I started a 265 gallon 6 weeks ago. I have been testing regularly. My amonia has been highest at .50. Right now it is at 0. I have never seen nitrite. I tested nitrate and it is at 10. Is it possible that it cycled and I never saw nitrite?
Cycle question
- Thread starter Johnny bass07
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In that much dilution it’s going to be hard to use test kits to detect trace levels
we’d need a seneye but that’s only if we needed to test, it’s not hard to skip testing just add one simple bottle of biospira to this mix and begin if you have a concern.
you can also just evaluate your cycle based on a common cycling chart until you decide on a bottled booster, you can solve for the time axis and cross reference the other params.
all cycling charts are thirty days, therefore you can add some reasonable starting bioload and it will live because your base ammonia control is well in place. Bacteria still get in by water contamination and environmental exchanges within a home even if we didn’t dose from a bottle. This was all aquariums in the 80s, 30 day wait cycles. They used the cycling charts, living animals at the end of the wait time on paper, not testers.
in the 80s nobody doubted bacteria. Now we all do, and luckily there’s a retail solution
$
we’d need a seneye but that’s only if we needed to test, it’s not hard to skip testing just add one simple bottle of biospira to this mix and begin if you have a concern.
you can also just evaluate your cycle based on a common cycling chart until you decide on a bottled booster, you can solve for the time axis and cross reference the other params.
all cycling charts are thirty days, therefore you can add some reasonable starting bioload and it will live because your base ammonia control is well in place. Bacteria still get in by water contamination and environmental exchanges within a home even if we didn’t dose from a bottle. This was all aquariums in the 80s, 30 day wait cycles. They used the cycling charts, living animals at the end of the wait time on paper, not testers.
in the 80s nobody doubted bacteria. Now we all do, and luckily there’s a retail solution
$
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