I've had the ray for ten days now. Good news is he is vibrant and healthy and readily (as well as enthusiastically) eating earthworms, frozen bloodworms, and cut-up jumbo shrimp I bought from the grocery store. By far the shrimp is his favorite food.
Bad news is I believe I'm going through a mini-cycle. Four days ago a trace amount of ammonia (a varying degree of .5 ppm) showed up after a water test. I've been testing in the morning and the evening before I go to bed and the spike has not escalated, but it has not dissipated either. No sign of nitrites yet. However, nitrates are present and holding steady at ten ppm.
On Saturday I doubled the seeded biorings and ceramic biological media and moved most of it into a Rena XP4 which arrived that afternoon. Still have a full pack of established biorings in the Aquaclear and three times as much in the canister filter.
This biological "shock" did not lower the ammonia but possibly curtailed it from going higher.
I am feeding lightly every other day as well as doing 20% water changes bidaily as well. This morning the ammonia read slightly lower so I'm hopeful.
What's likely going on is a mini-cycle due to the sheer output of this large fish. As seeded and established as my biological filtration was, it may not have been enough to handle this high load.
Unfortunately I was not able to find Biospira. Instead I have a product I've never heard of before, sera toxivec. I find it very suspicious and its claims dubious. It is not a refrigerated product as is Biospira and states it contains a different form of bacteria which lies dormant in the bottle. This sounds a lot like Cycle, which is total shit. You could pour an ounce of snake oil into your tank and have the same results in regards to "cycling." And once again, just in case you didn't get the point, Cycle is shit.
Yet I can't say the same for this stuff as I've never seen it before. This product is made in Germany and there are some anecdotal reports of it working so I'll use it as a last resort if the ammonia goes above .5.
I will also conduct an experiment with a gallon of the tank water to see if it does instantly remove ammonia as it claims, instead of "locking it" away like Ammolock and zeolite and that other stuff.
Throughout the spike the ray has maintained optimal health so I'm not going to add any new factors until the ammonia climbs or the ray begins to lose vigor.
You may be thinking I should have "done this right" from the get-go with the so-called perfect method of fishless cycling, but most likely I would have had this same problem when the ray was introduced and his massive ammonia output shocked the system, overloading what I had built up with my ammonia introductions each day to get the water to .5. Also I've known some fishless cyclers to "fishless cycle" for more than a month, almost a month and a half. To me that's ridiculous. Yes, I would have had to fishless cycle (in conjunction with Biospira--I'd head to Asheville to get it) if I didn't have established tanks, but I had that venue available to me and as using established media has cycled tanks for me in the past, this seemed like the best plan.
Although in retrospect, I would go back and obtain a quart of Biospira and double-up on that from the beginning.
Speaking of do-overs, I'd also use white gravel instead of sand. As much as I like the look of the sand, I'm having trouble with my filters. The ray's constant activity causes grains to be sucked into the filter boxes, putting undo strain on the impellor. I have to keep the intake tubes a foot and a half above the substrate, and this isn't really doing much good for mechanical filtration.
I may have to remove 90% of the sand and go with the gravel after all.
And that will be a lot of fun... ugh.
- Josh
joshday.com
