Is my dry rock cycle doing the right thing?

[carolioness]

Hello everyone!

I set up my first saltwater aquarium at the end of september. It's a 60L (about 16 gallon) tank and I decided to start with (dry) Real Reef Rock + bottled bacteria.
As I read on the internet, I introduced ammonia into the tank by adding a few mililiters of household ammonia (that claims to be just ammonia + water) up to about 1 to 2ppm to give the start of the cycle a little boost.
However, after a few weeks, the ammonia hadn't dropped, no nitrite or nitrite spike. It came to mind that maybe the bottled bacteria that I had been adding (Seachem Stability btw) weren't working (no more)... I mean, you never know. So I decided to try another brand; Microbe-Lift Nite-Out II. This bottle sadly came slightly opened so I'm not even sure if that should still work properly anyway, but also after adding that to the tank for more than a week, still nothing happened. No ammonia drop, no nitrite, no nitrate spike. I also got a Seachem Ammonia Alert to see if my ammonia test wasn't actually just being wrong all the time and to keep a bit of an eye, but that thing also shows ammonia (no 2ppm, but it only reads a certain type of ammonia I believe). And even though I know waiting is key here, the bacteria brands do seem to claim that by this time, the ammonia definitely should have dropped (right?) and there should have been some sort of cycle happening...
This Monday I decided to go for a small piece of live rock, then, because there definitely have to be good bacteria in there... They had wet pieces of RRR at my LFS that were lying with the 'real' live rock, so I got a piece of that, hoping that it contained enough bacteria by now. Just did a test again and still no changes, although I wasn't expecting any already...

But as I was reading around a little bit, I do think it might be a little off that for the last few weeks nothing has changed with the ammonia, nitrite or nitrate levels... Do you guys think that maybe something's going wrong? Or is it normal that it takes so long before there are enough bacteria to handle the ammonia?

And if the live/wet Real Reef Rock will do its thing: how long do you guys think it will take before I should start to see changes?


Hope you can help me!

Definitely not the case that I want to add livestock right now or something, but I just want to make sure if this is a normal thing or not or if I should change anything...
And for a bit more info on the tank: I made the water with RO/DI water + Tropic Marin Reef Pro. There's no skimmer running at the moment, and the current readings are:
Salinity: 1.024
Ammonia: 2 ppm
Nitrite: 0,05 ppm
Nitrate: 5 ppm
PH: 8,15 pH
Alkalinity: 9,9 dKH
Phosphate: 0

 

[brandon429]

All cycle challenges can be decoded what nh3 does is predictable always.

first clue hunting, lemme see pics of scape and show which areas are the full cured aquarium live rock, lemme see how much of the scape is the known live rock.


ur cycle will be easy to fix considering you’ve met the time of a cycling chart that doesn’t care what bac you used. And u have nitrate.

 

[am3gross]

I am going to follow this one, I am having the exact same problem.

 

[carolioness]

Thanks for replying and following.

Here's two photos of the scape with a circle around the live/wet rock! The main shape was already put together by RRR; thought it was a rather cool looking piece that fit nicely into the tank with leaving enough space around it. It does have a small flat piece of RRR in the back that you can't see very well now to keep it upright, but that was also dry rock. The live piece was a little more than 0,5 kilograms.
Planning to change the position of the wet piece to the back later to see if I can create a little cave-like something, but I decided to put it in the front for now to keep an eye on it. (Same for the heater btw! That's in the tank itself now as I played with turning the temperature up a little as bacteria seem to like that, but I'll move it back to the built in sump as soon as the cycling is done and the temp can go back to normal.

As for the nitrates : they always have been there so it seems. They've never been 0 since I started testing...
Using Salifert kits for most tests by the way, for the ammonia test I'm using Colombo.

 

[brandon429]

you really have a neat post we can use in our cycling threads.

I show that to be a freshwater ammonia test kit, is that right

 

[carolioness]

I show that to be a freshwater ammonia test kit, is that right

No it is a test for marine aquariums. It's a Dutch brand I believe! They do seem to sell freshwater tests too but this is the saltwater one.

And thanks I think haha. I'm rather new on this forum so not quite sure how this post could be of any help but if you want me to mention or post this elsewhere let me know!

 

[brandon429]

no thats fine, most of those test kits should be using same approach, measuring total ammonia nitrogen etc we should try a way of calibrating it to see how it fares.


Below is an example link of this actual test being ran on a nano. His ammonia seemed stuck at 8 ppm, as single point reading.

but after our re arrangement, not stuck, is now reefing.

