I recently set up a 24 gallon peninsula frag tank. I have had a large 500ml bag of Seachem Matrix in my existing tank sump for over a year and I planned to just take half of it and have cycled media for my frag tank and use a bottle bacteria to give it a kick start in the new system.
I got one 1 1/2” Falco Hawk and one 2” Electric Indigo Dottyback to get things moving. I figured with the 250ml of cycled Matrix and Seachem Stability added daily in the initial days I would be just fine in avoiding any ammonia. I’ve done this in the past with freshwater tanks with zero issues if I use enough cycled media. I’ve placed 10 tetras right in before in a 20 gallon freshwater tank and never saw any trace of ammonia.
I’ve tested twice a day for 0 ammonia for the first three days. Now this morning I got a slight ammonia reading of .1ppm or so. I added a dash of prime and a little extra Stability to detoxify the ammonia and hopefully boost up the bacteria population.
I’m wondering why the large amount of cycled media is not taking care of the ammonia of two tiny fish... especially with the Stability I’m adding in the recommended amount. The fish seemed fine with no signs of stress, so I am also wondering if my stupid API test kit for ammonia is just inaccurate and I’m worried about nothing. I also took more cycled media out of my main tank and put it in the filter section.
I am very responsible with cycling tanks, and I hope this wasn’t a rookie mistake. Please don’t chastise me for it, I was going off of past experience and thought this would not be an issue. I better come home to a ZERO ammonia reading this afternoon or I’m going to be quite worried about my fish!
Let me know what you think is happening. Should 250ml of cycled Matrix be able to handle the bio load of 2 small fish in a 24 gallon tank? Or was that stupid of me to add them that soon?
Thanks for taking time to read my story.
I got one 1 1/2” Falco Hawk and one 2” Electric Indigo Dottyback to get things moving. I figured with the 250ml of cycled Matrix and Seachem Stability added daily in the initial days I would be just fine in avoiding any ammonia. I’ve done this in the past with freshwater tanks with zero issues if I use enough cycled media. I’ve placed 10 tetras right in before in a 20 gallon freshwater tank and never saw any trace of ammonia.
I’ve tested twice a day for 0 ammonia for the first three days. Now this morning I got a slight ammonia reading of .1ppm or so. I added a dash of prime and a little extra Stability to detoxify the ammonia and hopefully boost up the bacteria population.
I’m wondering why the large amount of cycled media is not taking care of the ammonia of two tiny fish... especially with the Stability I’m adding in the recommended amount. The fish seemed fine with no signs of stress, so I am also wondering if my stupid API test kit for ammonia is just inaccurate and I’m worried about nothing. I also took more cycled media out of my main tank and put it in the filter section.
I am very responsible with cycling tanks, and I hope this wasn’t a rookie mistake. Please don’t chastise me for it, I was going off of past experience and thought this would not be an issue. I better come home to a ZERO ammonia reading this afternoon or I’m going to be quite worried about my fish!
Let me know what you think is happening. Should 250ml of cycled Matrix be able to handle the bio load of 2 small fish in a 24 gallon tank? Or was that stupid of me to add them that soon?
Thanks for taking time to read my story.
