is my cycle stalled?

[dkosdros]

Hello all,
I've had my tank up for about a week. Used Dr Tims One and Only to cycle the tank. Been testing daily. It seems my ammonia is staying at 1.2 and my nitrites are at 1 and my nitrates did spike to 10 and then I used my skimme to reduce foam and at same time nitrates went down so I'm assuming they were related.

Can anyone with more experience review my daily tests and give me your input on what I should be doing if anything?

Here's my post:
http://reef2reef.com/threads/dkosdross-75-gal-reef-build.162305/page-2#post-2908527


Thanks
Dennis

 

[tankstudy]

You had a bacteria bloom that caused the cloudiness. When the bacteria bloom died, indicated when your tank water became clear again, it more than likely produced a ton of ammonia for your ammonia consuming bacteria. Monitor your pH so that it is within the recommend range by Dr. Tim. Just let the tank get to zero on ammonia and nitrite before adding anymore ammonium chloride. The bottled bacteria isn't going to have a specific amount of bacteria consistently. I'm sure they try to put several quadrillions worth of bacteria in every bottle but by the time the product reaches you, it may have more or less.

Using the recommended dosage on the bottle may take a week or two depending on how much bacteria is in the bottle, so you'll have to be patient.

 

[dkosdros]

Ok thanks.

Just checked PH again because I hadn't done that since a couple of days ago figuring that wouldn't change since I wasn't adding much new water or had any live stock. PH just tested again at 8.2 like I has been all along.

Sounds like everything's doing what it should be doing and I need to sit tight. Cannot wait to see when Ammonia and Nitrite drop to zero as well as the effect of my skimmer continues to have on nitrates.

 

[Diesel]

Dr Tims can be tricky as I have used it many times, it's know it can cycle a tank in 5 days if it takes longer you did something wrong on the dosing.
How long is your tank cycling as we speak?
If Ammonia won't drop ad some bacteria to the tank, if you still have some DrTims great if not use any kind what's available at your LFS.
Use the recommended dose on the bottle for your tank.
A small water change (5%) might trigger some bacteria life too.

 

[brandon429]

The most important distinction for you dkos is a simple 40 day time frame submerged. We trust the known time frames over any test kits, biology is more reliable. These cells seed, divide and become colonies over known time frames that never change unless someone doses antibacterial meds.

We do not go solely off test kits in your cases, ammonia to zero with some nitrates, because your water column is nitrifying due to the things you are adding to suspension. The time frame commutes that ability to the rocks, the higher surface area, in 40 days. That's why it takes 40 days....we are filling in football fields worth of surface area in some tanks. Others are ready faster, weeks or days as mentioned.

When we start with live sand and dry rock, and are dosing the water with bac additives and ammonia, the live sand automatically adds to nitrification along with the water ability, so if you had dry sand dry rock, do dr tims for a month, then when it goes to zero in 24 hours it's ready.

If you used dry rock and live sand, and bottle bac, the tank had an initial ready ability and you can wait variably past that for the rocks to catch up. If you added a few frags to make the ride less boring in a blended cycle like that, no harm would come.

The cool takeaway for your thread title is it's impossible to stall a cycle unless we dose meds

*if you already have any live animals in the tank, it's cycle sped up massively. The dilution and pre-cycled portions carried them, if it's been anywhere past two weeks you can just continue.

You are either within or without the 40 day periods relative to the amount of ammonia you want to digest, with any pre seeded portions automatically able to carry some bio load.

http://reef2reef.com/threads/new-ta...d-cocktail-shrimp-live-rock-no-shrimp.214618/

 

[dkosdros]

Thanks Brandon. I woke up this morning and see brown algae forming on top of the rocks. Tiny air bubbles are either coming from the algae or they are in the water column and sticking to the algae because on top of the algae there are air bubbles sticking to it. I'm about to test the water once I put my son down. Will be interesting to see if anything has changed now that I see the algae which I assume is the start of diatoms.

 

[dkosdros]

Here's a pic of it. Starting to see the brown on top of the sand bed as well.

 

[tankstudy]

If your already seeing diatoms, they are probably what are consuming your nitrates. Just keep your skimmer going and it will remove the diatoms as they die and slough off.

