Cycling with Damsels

[pnosko]

I just read the emergency post from tgeppes, and was delighted with the diplomatic replies and Tyler's eagerness to take the advice of RC members. I've only been here at RC for several months, but have noticed a good number of folks starting up like Tyler, having been guided by their LFS into a damsel-induced cycle.

I have to wonder. I doubt any standing RC member would advocate this method. Being this is the largest hobby in the world (from what I've heard), there's no doubt there are differences of opinion and a time lag for "new and improved methods" to be disseminated.

But like any hobby, isn't there at least one popular source of information for the "professionals" to get advice? I'm calling the LFS owners professionals in that they are engaged "for profit" (as opposed to amateurs), and not as in they are knowledgeable or experts. As cheap as damsels are, LFSs can't by profiting from selling damsels for cycling (or they couldn't lose a lot by not doing this). Why does it seem like so many LFSs still advocate this?

Maybe this should be a lounge post (moderator: move it if you think so). Am I just reacting to "noises" from the minority of LFSs? Or maybe in the big scheme of things, is torturing damsels just to insignificant of an issue?

[RooFish]

I try to steer people away from damsels at all, for cycling or otherwise, but lots still buy them. Many LFS workers know nothing about fish in general, especially reefs. Also many people who come in have read books which advocate this technique. Most new books suggest other ways, but most people have older, lower quality books, which do say its a good way to cycle a tank to murder the damsels. It will take a while before the books that are bought the most are new, and until then most people will do it the old way. Thats also why lots of people still use old style filters. Lack of knowledge, and greediness.

Oh and an LFS CAN make a profit on damsels.

[tgeppes]

sorry if i started a stir. if i had known about different methods of cycling the tank before hand i would have. i plan now to take a different course of action now that the fish have been returned (live rock) sorry agian
~tyler

[pnosko]

No need to apologize! You are hardly the only one here who's done this. You're just the most recent one to admit it. :D

[OscarBeast]

Tyler, don't worry about it. :P Nobody was mad at you. ;p

The hobby needs to be discussed from an ethical standpoint. Many people who just start out with fish don't realize exactly the process of cycling. It can be complicated by its nature.

Hobbyists need to strive to try to find ways to keep animals from suffering and to educate others about these ways. The sad part is that many don't really care if it doesn't cost a lot of cash. To many, the value of live is only equal to something's price tag. If it is cheap or free they don't really care if it suffers and dies.

This is the type of mindset that I am against. I am also against the idea that simpler organisms are less important and OK to make suffer.

[NYReefMan]

Let's not be hypocritical...
Why do so many cycle their tanks with live rock if they are so concerned about cruelty to animals?
Do they not care about the organisms on the live rock that are exposed to the high ammonia levels because they are smaller than damsels?

[Wolverine]

I think the problem is that many LFS owners don't follow new developments in the hobby. They set up their store how they learned it, and that's how they tell everyone else to do things. You can still go to some LFS's and they'll tell you the only way to go is an unerground filter and to make sure you cycle with damsels, because that's the best way.

NYreefman, in a way, yes. The people who work with PETA fight against cruelty to animals, but they're not out there protecting spiders and flies. I think the issue is not so much size at it is numbers. If I have 10,000 amphipods in my tank, I'm not going to worry if a few thousand of them die in the cycle; I'll still have a lot, and those that live will reproduce and most likely get me back to, if not past, my starting numbers. If I have two damsels in my tank, and one of them dies, then I only have one, and the other isn't going to replace itself.
And what else would you cycle with, if you get LR, it has to cycle at some point (whether it's in your tank, or in the holding tanks of the wholesaler or where ever else it might go).

Tyler, don't worry about starting a stir, as pointed out, many of us listened to the advice of LFS's before and cycled tanks with damsels. I've also used triggers and groupers, back before I found this part of the internet.

Dave

[TheJ]

When I set up my tank, I tried to buy a couple damsels from my LFS for the cycle. They wouldn't let me! Instead, they sold me some gorgeous, beautifully cured LR.

