Is my tank fully cycled?

[hotashes]

I do not want to create any confusion here, but I have to disagree with dosing Ammonia. If one starts with live rock and sand, dosing Ammmonia to 2 ppm, as one might do with dry rock, risks killing some beneficial life in the rock.

For some more detailed information on cycling I suggest these threads:

General cycling information:
https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/cycling-an-aquarium.306554/

Differences in cycling with dry and live rock:
https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/the-microbiology-of-reef-tank-cycling.214618/

Hope that helps!

Ok, firstly I lay no claim to the science. However to my recognition the ammonia test certainly needs to be re done as it appears visually incorrect. However moving on to the fact live rock/sand was used I'd certainly have to offer my experiences on setting up my nano tank 14G/54L using live rock only. The rock was transported in previous tank water and kept submerged. Previous tank was FOWLR. Once I'd dumped the rock and water it was transferred in into my tank I needed to top up with synthetic saltwater the rest of the volume.

NO ammonia was added, however I was detecting an ammonia reading (salifert) of <0.25 from set up and still do now heh.
However although NitrAtes were detected they were only ever 35ppm at maximum. Since lowered.

NOTE : I'd not added any fish, just like I wouldn't advise be done on this set up in question.

However I added LPS corals after 10 days, and even a 1" Tridacna Maxima clam at 30 days. (Touch wood)

Throughout my experience of setting up, I'd noticed microorganism like fanworms, Dorvilleidae worms, copepod, amphipods, even what appeared to be jellyfish medusa.

To add some more flavour, my LR having come from a FOWLR tank I learnt there must have been phosphates in the rocks as this revealed itself in the end product algae.

Mr @brandon429 h2o2 papers caught my attention.........

Yes believe it or not my rocks have had a round of spot dosing using 3% h2o2, yet all still holds up.

Now all I can add is, my nano has 2x fire shrimp in residence recently and going strong...

No fish yet.......

A.

 

[Tony Thompson]

That's the difference between curing live rock, and cycling. Live rock has lots of organisms on it. Rip it out of a tank or the ocean, transport it, and put it into your tank, lots of things will die. Those are the things that generate ammonia, and that's the curing of live rock: waiting for the die off to wind down, and nitrogen cycling to catch up the the increased ammonia load.

Hi Randy, I found both articles very informative and well written.

However I did have some difficulty in following the second post. The reason for my comment " To be honest I can not understand where the ammonia source will come from in the second article."

My comment was referring to the following statement from the article "1. fully cured live rocks, transferred live from pet store or seller, to home: gets no ammonia, we don't want to kill small bugs. keep it underwater for the transfer where possible"

As this refers directly to fully cured live rock transported wet. I did not follow how their would be sufficient die off to provide the suggested contained ammonia. I do appreciate that they will be some form off cycling as with anything living. But I would have thought this would require a substantially long period before the bacterial colonies reached a density sufficient to support an average bioload. This limited ammonia source would also suggest to me that once a live fish where added to the tank the increased load on the system may very well trigger an extended ammonia period. I understand that this may be minimal but all the same may be regarded as unnecessary stress on the animal.

I am also a little uncertain about the statement of additional ammonia having a lethal effect on the decapod crustaceans, amphipods, copepods and other micro fauna that may be present on the live rock. Surely this is in proportion to LC50 and above for any given group. If measured amounts of ammonium chloride where administered , enabling approximate predictions of resultant NO2 and and NO3 than I would have thought this would have a controlled effect rather than a lethal one.

I have observed this quite recently with regards my culture stock. Although unintentionally and therefore no controls or proper monitoring. I was very surprised at the length of time a culture of benthic pods continued to thrive and reproduce without any water changes to the culture medium. I have read a number of articles in the past due to my interest in to microbial process within the reef aquarium. As a novice I must admit that my comprehension may be a little naive. But I remember that the toxicity levels in question did not appear to be in substantial.

 

[Bmezz]

i think someone may have said this but i would challenge by adding a ammonia source and see how it cycles to make sure you are truley cycled. Try Dr. Tims Ammonium Chloride which is great becuase you can measure easily the dose you are adding... and i would have a second tester brand to make sure..

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

Hi Randy, I found both articles very informative and well written.

However I did have some difficulty in following the second post. The reason for my comment " To be honest I can not understand where the ammonia source will come from in the second article."

My comment was referring to the following statement from the article "1. fully cured live rocks, transferred live from pet store or seller, to home: gets no ammonia, we don't want to kill small bugs. keep it underwater for the transfer where possible"

As this refers directly to fully cured live rock transported wet. I did not follow how their would be sufficient die off to provide the suggested contained ammonia. I do appreciate that they will be some form off cycling as with anything living. But I would have thought this would require a substantially long period before the bacterial colonies reached a density sufficient to support an average bioload. This limited ammonia source would also suggest to me that once a live fish where added to the tank the increased load on the system may very well trigger an extended ammonia period. I understand that this may be minimal but all the same may be regarded as unnecessary stress on the animal.

I am also a little uncertain about the statement of additional ammonia having a lethal effect on the decapod crustaceans, amphipods, copepods and other micro fauna that may be present on the live rock. Surely this is in proportion to LC50 and above for any given group. If measured amounts of ammonium chloride where administered , enabling approximate predictions of resultant NO2 and and NO3 than I would have thought this would have a controlled effect rather than a lethal one.

I have observed this quite recently with regards my culture stock. Although unintentionally and therefore no controls or proper monitoring. I was very surprised at the length of time a culture of benthic pods continued to thrive and reproduce without any water changes to the culture medium. I have read a number of articles in the past due to my interest in to microbial process within the reef aquarium. As a novice I must admit that my comprehension may be a little naive. But I remember that the toxicity levels in question did not appear to be in substantial.

I cannot be sure how much die off any given live rock has, but it will depend on many factors, especially how fully cured it is before shipping, what is left on it, etc. Many times there is still a cycle unless the rock is quite bare. Rock bang against each other, get stacked to crush things, organisms all the way down to bacteria get relocated into environments not suited to them, etc.

As to intentionally adding more ammonia, yes, that is Ok, but realize that the 2 ppm recommendations for "cycling" may well be above the level toxic to some creatures on the live rock (depending, if course, on what is living on the rock). If one chooses to do that, I'd target a lot less than 2 ppm unless the rock looked totally bare.