The test:

change out all the water we want assumed ammonia gone, to calibrate your test kit for low-end motion.

after full water change or at least 90%, take an updated ammonia test and post the actual test + its card in clear daylight.

that's your calibrated zero, no matter what the test says we know that's a safe level for new life, most or all of the water is new so it doesnt have ammonia issues. Age your water out a couple hours before the test/some mixes actually have trace ammonia but in two hours that w be fine.

two hours after a full water change is ammonia pic 1

then after that, dose your liquid ammonium chloride into the tank just a few drops at a time, wait five mins to circulate, and take an ammonia reading. *you are trying to drive it up barely, tiniest possible increase we can see as a difference between pic 1 and 2. dont go opaque change it will take a week to move down on most non digital testers, go up barely.

pic two is you driving the free ammonia up just barely from pic 1, post that clear pic barely darker on your kit.


third pic is the gold: for most testers the third ammonia test on tank water next day matches pic 1


in some tanks it takes two days, but if pic 3 does not match pic 1 in three days Id be amazed. I think w your live rock and wet sand and whatever bac has remained, it will move overnite or in one day.

You have a tester that hasnt been used on this forum, it will be neat to see the triple motion series on it.

Here is the exact test from above:

100% Water Change

So in my previous thread, I had an ammonia issue that was out of hand. As suggested, I did a 100% WC and now i’m wondering when I should start adding fish back. If anyone has suggestions, let me know!

www.reef2reef.com

 

[brandon429]

Jacks pic sequence-

next day after a water change, baseline for his tank is actually .5 a common reading due to color interp differences among lookers lol

he carefully dosed ammonia to a slightly darker change:

and then overnite, this motion proved he was never stalled and the whole time his base ammonia read .5

.5 was actually about .05 or .005 nh3, which is the only param we care about in cycling nowadays.

Being able to call a cycle off this motion is the single biggest difference between new cycling rules vs old.

Going off old cycling rules, Jack would still be awaiting a start date/.5 is his baseline safe but no old rules permit fish use in the presence of .5 ammonia.
old rules never disbelieve the single point reading.

 

[carolioness]

Hmm but if I get it right, would that be assuming that the test would always falsely read a certain amount of ammonia? Possible, of course, but I do doubt if that would be the case... Because when I started dosing it, it didn't start off at the 2ppm immediately. The first dose I did came at like 0,5ppm, then I added more so it'd read 1ppm. But as that didn't do anything for a while I decided to go for the 2ppm, because that's what most people seemed to advise... But correct me if I'm wrong though!

Was also thinking: if nothing will happen eventually, perhaps I should do a full water change anyways and not dose the ammonia with just an ammonia solution... but with ghost feeding or something (or a dead shrimp, although I'd rather not do the last one)...

 

[brandon429]

You could do it that way, either way it will cycle by x date tbd.



that alignment test shown is the only way to know if a given date is ok to start.

Waiting indefinitely for three parameter classic compliance is also ok, but we pay money to avoid those waits. I’ve never seen a single case where waiting a month + having bought five day cycling bac was required by seneye, literally all cycle issue threads are trying to use non seneye test kits and single readings to determine a start date.

 

[carolioness]

So I read the thread about this method and - just making sure I'm getting this right, so correct me if I'm wrong - but the situation in that thread does seem to be a little different right?
Because his test seemed to read something without any added ammonia in... But in my case the test did actually have lower readings before I started adding the ammonia. I also checked the ammonia several times a week, every week, and never saw a change... Shouldn't that have been happening then? Even if it didn't go back to zero?

Or would this method suggest that ammonia won't go down from (say) 2ppm to zero (or to where it was before ammonia was added) but just go down only slightly?

Not saying I'm not open to trying this method, by the way . Just wondering what seems to be going wrong in my case...

(Sorry if I'm slow at understanding stuff btw, but as English isn't my native language, sometimes things that are a little more complicated can be a little more challenging and I just want to make sure I'm getting it right and will do the right thing.)

 

[brandon429]

No I wouldn’t agree to that sequence above for a few reasons but in the end what we are searching for is a start date.

before I respond to above w opinions, search out and link here any thread or article you can find that applies to your tank, and gives a specific start date.

that hunt alone will show some neat patterns I think we address when using any non seneye test kit in this way, as a three picture set.


show me another persons start date for this reef first we need to see the benchmark reference.

