Is my tank done cycling?

[Cell]

Azed is giving good advice. In the presence of suspected false positive ammonia test, you test for ammonia now and set your baseline. Then dose ammonia until your test reads an elevated level. Wait a day and test again. If it drops back down to your baseline, you are good to go.

 

[LifeOfAquatics]

I use dr Tim’s ammonia. And just add some drop and test. Allot easier to get to 2ppm then with food

that does sound a lot easier ngl. but i can't get that now, unfortunately. could i just a larger amount of food into the tank to hopefully achieve the same result?

 

[LifeOfAquatics]

Azed is giving good advice. In the presence of suspected false positive ammonia test, you test for ammonia now and set your baseline. Then dose ammonia until your test reads an elevated level. Wait a day and test again. If it drops back down to your baseline, you are good to go.

ah ok thats smart. so i assume .25 is my baseline right now. should i add more fish food than usual and test tomorrow and see if the readings went up? and once ammonia goes up, nitrite goes up and then they both go down and nitrate goes up then the cycle is done right?

 

[MaxTremors]

i responded earlier. so the lfs associate said that the rock was sprayed with like bacteria and was technically live rock. i believed them because the rock did have coralline alage growing on it as well.

You aren’t answering the question. Was it dry (and stored dry at the lfs), or did come out of one of their tanks and you transported it wet? If it was dry, it’s not technically live rock, it’s man-made aragonite rocks that have been painted purple (it is not real or live coralline algae) and seeded with bacteria spores they call ‘life rock’, in terms of aiding in nitrification and denitrification, it is not nearly as good as real, wet live rock. That’s not to say it is bad, it doesn’t have all of the pests associated with live rock, and it will eventually have all the bacteria that real live rock has (at least in terms of the bacteria we want in our tanks), but it is not instantly aiding in the cycle the way real live rock would. If that is the kind of rock you got, if you can get a small piece of real live rock to seed the rest, it would be beneficial and speed things along (though you do run the risk of introducing pests (there are many), but to me it is well worth the risk, IMO a reef tank isn’t a reef tank without all of the microfauna that only comes with real live rock, ie copepods, amphipods, feather duster worms, bristle worms, and all of the other little creatures that come in on live rock). If you can’t get any real live rock, you’ll end up getting some of these things from coral frags (especially if they are on live rock rubble instead of frag plugs). I will say, I recently set up a tank using mostly the rock you most likely purchased and seeded it with real live rock, and used liquid bacteria (seed by aquavitro), and the tank wasn’t completely cycled in two weeks, let alone two days. I wouldn’t add fish until you’ve observed zero ammonia and zero nitrites for several days (or a week) while still ghost feeding. There’s just no way you have a stable bacterial population in two days.

 

[Alvaro_Spain]

Your tank is on the good path if you already have 20 nitrates and 0 on nitrite. Just a bit more till that ammonia dissappears.

You don´t need to test every day. I´d test in 3 days or so and then in a week or so.

 

[LifeOfAquatics]

You aren’t answering the question. Was it dry (and stored dry at the lfs), or did come out of one of their tanks and you transported it wet? If it was dry, it’s not technically live rock, it’s man-made aragonite rocks that have been painted purple (it is not real or live coralline algae) and seeded with bacteria spores they call ‘life rock’, in terms of aiding in nitrification and denitrification, it is not nearly as good as real, wet live rock. That’s not to say it is bad, it doesn’t have all of the pests associated with live rock, and it will eventually have all the bacteria that real live rock has (at least in terms of the bacteria we want in our tanks), but it is not instantly aiding in the cycle the way real live rock would. If that is the kind of rock you got, if you can get a small piece of real live rock to seed the rest, it would be beneficial and speed things along (though you do run the risk of introducing pests (there are many), but to me it is well worth the risk, IMO a reef tank isn’t a reef tank without all of the microfauna that only comes with real live rock, ie copepods, amphipods, feather duster worms, bristle worms, and all of the other little creatures that come in on live rock). If you can’t get any real live rock, you’ll end up getting some of these things from coral frags (especially if they are on live rock rubble instead of frag plugs). I will say, I recently set up a tank using mostly the rock you most likely purchased and seeded it with real live rock, and used liquid bacteria (seed by aquavitro), and the tank wasn’t completely cycled in two weeks, let alone two days. I wouldn’t add fish until you’ve observed zero ammonia and zero nitrites for several days (or a week) while still ghost feeding. There’s just no way you have a stable bacterial population in two days.

it was dry on a shelf. got it, thanks!