Worked out great for everyone. I had almost no cycle (a couple days), didn't kill any fish, and they sold me a couple hundred dollars of merchandise instead of a couple dollars worth of fish. Although it did take about an hour of talking for the guy to convince me he wasn't BSing me with $5/lb rocks haha :D

So, doing things the "right" way can be very beneficial to the LFS :)

[slimytadpole]

Actually, the live rock is, generally, the source of much of the ammonia spike.

[TheJ]

Oh, I should add that the guy that owns & runs the shop can't be more than 25. Probably not as set in the old ways as some of the old farts ;)

[TheJ]

slimy- the ammonia spike is a result of die off. The rock was very well cured, and I drove straight home (20min) and put it in my tank. Minimum die off= almost undetectable spike.

[Big Lance]

I found the same results slimy. I just started a small tank for my dorm room at college. 20 gallons isnt much, but its a start. I put 10 pounds LR in and the tank cycled in just two days. This really surprized me considering all of the literature and advice stated the cycling would take 2-3 weeks. I now have a cleanup crew and a gold striped maroon clown and they are doing wonderful. I guess i found the right way to cycle by accident. :)

[pnosko]

OK wait a minute folks. I'm a little confused. Please correct me if I'm wrong, as I hope to start this process myself very soon. (If I don't get my tank back next week..... :mad2: ) Everything that follows is what I've learned (or mislearned) from RC and its sources and references.

Cycling (with a DSB, specifically) is the process of growing bacteria in the sand to process ammonia into nitrites into nitrates into released gases (if I understand this correctly). Without a source of ammonia, you can't start the cycle nor maintain the "biofilter." Besides ammonia, you need adequate circulation of aerated water, and critters to keep the sand sifted. This biofilter doesn't reach a final stage during the initial cycling, but s-l-o-w-l-y adjusts itself as the bioload is adjusted. Hence, the constant emphasis on PATIENCE. Is this right so far?

In my mind, the shorter the initial cycle, the smaller the natural biofilter you have. I don't see this as a positive thing. It seems to me if you manage to get really live rock into a freshly setup tank and have only a tiny ammonia spike that quickly turns into 0-0-0 readings, you end up having a tiny biofilter that basically isn't going to support much more than your LR. Your first new fish may just start another cycle.

It seems that timing, in addition to patience, is in order. The amount of ammonia with which you want to start the initial cycle and create a resulting biofilter should be dictated by what you expect to introduce at the end of the cycle. And by timing, I mean as soon as the cycle ends (0-0-0), as this is the point where an established biofilter starts to die off if it isn't kept fed. Right?

Comments and corrections not just welcomed, but sincerely sought!

[john rochon]

if you have a cycled tank, with sand and rock you add your fish slowly.The tank can adjust quite quikely. This is also were your water changes are important. my 65g tank showed no spike or change at all when I added my 4" tang and blue damsel[which I like] .And yes my LFS also told me when I first started to cycle with a damsel. He lives with my yellow tang-clown-coral beauty and not a problem. I think he is the coolist, always cleaning his shell[his home] out. He was so ****sed the other day when the tang pooped in his shell!

[OscarBeast]

pnosko
The more gradual you can increase your "bio-filter" then the better off you are. If you can slowly cycle your tank without getting any deadly spikes, you will save the lives of many little critters.

Live rock is a "bio-filter". Even cured LR will produce some ammonia because there are tiny organisms that will produce some waste, but the bacteria on the rock should be enough to keep up with it.

When you add uncured live rock, you still have some bacteria on the rock, but it takes a while to catch up with the huge amounts of ammonia released by die-off.

If you add fish as soon as your rock cycles, your tank will in truth be able to handle a larger bio-load sooner, but many of the little critters have been fried on your LR.

Think of cycling as an equilibrium type thing. When something has cycled, it just means that you have sufficient bacteria to sustain your current bio-load.

