the single most expensive thing in many of our homes and we want it
to look nice.
Today’s LED lighting allows us to adjust all kinds of colors to try and make it look
just right to our eyes.
However we are also trying to provide proper light to the colors which means the right
intensity by not starving them with half the light they need or burning them with twice
as much as they need.
This also means providing the right spectrum.
The Seneye probe has a few cool lighting features with a color compensated PAR meter designed
around today's blue aquariums, but more important than PAR it also displays PUR which is a percentage
of that light which is in the usable spectrum for our corals as well as a spectrum analyzer
with a graph.
With a tool like this it should be easy to tune our ultimately lighting selection not
only for what looks sharp but also make sure we are providing the right amount of light
to our corals.
It’s a bit too early for me to give this my personal seal of approval but I really
think this could turn out to be a pretty valuable tool to anyone who owns LED lighting and having
trouble maintaining coral health or better yet being successful to begin with.
Next week we are going to dive into UV sterilizers.
This one should be fun because there are some pretty hotly debated theories on UV sterilizers
and what they do and we are going to dive right into the middle of it.
So hit that subscribe button.
If you are interested in learning more about any of the stuff we talked about today check
out this look.
Also if you have thoughts or experience with Seneye monitor the team here and BRS community
in general would absolutely like to hear what you think in the comments area down below.
See you next week with week fourteen of the BRS160 UV sterilizers.