 

[LifeOfAquatics]

Your tank is on the good path if you already have 20 nitrates and 0 on nitrite. Just a bit more till that ammonia dissappears.

You don´t need to test every day. I´d test in 3 days or so and then in a week or so.

someone else on here was saying that i might be getting false ammonia readings and that the test strips say its .25 but really its at 0. also, someone suggested adding 2ppm ammonia and letting it sit for 24 hours and if the ammonia is 0 (or in my case, .25 cause my strips arent registering correctly), and seeing if the nitrites are also 0 and the nitrates go up then the cycle is complete. is this true? could i add "2ppm ammonia" by simply adding more fish food because i do not have pure ammonium on hand rn.

 

[Cell]

my baseline right now. should i add more fish food than usual and test tomorrow and see if the readings went up? and once ammonia goes up, nitrite goes up and then they both go down and nitrate goes up then the cycle is done right?

Dr. Tim's ammonia or a different pure source would be preferred. The key is making sure you measure an elevated level after spiking. Not sure how much food that would take. But then yes, after the ammonia drops in 24 hrs, you are good to go. You can measure nitrite at this point to ensure you are getting an accurate nitrate reading. A nitrate reading is nice to know because you may or may not need a big water change before stocking depending on level.

 

[Azedenkae]

how should i go abt adding 2ppm ammonia using flakes? should i just dump a whole bunch in there (not like too much obvi but like more than I've been doing thus far)? wait, API test kits show 0 ammonia as .25 sometimes?

I would use Dr. Tim's ammonium chloride. It is hard to have control using fish food, because 1. it is hard to know how much ammonia is being produced by adding fish food, unless you know 1. how much ammonia it would even produce from ammonification and such, and 2. how much ammonia it produces over time. So that makes it hard.

If say you add heaps of food and say in a few hours measure 2ppm, then tomorrow you measure 2ppm again, it is hard to know if nothing is happening, or if ammonia is being consumed but at the same time ammonia is being produced at the same level and thus still measuring 2ppm. I mean, you should see nitrite or nitrate increase in that case, but then that requires conversions.

It can work, just harder to really control or accurately track.

If you really want to make fish food to work, personally I'd dump in a week's worth of feeding into the tank, give it a good stir every so often to help it break up and dissolve as much as possible, and measure every four hours or so after the addition to monitor ammonia changes, then maybe every 12 or 24 hours after in hopes of getting readings that may not be accurate, but good enough to see where everything is trending over a course of a week (to match the week's worth of feeding). Of the top of my head, that would be what I'd do.

As a lot of others said, you really want a 'spike' in ammonia reading to be able to see a reduction in ammonia concentrations. If you take 0.25ppm as the baseline, that does not really work because it is not really possible to tell if there is a decrease or not if we are not sure if 0.25ppm is actually 0ppm or otherwise.

 

[LifeOfAquatics]

Dr. Tim's ammonia or a different pure source would be preferred. The key is making sure you measure an elevated level after spiking. Not sure how much food that would take. But then yes, after the ammonia drops in 24 hrs, you are good to go. You can measure nitrite at this point to ensure you are getting an accurate nitrate reading. A nitrate reading is nice to know because you may or may not need a big water change before stocking depending on level.

someone suggested to put a week's worth of food in there. might as well try that. so i add a weeks worth of food, then wait until this time tmw, and test and see if ammonia went down and nitrites went up. then wait a bit longer and see if nitrites went down and nitrates went up.

 

[LifeOfAquatics]

I would use Dr. Tim's ammonium chloride. It is hard to have control using fish food, because 1. it is hard to know how much ammonia is being produced by adding fish food, unless you know 1. how much ammonia it would even produce from ammonification and such, and 2. how much ammonia it produces over time. So that makes it hard.

