Dr Tim One & Only - water parameter unchanged for 30 days

[Garf]

Did a test today and saw amonia decreased, great! but nitrite and nitrates are still zero. Where's the nitrogen gone??

It’ll be there somewhere, lol. How much has ammonia come down?

 

[provia]

Thanks for help everyone. I'll hold on putting fish in there for now as there's no sufficient evidence that the tank is cycled and it's clear that the amonia is still high in there. I brought my water to my LFS and did a test there and confirmed this. Other than the chloramine killing the bacteria there's no explanation that the amonia didn't go down in the first 30 days.

It’ll be there somewhere, lol. How much has ammonia come down?

It went down from 1mg/l to 0.5mg/l. I'm confused. Is it theoretically possible for nitrogen to stay inside the bacteria before NO2 is released to the water??

 

[Garf]

Thanks for help everyone. I'll hold on putting fish in there for now as there's no sufficient evidence that the tank is cycled and it's clear that the amonia is still high in there. I brought my water to my LFS and did a test there and confirmed this. Other than the chloramine killing the bacteria there's no explanation that the amonia didn't go down in the first 30 days.


It went down from 1mg/l to 0.5mg/l. I'm confused. Is it theoretically possible for nitrogen to stay inside the bacteria before NO2 is released to the water??

Hobby test kits are weird and wonderful thing, lol. Converting your total ammonia of 0.5 to free ammonia (at normal pH) would suggest your safe to continue. Happy reefing

 

[provia]

The bacteria that cycle a tank are everywhere.

If you put a bucket of seawater outside and leave it alone with a pinch of food to create ammonia it will cycle.
Guaranteed.

You can add some bio media to speed things up.

Normally it will take 30-90 days.

You can speed the whole thing with a bottle of bac, which will work in 14 days.

The biggest con is the sale of Ammonia and Nitrite test kits. They are quite simply a ploy to watch a cycle that will happen anyway.

This is so true lol. I couldn't stop doing 2 tests per day, 12 hours apart. The waste on test kit is real.

 

[provia]

Hobby test kits are weird and wonderful thing, lol. Converting your total ammonia of 0.5 to free ammonia (at normal pH) would suggest your safe to continue. Happy reefing

This is interesting. Since I don't see an increase in nitrite and nitrate, isn't my tank equivalent to a non-cycled tank with a bit of amonia in there?

 

[gbroadbridge]

This is interesting. Since I don't see an increase in nitrite and nitrate, isn't my tank equivalent to a non-cycled tank with a bit of amonia in there?

It's complicated, but there are many threads that explain the whole ammonia equation.

 

[provia]

It's complicated, but there are many threads that explain the whole ammonia equation.

It will be very appreciated if you could suggest a few threads or a few keywords that I could search. The search function in this forum isn't always giving me the most relevant results.

 

[brandon429]

How does the link in post 8 not define your cycle, does your tank have characteristics we've never seen in that thread before

 

[brandon429]

You can easily see in that thread that if you do a water change then add fish, they live because your tank is cycled. All are after 30 days swirling in heated/ inoculated aquarium water

(They live until disease from skipping all disease preps kicks in)

You're thinking the tank is a stuck cycle because a non digital test kit says you're stalled. What's first sentence of the thread say?

 

[Dan_P]

Hi guys, I began my fishless cycle one month ago and during the month I observed absolutely no change in my water parameter. I'm quite frustrated and not sure what's the next action is. I am using aqua one 160L.

Here's the timeline:

Day 1: 120ml dr tim one and only with amonia dosing to 2ppm, skimmer off for the next 48 hours
Days 2-21: amonia 2ppm, nitrite 0.1-0.2, nitrate almost zero.
Day 21: 60ml dr tim one and only, skimmer off for the next 7 days.
Days 21 - 30: amonia 2ppm, nitrite 0.1-0.2, nitrate almost zero.

The test kit is from sera BTW.

The top of the skimmer (where the bubbles come out) turned green on day 14 but I am not expecting algae since there's no live rock.

Thanks in advance.

It is possible that you bought a dud bottle of Dr Tim’s. Try Turbostart or Biospira. The cycling should only take days.