I did a 50% water change and that seems to have jump-started the cycle. 24 hours after the water change I still have 200+ppb Nitrite but Nitrate is now 4.6ppm. I'll do another water change and I am going to try and find a new ammonia test. Protein skimmer is not on yet. I ran it for a day before the water change just to try and tune it, with no luck.
Yes, it will work, though a few things.
Yes rodi then mix with saltwater. Live in Florida, avg temps are 70+ right now. Don't think a heater is necessary but will still look into it. Do I need to provide any source of light?
No, light is not needed. 70+ should be fine, it's just about making sure it is not too cold as that does slow down the metabolism of the nitrifiers, but 70+ is plenty warm.
Yeah probs just a bacterial bloom. Careful it does not get too massive and deplete the tank of oxygen, but otherwise should be fine. I presume you started with live rock and/or some other sort of established biomedia? I mean the slight amount of nitrite throws me off just a little bit, so kinda wondering.
Started with Caribsea live sand + Marco dry rock + a plate of Marinepure bio media in the sump.
Gotcha. Yeah just be a bit careful with the stocking rate, sounds like your nitrifiers are still catching up with their growth. But otherwise re: bacterial bloom, is fine. Keep watch of your fish, see if they are breathing heavily. Otherwise not a problem.
Its high, above 2
It may be possible it is going down, just slowly so hard to register with your test kit (depending on what you use). For example with the API test kit it is pretty hard to differentiate between 2 and 5ppm. How long was it from when it first 'spiked' until now?
About one week ago was the first spike, Im using biological accelerator e throwing small portions of pellets everyday
So to preface this, one thing to note is that nitrite is non-lethal to marine fish until it reaches super high concentrations, like 100+ ppm or so, may only be toxic at 25ppm anyways. So 2ppm is far from that.
Hey there. I'd recommend checking something that should have 0 nitrite, like the water you use for your salt mix or something and see if your nitrite test kit indeed measures 0 nitrite - which at least says it can differentiate between presence and absence of nitrite.Hi all, about 10 days into my fishless cycle (seeded with Bio-Spira and live sand, but otherwise dry rock) dosing ammonia. I am using the Red Sea test kit and have seen ammonia spike initially and now register at 0 ppm for several days. However, I don't have much clarity on the nitrite and nitrate readings. The tests seem to be a slightly different color spectrum and I haven't been confident with the results. I wonder if the 'A' bottle was tampered with, because when I first opened the kit, it seemed a bit disheveled and the 'A' bottle had a little bit of moisture on it. Any ideas or insight would be much appreciated!
Ow, that's awesome then, its indeed a fishless cycle, do u think that I can introduce them now?
So this then depends on how well your aquarium is handling ammonia. That's kinda hard in some cases whereby your ammonia source is fish food as it may take a while to decompose and release ammonia, etc. etc., but in this case presuming you've been adding fish food daily for a while and ammonia is 0 (or 0.25ppm, with the API test kit), then it sounds like ammonia-oxidation capacity is up to par. So yes, you can probably add fish now.
Thanks — very helpful! I did a baseline test a few days ago (for ammonia, should've done it for nitrites as well lol) with my pre-tank water and it seemed fine so I kept pushing along. Upon just doing it for nitrites, it barely registered a color so, like you said, at least now I can verify that the testing is working!
