epleeds January 17, 2014 January 17, 2014 I have been doing some reading about it and was wondering if we have anyone in the club that used this product. Good and Bad comments welcome. It sounds great, but i would like some real time information.
smallreef January 17, 2014 January 17, 2014 I used it when I started the 150g a few months ago...seems like it helped speed up the cycle...only 2 weeks (vice I dont know how long it would have been...) I had 2 cerameco pieces, 75 lbs of new dry rock and 80 lbs of new dry sand...I added one very large piece of my live rock from my tank and about 20 lbs of my live sand and the Dr. Tim's....
epleeds January 17, 2014 Author January 17, 2014 2 weeks is great. I am planning on using it on a tank with only Vida Rock in it. Anyone else try this product?
MBVette January 17, 2014 January 17, 2014 I used it on my cube and it worked well, seemed to speed up the cycle.
BowieReefer84 January 17, 2014 January 17, 2014 I used something similiar (MB7), but I feel a couple small pieces of rubble really helps a lot along with this. I think the diversity is not as good without some good old live rock thrown in there for good measure. You can even put the LR in the sump.
epleeds January 17, 2014 Author January 17, 2014 I used something similiar (MB7), but I feel a couple small pieces of rubble really helps a lot along with this. I think the diversity is not as good without some good old live rock thrown in there for good measure. You can even put the LR in the sump. I was going to use some of this "Sera Siporax" in the sump as an additional boost to help the good bacteria grow there is a guy "Mark54321" on RC that set his tank up like this. I am going to try to follow that model and see how it goes.
Coral Hind January 17, 2014 January 17, 2014 I've used Tim's as well as MB7, Seachem's Stability, and the Foster & Smith's brand. All seem to work and I can't really tell the difference as in one working better than the other. I just get the one that is cheaper. I use it QT systems during and after treatments to keep the bacteria population up.
sen5241b January 17, 2014 January 17, 2014 Used this kind of thing and it did complete the cycle in about 2 weeks.
AlanM January 17, 2014 January 17, 2014 I've used it a couple of times. Once to start, once a month ago just to give a boost. I can't say what worked or if the boost helps or whatever. It probably doesn't hurt. My "cycle" lasted two months or more. At least if you call the extent of the cycle the time it takes for ammonia and nitrites to start saying 0 regularly even while adding 4ppm ammonia each day. That's the benchmark that Dr Tim's uses. If you have a large enough population to do 4ppm per day of ammonia then at least that part of it is done. Maybe mine took much longer because I spiked the ammonia early on with an entire morning pee (we can all say eww together), but it did come down eventually. There are other things that you want your bacteria to get rid of too, however, like nitrate and phosphate. Those take considerably longer than the ammonia one. Not sure if Dr Tims helps with those or not, but live rock/sand that has been in use for an extended period of time probably does.
monkiboy January 17, 2014 January 17, 2014 i used it one on my recent build with all the cerameco pieces and cycle was around 2-3 weeks for ammonia and nitrite to get to 0 consistently. i did not seed the tank with anything live. i've used it for QT and all new builds.
Coral Hind January 17, 2014 January 17, 2014 I don't know where that idea of peeing in the tank came from but it doesn't make sense to me. It contains pollutants from your diet, drugs, cosmetics, lotions, environmental exposures, basically stuff we put in us and on us will come out in our urine. Plus the urea in your urine would have to break down into ammonia before it would help with the cycle, faster to just add pure ammonia which you can find at a hardware store, pharmacy, or even a dollar store which is where I got my last bottle.
lnevo January 17, 2014 January 17, 2014 I don't know where that idea of peeing in the tank came from but it doesn't make sense to me. It contain pollutants from your diet, drugs, cosmetics, lotions, environmental exposures, basically stuff we put in us and on us will come out in our urine. Plus the urea in your urine would have to break down into ammonia before it would help with the cycle, faster to just add pure ammonia which you can find at a hardware store, pharmacy, or even a dollar store which is where I got my last bottle. +1 plus its so much easier to just drop in a dead shrimp and let it decompose..