Anything you add or remove will cause an adjustment of the equilibrium. In other words, a small recycle. If you only make small changes, the bacteria can catch up without hardly any spikes, but if you make a LARGE change you will set off a chain reaction that isn't going to be good for anything in your tank.

If you make a huge spike, then it will kill more things and create a even bigger spike. It will snowball like this until you kill off most of the delicate stuff and the bacteria has a huge bloom to catch up.

[pnosko]

Originally posted by OscarBeast
Think of cycling as an equilibrium type thing. When something has cycled, it just means that you have sufficient bacteria to sustain your current bio-load.

That's exactly my point. But I'm still seeing lots of folks suggest cycling with LR, when in fact (NYReefMan contributed to this point) you're going to cause die-off of life on that rock-- life you really want (ethically and financially). From the $$$ point of view, why pay for live rock then kill some of the life on it?

I still see merit in using the raw dead "human food" shrimp (extended ethical arguments aside) method for the initial cycle, then adding LR and the critter kits to seed the bed once the cycle stabilizes. This takes time and patience.

[RooFish]

If you put in LR you get a bunch of bacteria on the rock. Then you get your initial cycle and can add fish. If your rock is pre-cured then there is a short cycle, because there is already a lot of bacteria, and there is little die off. Then you add fish slowly, causing a small spike each time, but those bacteria reproduce exponentially, so you get a lot really fast, so each spike lasts about a day, then its over. The key is to go slowly, and use the LR as a base for bacteria.

[slimytadpole]

Originally posted by pnosko


That's exactly my point. But I'm still seeing lots of folks suggest cycling with LR, when in fact (NYReefMan contributed to this point) you're going to cause die-off of life on that rock-- life you really want (ethically and financially). From the $$$ point of view, why pay for live rock then kill some of the life on it?

I still see merit in using the raw dead "human food" shrimp (extended ethical arguments aside) method for the initial cycle, then adding LR and the critter kits to seed the bed once the cycle stabilizes. This takes time and patience.

Don't forget that the rock has (or should have) quite a bit of life to it. I would hazard a guess that a few pounds of live rock, even thoroughly cycled, will provide adiquate ammounts of ammonia to cycle the tank. I don't really buy the argument that you're going to kill off mass amounts of life during this process, because presumably, the rock has already been cured. The curing process of rocks is nasty nasty nasty. The nutrient spikes that happen during the curing stage are far worse. If the bacteria/worms/pods/etc made it through the curing process, then the relatively mild process of a tank cycle should not contribute to mass death on the live rock.

I think alot of people overestimate the bioload of fish relative to that of several pounds of live rock. The argument has been raised that a quick cycle isn't good, because it means that the bacteria populations haven't risen enough to the point where you can add fish without getting another nutrient spike. I disagree. I believe that that once you have added rock in the tank, you've already got a significant bio-load to to get the bacteria populations to where they need to be. Once the Ammonia is undetectabe and the nitrates are below 20ppm, you can add fish. The bacteria population should be good to go, and should have no difficulty keeping up with the addition of one fish per week.

I guess the difference between adding ammonia or food to the tank, then adding fish, is to up the bacteria population in anticipation of adding a fish. Stop ammonia drip and add the fish. However, if you just add the fish, without using an ammonia drip or food, the ammonia goes up, and then the bacteria catches up. Proactive bacteria increase in the former case, rather than reactive bacteria increase in the latter. I would argue that as long as you aren't adding huge fish to tiny tanks, (which you shouldn't be doing anyway), or adding several fish at once (which you also shouldn't do) the difference in ammonia is negligable.

In short:
1) any life on the rock that survived the initial curing stage should be able to survive the cycling stage. Especially a quick, mild cycle.

2) The addition of a single fish to an appropriately sized tank shouldn't be enough to cause a second ammonia spike after the initial cycle. Once Ammonia is undetectable, it should stay undetectable.
I stress appropriately sized, since most books out there do not stress the importance of not overstocking tanks and not adding huge fish to small tanks (like adding tangs to a 29gallon tank).