Cured rock doesn’t produce nitrites at all, you are going about the cycle backwards. It took quite an in depth work to show how live rock cycles opposite of dry rock. To me that’s the most critical cycling detail never put into cycling threads
As you get advice meant for dry rock cycling, expect it to be tough to get yours done.
As your cycle continues and seems to do crazy things, remember that all cycles follow the same timeline given a few simple controls/in your case cured vs uncured. It’s not really misbehaving
Many times we get reports of cured rock and it’s just grey live rock uncured. That would make sense and pics w help.
But testing with api sure can cause problems.
Even before pics, you may have this rock in an ultra low surface area setup, which is why we wouldn’t have used 3 ppm to test it. We would have never ever dosed ammonia at all. That a few pounds of lr cannot digest a mass of ammonia sitting in a bare bottom tank (if applicable) means nothing about their inherent bacteria. Overwhelming some bac doesn’t mean they aren’t there
This rock wasn’t for fishless cycling w dr tims. If you want to anyway, you need to factor in the complete tanks surface area before choosing a ppm stopping point, and, don’t use api to get there
Your ammonia could be as high as 3-6 there’s no telling from the common kits people use.