 

[brandon429]

this thread can also be used another very interesting way. Simply follow old rules to see how long it takes. Cannot start until hard zero ammonia on a single read, absolutely no nitrite, and must have some degree of nitrate before it’s ready. Can try adding more bottle bac from a third brand to see if something changes

feel free to alter salinity and temp to any degree you’d like.


being able to see how long that takes to complete with these testers will be very valuable info

 

[carolioness]

Exciting news:
After putting the wet RRR in a week ago, I did a test again yesterday and I'm finally seeing changes in the nitrites and nitrates! Just did another test just to be sure and it is indeed showing higher numbers!
Nitrites used to be 0,05 for weeks and is now at 1 ppm.
Nitrates were 5 for weeks and are now 50.
Ammonia is also slowly coming down. Not very quickly yet, but it's definitely closer to 1ppm than to 2 now on the test. The Seachem Ammonia Alert is also getting lighter and is now saying 'alert' rather than something between 'alert' and 'alarm'.
So I think a cycle is finally starting to happen!

 

[starbuck88]

Seachem Stability is notorious for not starting a cycle. I went through 2 whole bottles and dosing with Dr Tims Ammonia and it didn't do anything at all, I left it weeks and weeks and weeks.

Due to a fantastic experiment/study on this very forum It would appear that the bottled bacteria that aren't technically live (bottles that don't need to be kept in a fridge) also need a carbon source, so they are better suited to starting off using food instead of pure ammonia.

This is the thread, https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/bacteria-in-a-bottle-myth-or-fact.403226/

The live bacteria that worked for me and matched exactly with the findings in the above thread with the pure ammonia and had my tank fully cycled within a couple of weeks was Fritz Turbostart. I will only ever use that from now on. Yes it is a little pricey but it most certainly gets to work immediately.

Your Rock will have started the cycle and thankfully now it seems your ammonia is coming down and you're now producing nitrites and nitrates.

It takes the bacteria colonies essentially twice the time to convert from nitrites to nitrates compared with the fast colonies that double in size much faster than convert ammonia to nitrite.

Keep testing and as soon as ammonia and a nitrites are 0, you're off to the races!

 

[brandon429]

Just to chart old school cycling times and rules against new timing, what’s the total weeks this tank has been running now, is it seven weeks?

Starbuck, can you give a guess when you feel the test kits used are going to line up all three ways? It’s ok to set start dates we aren’t required to wait indefinitely - reef conventions manage to start timely. When people move reefs to new homes, they want it ready on the right date, legit to ask here as well. We want to avoid ‘as long as it takes‘ predictions if possible, we are past how long it takes on all known written references

we want to keep it in comparison to what cycling charts show, none are sixty day charts so it will be neat when this tank using non digital readings, and nitrite spiking vs going down, arrives at eighty days showing not ready, on these test kits.

below is the sample timing from any cycling chart


if you solve for your time variables, you have the params at hand.

 

[carolioness]

Just to chart old school cycling times and rules against new timing, what’s the total weeks this tank has been running now, is it seven weeks?

I set it up on September 29. So apparently it's about 8 weeks now!
To give a quick idea (hope I'm getting this right but it's something like this at least):
Week 1 I just waited and added Seachem Stability on daily basis.
Week 2 I dosed the ammonia to 1ppm and added the Seachem
Week 3 no changes, still adding Seachem
Week 4 no changes, still adding Seachem
Week 5 no changes, started adding Microbe-Lift Nite-Out II instead and dosed ammonia op to 2ppm
Week 6 no changes, still adding Microbe-Lift
Week 7 no changes, added the wet piece of RRR
Week 8 ammonia coming down, nitrites and nitrates rising

Ammonia was at 0,5 today by the way! So it's now clearly coming down.

 

[Qasimja]

8 weeks is a really long cycle when im doing fishless cycle it usually takes 3-4 weeks

 

[brandon429]

those initial strains used agreed are a little different than norm.

fritz and dr Tims are known to be much faster.

but
would be very curious to see you specifically run the ammonia slightly up test and post the 3 pics.
that provides a specific answer that we havent got so far. we're waiting twice the normal time on the current method, what about changeup the evaluation means

 

[carolioness]

Fritz and Dr. Tims are sadly not available here, otherwise I probably would've bought the Dr. Tims as I read so much about it. But Europe seems to have different brands available...

But for the test though... Would I still need to do a 100% water change? As I probably don't prefer doing that now as things seemingly are going the right way and a 100% wc just to show results seems like quite a lot of work. ;-)