your cycle is done, here's why, and what's making it hard to confirm:
liferocks self activate/painted on bac within about 10-12 days, per site.
wet sand=brings in nitrifying bac too
redundant bottles of bac, Fritz has already been tested to cycle a tank in 24 hours (where changing all the water, and redosing ammonia, still oxidizes=proof of cycle)
reason testers make it hard: you're using old cycling rules and guess testers.
new cycling rules: only ammonia matters not the other two, kick them out altogether
where ammonia is being measured, to not use seneye (a $300 meter) is to totally guess, you can't use that tester above to search for zero ammonia, since ammonia converts in the thousandths ppm in all reefs with rocks and sand and no dead fish wedged in the rocks. that tester can't read thousandths ppm, on the card it says zero. we think they register a fraction of free ammonia as they try and indicate this natural conversion, but overreport it.
You'll have to assess your cycle using other means. given the timeframes above, you're cycled, you'd change water and add some life and it lives, because your tank is ready. no matter how you slice, dice, adjust lighting, doesnt matter-API is not seneye. your tank is ready.
all you do is change out your wastewater, its algae fuel, makes uglies get ugly even faster.
input some reef life into the tank with clean water, and they all reef normally day to day. thats how you confirm a cycle when seneye isnt avail.
if determined to use that tester, you still could. spike liquid ammonia until that goes up one tiny color level, NOT 2ppm just one color block up from where it sits right now which is calibrated zero.
dose up
then in 24 hours itll lessen just a bit/down, might even take 48 hours since this isnt seneye. the move down within a couple days re proves what we already know due to submersion timed cycle studies. and ten thousand fish-in cycles.
not everyone agrees painted on bac/liferock is real/works
guess what we're missing to make that claim? a smidge of proof testing. Until then, its 2020 if you want to paint bac or ship it to me in a bottle, Im not amazed. we are heading to Mars, man. some water loving bac in dormancy cast around in different ways is not mindblowing.
Our own cycle testing can't confirm/disconfirm liferock activity since so many side sources of bac are mixed in, namely wet sand already claimed to carry bac (we know bottle bac works by testing, would bottle bac placed into a plastic bag with wet sand die? I think not)
