No, the only bad thing is that there’s no seneye in place to track the actual levels, it’s the only way we’d know your status by testing. That kit you have can be overwhelmed by several factors, though agreed ten drops of straight liquid ammonia directly in the test vial would be less dark than that.
a firm rule in updated cycling science is that regardless of any mix, within reason ahem, you can wait X number of days predetermined for a cycling reef tank and change out all your water-what’s left behind is a working bioslick filter. it doesn’t fail to establish within a set number of days, exporting an overdose of ammonia swirling above the well-fed mix of bacteria is ideal. The slicks aren’t dead, they’re hyper growing.
regardless of the variations we see across cycles with high low ammonia, high low bacterial counts where some mixes are more active than others, given the number of days a cycle chart shows we can just do a water change for basic initial ammonia control and the tank’s filtration system will handle initial bioloading from there on out.
because that ammonia is so dark I thought it was magic marker black fluid squeezed out in the vial, you have a really good system to fact check updated cycling science.
Wait exactly twelve more days, change water, that’s beyond the ammonia drop date on any cycling chart. I am certain with all new water in it after that date, you can add a couple starter fish if you want and they’ll be fine. Don’t dose anything else, don’t feed any more, don’t water change now, let it stew twelve days and change water, and your tank will carry fish. At no time can that ammonia test be trusted; it’s likely a spy device of some sort I’d ditch it immediately
