High ammonia during cycle(dr.times)

[badudi]

Hey guys after a little bit of advice I’m new the the hobby I started my cycle on the 31st of August, went with the Dr.Tims one and only and bottled ammonia following the instructions but seem to have a very high reading of ammonia at 6.1 I’m not sure if this is normal in a new tank? I took some sample water to my LFS and they sold me a bottle of seachem stability and told me to do that for a week. A different LFS told me to do a water change what would you guys recommend?

also a little confused with the fluval test kit am I getting my ammonia reading from the colour chart or the chart on the left keeping in mind my ph is currently 8.0..

side note I added the stability yesterday as guided by my LFS but haven’t done the second dose today as I’m thinking I might need to do a water change first..

thank you all in advance and excuse my ignorance!

 

[brandon429]

Im going to simplify your cycle challenge by converting this into a testless cycle vs a tested one

we do testless cycling in another thread out to forty pages, this summary will save you a long read


testless cycles have a known exact start date planned ahead of time vs tested cycles that have an open ended wait + extra wait time on top of that due to issues known with the test kit, not the actual cycle.

*reef conventions use testless cycling or they couldn’t start the convention on time with rows of ready reefs. If they did tested cycling at the convention nobody could begin their reef until test kits permitted them to, they’d miss the entire convention waiting for nitrite or ammonia to zero out.


Sub in # of days counted vs testing for an easy fix to your issue.

add one pinch of fish food ground up into powder into the tank, Dr Reefs carbon dosing trick. Let the tank run like this for one more week from today. Change out all your water, add fish, the cycle is done. no testing required, thats not a digital kit you’re using and doing a test cycle with that ammonia kit will have you waiting until the end of this month for something that will be ready next week.


this is the known deposition time, number of days wait, for the type of bacteria you’re establishing at the start here.

 

[brandon429]

The formula to fix your cycle is simply fish food, wait seven more days, change water, you’re done and whatever you add to the reef will live just fine

regarding number of days calculated for your start date: comes from the ammonia drop line from a cycling chart. The drop happens by day ten, on all charts, thats what we use in my testless cycling threads to develop a planned ready date and it always works.

How to unstick any seemingly stuck cycle

Updated Cycling Science in Action This is a testless reef tank cycling thread, the only one from any board. If you ever had trouble with reef tank cycling in the past, you won't any longer after working some jobs with us. chances are you are using/about to use a method of reef tank cycling...

www.reef2reef.com

notice from the thread

you would not test further


you would not add more bacteria to the current bacteria


notice how in Dr. Reefs test thread below, Dr Tims bottle bac was done by day ten? Able to carry fish on day one? That’s factored in your start date assignment too.

 

[reef_1]

Provided water params are good and water is dechlorinated I would:

- get a different test kit
- bring down ammonia to 2-3 with water change
- wait 2-3 days
- if no change in values then I would add a bit of a fish food (in a way that you can remove it later)
- wait 2-3 days
- if there is no movement in measured values then add fritz 9

While you wait read this for info on fish food, fritz 9 and cycling in general:

Bacteria in a bottle, Myth or Fact

Call me old school, back in the day we placed a deli shrimp in a tank to kick start the cycle. When tank reached 1.5-2 ppm ammonia we pulled it out and waited sometimes weeks to months for bacteria to colonize and drop ammonia and nitrites down to 0 to make tank safe for livestock. With recent...

www.reef2reef.com

 

[Garf]

Hey guys after a little bit of advice I’m new the the hobby I started my cycle on the 31st of August, went with the Dr.Tims one and only and bottled ammonia following the instructions but seem to have a very high reading of ammonia at 6.1 I’m not sure if this is normal in a new tank? I took some sample water to my LFS and they sold me a bottle of seachem stability and told me to do that for a week. A different LFS told me to do a water change what would you guys recommend?

also a little confused with the fluval test kit am I getting my ammonia reading from the colour chart or the chart on the left keeping in mind my ph is currently 8.0..

side note I added the stability yesterday as guided by my LFS but haven’t done the second dose today as I’m thinking I might need to do a water change first..

thank you all in advance and excuse my ignorance!

You can do what Brandon suggests to short cut the cycle and like he sais, everything will most likely be fine. Folks have been doing it for years successfully. However, that is not a fishless cycle. For a fishless cycle you can follow reef 1 suggestions. Reading is good, as long as you read the right stuff. Welcome