treesprite January 17, 2014 January 17, 2014 (edited) But how well does it work with NO liverock or used sand? I've set up tanks not putting anything in them except my same liverock, put all my fish and corals in and have nothing more of a cycle than some diatoms. So for those folks putting live stuff in, you really can't be sure on just your own experience how well the product works. Edited January 17, 2014 by treesprite
Coral Hind January 17, 2014 January 17, 2014 I've used the bacteria products to start QT systems off that had no rock or sand, just foam filters, and it cycled those tanks quickly.
monkiboy January 17, 2014 January 17, 2014 But how well does it work with NO liverock or used sand? I've set up tanks not putting anything in them except my same liverock, put all my fish and corals in and have nothing more of a cycle than some diatoms. So for those folks putting live stuff in, you really can't be sure on just your own experience how well the product works. my response was also one of the few above that have started with a sterile setup and used the dr. tims to cycle it rather quickly ( around 3 weeks). and like dave, i mentioned using them on qt tanks as well successfully.
treesprite January 17, 2014 January 17, 2014 That's good to know. I have often speculated about some distant future tank using only dry rock, and was not sure how I would go about getting it working.
MisterTang January 19, 2014 January 19, 2014 I tried it out when recommended by BRK, and it seemed to work just fine... cycled my tank in about a week with my lucky cycling damsel, with the initial ammonia spike really being more of a "bump". Did a water change at the end when nitrates were high and they leveled off after that.
zygote2k January 19, 2014 January 19, 2014 I don't know where that idea of peeing in the tank came from but it doesn't make sense to me. It contains pollutants from your diet, drugs, cosmetics, lotions, environmental exposures, basically stuff we put in us and on us will come out in our urine. Plus the urea in your urine would have to break down into ammonia before it would help with the cycle, faster to just add pure ammonia which you can find at a hardware store, pharmacy, or even a dollar store which is where I got my last bottle. household ammonia is fine but peeing in your tank is free and it has ammonia plus lots of great trace elements. I've actually never peed directly into the tank but rather in a cup, then into the tank. as far as contaminants in urine goes, it's never really been an issue and/or has never been proven to cause issues. these cycle in a bottle products are really not much different but no matter if you use either method, you still should continue the cycle till the algae and bacteria are fully established before adding any fish. 3-6 months.
OcalaReefGirl January 30, 2014 January 30, 2014 (edited) I know this is a little late, but I wanted to post my experience with Dr. Tims. I built a 55 gallon frag tank and added 50 lbs of dead rock to the tank. I didn't add anything from another system or anything live so I could actually test out Dr. Tim's thoroughly. I added the bottom of Dr. Tim's and two ocellaris clownfish. I tested the water twice a day for ammonia, nitrite and nitrate. Ammonia: The highest level of ammonia I received was on day 5 at 2.0. It hovered at 2.0 for three days and slowly went down to .5 after 15 days. Nitrite was between 0.5 and 1 and went to zero on day 11. Nitrate showed up at 0.5 for two days starting on day 3 never showed up again. Hope that helps. It seemed to speed up the process considering that I didn't add anything live and almost a complete cycle in 15 days. Unfortunately my acrylic cracked where the bulkhead hole was drilled and I had to do an emergency tank change. (Just got better hole saw =)) I added a snail, crab and third fish on day 16 in the "new tank" I used 60% original water and the same rock. I added live sand and everything has remained at 0 for two days now. Wish I could have been more scientific but changing out the tank and doing a 40% water change in the middle kinda changed my plans. I will be setting up a 80 gallon rimless tank soon so I will use Dr. Tims to see if I can get a complete result. Edited January 30, 2014 by OcalaReefGirl
CoralAquaCulture February 10, 2014 February 10, 2014 (edited) I just bought a bottle last week and received it over the weekend...I will be using it to seed my dry Marco rock...will post results in the coming weeks. Edited February 10, 2014 by CoralAquaCulture
Recommended Posts
Create an account or sign in to comment
You need to be a member in order to leave a comment
Create an account
Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!
Register a new accountSign in
Already have an account? Sign in here.
Sign In Now