Most do inadvertently without issues. I would do bio spira than ammonia. Don't be surprised if the ammonia is gone the next day
Re-read you post. IMO the only thing you should be looking for on your dry rock is phosphates. You shouldn't have anything alive on them to die to create ammonia.
If i did it over, i would have cured my dry rock.
Yup.
Did yours cause an ammonia spike?
It won't hurt to cure it. BRS makes that statement on all their rock shipments. Some of them come from the ocean and can have dead animals on them. The stuff you ordered shouldn't. That being the case, there is nothing to decay and create ammonia.
It's bacteria in a bottle. It provides a colony of ammonia and nitrite eating bacteria to instantly cycle a tank. Kinda like live sand but without the sand.
What seem counter productive? If a fish was your ammonia source, add a fish. No fish? Dose ammonia. You can wait 24 hours for ammonia source if you like? Nitrogen cycle doesn't live long without something to feed on.
That really depends on the type of bacteria. Some bacteria can go dormant and live for decades without a food source. There are many types of ammonia and nitrite eating bacteria so it would be tough to say how long an aquariums bacteria would last without being fed.
We are talking about nitrifying bacteria. +1 for Google if you haven't looked that up yet.