If say you add heaps of food and say in a few hours measure 2ppm, then tomorrow you measure 2ppm again, it is hard to know if nothing is happening, or if ammonia is being consumed but at the same time ammonia is being produced at the same level and thus still measuring 2ppm. I mean, you should see nitrite or nitrate increase in that case, but then that requires conversions.

It can work, just harder to really control or accurately track.

If you really want to make fish food to work, personally I'd dump in a week's worth of feeding into the tank, give it a good stir every so often to help it break up and dissolve as much as possible, and measure every four hours or so after the addition to monitor ammonia changes, then maybe every 12 or 24 hours after in hopes of getting readings that may not be accurate, but good enough to see where everything is trending over a course of a week (to match the week's worth of feeding). Of the top of my head, that would be what I'd do.

As a lot of others said, you really want a 'spike' in ammonia reading to be able to see a reduction in ammonia concentrations. If you take 0.25ppm as the baseline, that does not really work because it is not really possible to tell if there is a decrease or not if we are not sure if 0.25ppm is actually 0ppm or otherwise.

here ill try the dumping weeks worth of food. ill check tmw and see if anything has changed levels wise.

 

[Azedenkae]

someone suggested to put a week's worth of food in there. might as well try that. so i add a weeks worth of food, then wait until this time tmw, and test and see if ammonia went down and nitrites went up. then wait a bit longer and see if nitrites went down and nitrates went up.

I mean, pure ammonia is still preferable, but yes that would be my suggestion if you don't want to/can't use pure ammonia and really want to use fish food.

 

[LifeOfAquatics]

I would use Dr. Tim's ammonium chloride. It is hard to have control using fish food, because 1. it is hard to know how much ammonia is being produced by adding fish food, unless you know 1. how much ammonia it would even produce from ammonification and such, and 2. how much ammonia it produces over time. So that makes it hard.

If say you add heaps of food and say in a few hours measure 2ppm, then tomorrow you measure 2ppm again, it is hard to know if nothing is happening, or if ammonia is being consumed but at the same time ammonia is being produced at the same level and thus still measuring 2ppm. I mean, you should see nitrite or nitrate increase in that case, but then that requires conversions.

It can work, just harder to really control or accurately track.

If you really want to make fish food to work, personally I'd dump in a week's worth of feeding into the tank, give it a good stir every so often to help it break up and dissolve as much as possible, and measure every four hours or so after the addition to monitor ammonia changes, then maybe every 12 or 24 hours after in hopes of getting readings that may not be accurate, but good enough to see where everything is trending over a course of a week (to match the week's worth of feeding). Of the top of my head, that would be what I'd do.

As a lot of others said, you really want a 'spike' in ammonia reading to be able to see a reduction in ammonia concentrations. If you take 0.25ppm as the baseline, that does not really work because it is not really possible to tell if there is a decrease or not if we are not sure if 0.25ppm is actually 0ppm or otherwise.

i have one other option but i seriously don't think it will work. i have an axolotl who poops like a maniac. is it possible to use her poop to add ammonia to the tank? don't think so but just wanted to ask. but as for the fish food part, i might just add 2x or 3x the normal food I've been adding and see what happens tmw. if the ammonia are at least nitrites go up, at least something is happening. i understand the .25 as technically 0 part, make sense. ill put in a lot today, and see what happens tmw.

 

[Alvaro_Spain]

i have one other option but i seriously don't think it will work. i have an axolotl who poops like a maniac. is it possible to use her poop to add ammonia to the tank? don't think so but just wanted to ask. but as for the fish food part, i might just add 2x or 3x the normal food I've been adding and see what happens tmw. if the ammonia are at least nitrites go up, at least something is happening. i understand the .25 as technically 0 part, make sense. ill put in a lot today, and see what happens tmw.

Yes, it is possible to use the axolotl poop if that´s the way you want to go. You can even use your pee (a small amount) in the aquarium to raise ammonia.

Anyway, if that was my tank. You have it almost cycled. I would add a trochus snail or what I actually do, saltwater mollies, and continue maturing the tank for some months.

With your readings you can add also easy soft corals. xenia, GSP, palys, zoas and things like that. I´ve seen many people have softies in even while cycling.