Ammonia breakdown time?

[MarcosTacos]

I purchased 3 pieces of live rock from someone, the rock has been sitting in his sump for a couple of years.

The rock had some brittle stars, possibly other hitchhikers on it.

I placed it in a tub of freshly mixed saltwater with a heater and powerhead last night, and added somme bottled ammonia to bring it up to 2ppm ammonia.

Today I tested and ammonia is still at 2 ppm, no nitrites, it's been around 12 hours.

Should I be seeing nitrites at this point, or is this normal?

 

[brandon429]

change all the water out, and simply use that rock it's skip cycle rock. sitting in a sump didn't lower it's bacteria. unless you have a digital seneye test kit for ammonia, any kit you're using is simply overpowered by the initial large ammonia loading and can't show you the resolve rates anyway. I have threads where 3 year old reef tanks showed 2.0 ppm on api, or red sea, or on a seachem badge/all non digital test kits.

the reading means nothing, only the rock origin matters. it was sitting in the sump of a running reef tank, with animals in it for a long time, is that part correct>

you don't recycle that kind of rock, it skip cycle transfers into the new tank when you lift it over and set it in. non digital test kits mean absolutely nothing, I have 2-3 more threads handy where a years old reef tank said 8 ppm and the keeper went sideways thinking their cycle died. if you had seneye, you'd be getting fully different readings on the digital nh3 system.

A thread tracking pure skip cycle instant reefs, no bottle bac

I'm at river city Aquatics in Austin rn Now this is skip cycle live rock If kept wet in saltwater it will not: Starve Get uncycled Fail to skip cycle Cause a mini cycle See all the coralline The bottom of the tank has pods and micro brittle stars, all healthy proof of being cycled with no...

www.reef2reef.com

look at that thread solely devoted to setting up entire day 1 reefs on skip cycle rock, yours isn't even a start over its simply adding rock to current rock...you don't even have to have cycled rock for that-you could be adding dry rock and it wouldnt matter.

that thread shows plainly that you don't test, verify or proof wet live rocks from a living biosystem-you just transfer them over and continue. to use non digital test kits is everyone's stalled cycle. it never happens on a calibrated digital nh3 meter/seneye or hanna.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

I'd keep watching it.

 

[MarcosTacos]

Ok, so why do I need to change the water exactly? I thought bacteria needed the ammonia to survive. I plan on keeping it in there for a couple more days.

 

[exnisstech]

What ammonia test kit are you using? On a recent cycle I found salifert to be more accurate that api. I also watch for nitrates. I don't bother watching nitrites. If I see a nitrates I consider it cycled and move forward, slowly tho.

 

[vetteguy53081]

I purchased 3 pieces of live rock from someone, the rock has been sitting in his sump for a couple of years.

The rock had some brittle stars, possibly other hitchhikers on it.

I placed it in a tub of freshly mixed saltwater with a heater and powerhead last night, and added somme bottled ammonia to bring it up to 2ppm ammonia.

Today I tested and ammonia is still at 2 ppm, no nitrites, it's been around 12 hours.

Should I be seeing nitrites at this point, or is this normal?

I would monitor the ammonia and assure you see steady declines of ammonia. Typically with the ammonia you added, ammonia will rise then fall and nitrate will rise and fall which is normal. When fish are added, the bacteria population will increase with the new bio load, converting waste to nitrate.

 

[brandon429]

for these reasons:

we're on year 3 handling live rock via prediction vs verification with non digital kits = causes doubt in cycling always

by being assertive with skip cycling vs cautious and using misreading name brand kits, it helps in your overall reefing confidence and procedure and design abilities to know which kind of cycle needs zero help. this kind of rock you used, found in all examples in our thread devoted solely to this kind of setup, needs zero verification and cannot ever starve if kept simply wet.


adding 2 ppm ammonia to rocks already cycled is poisoning animals that don't need tested, the worms and stars you noted. though the live rock handles the ammonia blast faster than your test kit can read it, that was an unhelpful burn at the start. those animals included are benthic cues/proofs that your rock was skip cycled and done already.

if algae is potentiated on the rock, this 2ppm feeds it.

you can see from the thread live rocks can't starve of their filter bacteria, it doesn't occur, those rocks are loaded with 20 years of food permanently etched in the crevices (waste loading organics, waste from animals deposited in the crevices etc). what you're doing is for dry rock cycling only, when starting a new tank. be sure and read the thread it'll help distinguish live rock vs dry rock cycling

 

[vetteguy53081]

What ammonia test kit are you using? On a recent cycle I found salifert to be more accurate that api

Api almost always reads low when numbers are higher. Salifert or Hanna more reliable and if you want to verify your api results, simply take a water sample to a store that does NOT use Api kits and have them test your ammonia and nitrates and compare readings- then you'll know where your levels truly are at

 

[MarcosTacos]

I don't really hive the ro water to make a water change atm. so I will continue testing and see if I can detect some nitrites in the following hours.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

I don't really hive the ro water to make a water change atm. so I will continue testing and see if I can detect some nitrites in the following hours.

The important thing is the ammonia decline, whether you ever detect nitrite or not, but it doesn't hurt to measure it.