phatduckk
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- Jul 21, 2019
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- San Mateo, CA
- What state or country do you live in
- California
I started cycling my Reefer 350 over a week ago... I've been doing my best to be patient as I've embarked on this new hobby but, ya know, that's hard.
On Sept 22nd I pulled my filter socks, added an 8oz (I think, the one for 120g) of Dr Tim's One and Only, waited about 6-7 hours then dosed 4 drops/gallon of Tim's ammonia per the instructions on the bottle. I was very meticulous when adding water to the tank and counted about 75g to fill the DT and sump... so 300 drops of ammonia; annoying - but easy enough.
2 days later I started testing the ammonia w/ my Red Sea kit: neon green; it was was brighter than the color for 2.0 on the card. "OK - I'll wait". I started testing daily and every single time the ammonia was off the charts. "Maybe my kit is whacky". Yesterday, a week later, I went to my LFS to get the tests done and, yup, off the charts on everything - ammonia, nitrate and nitrate.
I decided to give Bio-Spira a shot. Dumped a bottle in last night and a few hours I noticed some strangeness on my Apex charts:
My ORP was starting to jet up! I figured something was happening. So, finally, 24 hrs after dosing the Bio-Spira I ran the Red Sea tests and, sure enough, ammonia is down. I can't exactly tell but its either 0.4 or 0.8 - a huge change from the neon green 2+.
Interestingly enough ph has been dropping during the same time.
Now - I don't want to poop on Dr Tim. I ordered the One & Only directly from them and it got delivered the day before I got back from vacation (first time Fedex ever delivered something earlier than scheduled) so it sat on my front porch for over 24 hours during a hot spell.
Anyway - I'm new at this but found this pretty interesting. Read up a bit on ORP but its been a busy day and haven't really dove in too deep.
Hopefully the nitrites start clearing up soon as they're pretty convincingly "neon" right now too. I'm actually looking forward to testing again tomorrow to see if this ammonia/nitrite vs ORP trend continues.
On Sept 22nd I pulled my filter socks, added an 8oz (I think, the one for 120g) of Dr Tim's One and Only, waited about 6-7 hours then dosed 4 drops/gallon of Tim's ammonia per the instructions on the bottle. I was very meticulous when adding water to the tank and counted about 75g to fill the DT and sump... so 300 drops of ammonia; annoying - but easy enough.
2 days later I started testing the ammonia w/ my Red Sea kit: neon green; it was was brighter than the color for 2.0 on the card. "OK - I'll wait". I started testing daily and every single time the ammonia was off the charts. "Maybe my kit is whacky". Yesterday, a week later, I went to my LFS to get the tests done and, yup, off the charts on everything - ammonia, nitrate and nitrate.
I decided to give Bio-Spira a shot. Dumped a bottle in last night and a few hours I noticed some strangeness on my Apex charts:
My ORP was starting to jet up! I figured something was happening. So, finally, 24 hrs after dosing the Bio-Spira I ran the Red Sea tests and, sure enough, ammonia is down. I can't exactly tell but its either 0.4 or 0.8 - a huge change from the neon green 2+.
Interestingly enough ph has been dropping during the same time.
Now - I don't want to poop on Dr Tim. I ordered the One & Only directly from them and it got delivered the day before I got back from vacation (first time Fedex ever delivered something earlier than scheduled) so it sat on my front porch for over 24 hours during a hot spell.
Anyway - I'm new at this but found this pretty interesting. Read up a bit on ORP but its been a busy day and haven't really dove in too deep.
Hopefully the nitrites start clearing up soon as they're pretty convincingly "neon" right now too. I'm actually looking forward to testing again tomorrow to see if this ammonia/nitrite vs ORP trend continues.
