Nitrogen cycle stalled?

[Always Be Reefin]

Working on my first saltwater tank. Used Dr Tim's Ammonia so I could do a fishless cycle, and used FritzTurbo Start because I've used the freshwater variant for past freshwater tanks and it's my favorite method, would typically cycle a tank in about a weeks time.

Tank has been up for just short of a week. Tuesday morning I tested and had Ammonia (.5 ppm), Nitrites (2ppm), and Nitrates (5ppm). Just tested again and everything is the same.

I don't know if there is a big difference between cycling fresh vs saltwater, but for my freshwater tanks if I did check every few days, I'd see shifts, even if it was gradual. I just wanted to ask if this was normal and I'm just being impatient

 

[KrisReef]

Those API test kits are difficult to resolve and if you wait until Christmas they may not be any different from what you see today.

What are you going to put in the tank?

 

[Always Be Reefin]

Those API test kits are difficult to resolve and if you wait until Christmas they may not be any different from what you see today.

What are you going to put in the tank?

This one is just going to be a FOWLR tank. When it's cycled I planned on grabbing some clownfish and maybe getting one new thing a month. Full livestock list was just gonna be 2 clowns, a royal gramma, some hermit crabs, and maybe shrimp/Goby pair

 

[KrisReef]

The bottle directions for the fritz, I believe will say that the tank is ready for fish after you add the bacteria?

I would suspect that you are ok to add fish already and the test results will never show ammonia = zero.

Second opinion @brandon429

 

[Always Be Reefin]

The bottle directions for the fritz, I believe will say that the tank is ready for fish after you add the bacteria?

I would suspect that you are ok to add fish already and the test results will never show ammonia = zero.

Second opinion @brandon429

The bottle ddid say that, but I used Dr Tim's Ammonia because I wanted to run a fishless cycle. Mindset was that I'd rather have any hiccups happen when there is nothing in the tank vs livestock.

So if I did put fish in now in the middle of the process, I'm not sure if it's dangerous for them.

 

[brandon429]

I like to reference independently searchable patterns so it doesn't look like I'd unfairly sway the material: if we search out fish-in cycles with bottle bacteria what do we really find after reading fifty threads?

Read through some, look for patterns
Did the fish die or live

We find: living fish each time.

And we also find: people who were told in old cycling science articles that ammonia must be zero to be safe, and nitrite zero. This sets up the stage for test kit battles, what we expect in terms of cycle outcome determines how much we believe our ammonia test kits. So these threads are by and large groups of people who have both living fish acting normally *and* test kits showing low levels of ammonia, and think that's bad. But if we search api .25 reef tank ammonia reading we also see that reading in fully cycled running reefs which is why nobody trusts the api ammonia kit. It's catching the small degree of ammonia that's supposed to be there, trace levels

Reefs keep a small degree of free ammonia they don't run zero. the kits are catching it because bottle bac works well enough to drive the big initial test load to normal levels the first day added, and the kit is sensitive enough to catch the trace amounts, it's not supposed to be zero per updated rules.


If an ammonia test shows zero that's fine too, one day it won't be is the bet

The risk is skipping quarantine with fish and other things to be added, bringing in disease.

Any group search of fifty examples will show in fair pattern that bottle bac cycles work, they carry fish, and waiting seven days to add some is seven times longer prep time than all the searchable data got. those were day one fish additions and they still came back totally successful as far as carrying fish goes.

Disease is the risk, that's the busy forum for fish loss it's not the cycling forums. Those all show fish carried just fine using any of the means reefers use

If you add fish at the start, vs to a fallow- prepped system (every wet item in the tank was fallow prepped in the tank) you get disease losses within eight months the disease forum shows. Disease is all the risk and how you cycle doesn't impact its expression.