 

[dkosdros]

Ok cool. Yea I was golfing all day and just got back and checked on the tank and the diatoms have covered 80% of the rocks and a lot of the sand. It's impressive how quick is spread all over everything. And it's giving off air bubbles for sure. All my rocks have tiny air bubbles floating off of them and then they bubble up to the surface. So I'm assuming some sort of anerobic activity is happening.

 

[brandon429]

That needs to be removed from the tank, hand guided out it is of no benefit

Needs work, siphon removal water changes to guide the aging substrate free of all invaders, only coralline and corals allowed
We find creative ways to remove it

A brush head zip tied to the end of a siphon hose on a dowel rod for control...can brush and remove same time etc...

Not critical to sterilize it clean, but the act of hand removing what you can as early substrate guidance, allowing only purple coralline to set in is ideal

 

[George_86]

hi guys, geroge here first day to the site, im on my third week< having some major issues, with trying to fight off, so0 i dipped the Myagi torts yesterday ,,,Nothing ( have more than one tank going at the moment )I plan on dipping all sps in Bayer every 3-4 days and removing any obvious eggs and leaving main bt free of across for a few weeks< not sure what to do at this point anyone have any ideas? maybe point me to a better forum then this one, ive been looking all over this site today looking at other peoples forums/threads and trying to get some ideas how to fix this no idea so i signed up to be able to post and im really hoping to find someone that can help me out! would be great to meet someone who has such a passion as i do that can maybe help me?

 

[dkosdros]

Going on Day 20 and my ammonia dropped to zero a week or so ago however my Nitrites are still reading at 1+. I have fish and inverts and all seem healthy and fine. Is this normal? Am I doing something wrong? I just thought nitrites would have fallen by now. I'm moving slowly and waiting about a week in between adding live stock. Which is slow to me. LOL. Any thoughts? I'm just going to keep chugging along hoping they drop at some magical point.

 

[brandon429]

not stalled at all. per the thread, you are on track. you are needing about 40 days time, then a digestion test, and only what ammonia does matters not the nitrite.


after the 40 day window, when the ammonia passes the digestion test from our link right above, then your cycle is done and at no time did nitrite matter given verified ammonia digestion and all tested substrates being submerged 30-40 days per the thread.

The part that's confusing you is measuring nitrite at all... easier to disregard and go only off ammonia + 40 days underwater, you're halfway thru

By day 40, if you've verified the ammonia digestion abilities per our detailed thread above, nitrite will be in line regardless of what tests say, not needed to test for nitrite but if we do it adds more cycling challenges mostly due to misreads at low levels.

 

[dkosdros]

Gotchya. Makes sense. Should I be doing water changes frequently? Or should I leave it be for at least 40 days?

And I guess I should stop waisting tests on nitrite until at least day 40 correct?

 

[Kirch899]

I would not do a water change in a cycle. Just me tho

 

[brandon429]

Yep I agree no WC needed since no animals are present. Ideally, we are spiking a little bac in a bottle and a little ammonia from a bottle and we shore this thing up in about two weeks lol

 

[Kirch899]

Yep I agree no WC needed since no animals are present. Ideally, we are spiking a little bac in a bottle and a little ammonia from a bottle and we shore this thing up in about two weeks lol

Agreed if you do a water change it will mess up the cycle I believe. (Some people may disagree). I Agree with Brandon429. After cycle I would do about 10 percent every week water change.

 

[dkosdros]

I do have livestock. 2 cardinals and a cleaner shrimp and a small cleanup crew. I did do a 25-30gal water change last weekend. Was trying to get nitrates down. So what would you recommend from here?

 

[Kirch899]

What is you're setup. I would do another water change

 

[Kirch899]

High nitrates could be a few things.

1) Your filter media needs replacing.

2) High bio load. Having too many or too large fish will keep nitrates high. Couple that with heavy feeding and it's a recipe for disaster.

3) Not enough water changes. Dont' just change the water, dig down in the substrate and get that detritus out of there.

4) Nitrates in source water. With 10 PPM source water you are fighting an uphill battle. Say you have 40 PPm in your tank before a change. You then take out 25 % and replace it with 10PPM new water. You're not really removing all that much nitrate.

You might want to try some live plants or more frequent/greater quantity water changes.