excellent status, here's how I factor that into your kit reading:
From the microbiology of cycling thread we have collected tanks like yours under a similar timeframe that would show to be cycled by now using a different test method. The badge is good at indicating spikes like a dead fish, but routinely we couldn’t rely on it to cycle tanks and indicate true zero, but it may work for others. We can’t use the badge tests in our cycling thread due to misread errors and we are cycling too many tanks to be relying on testers anyway, all of them but the digital ones are too often wrong
We use submersion timing, number of days flooded and factored boosts to call a cycle done. If the masses had access to good ammonia testers, we’d be using those. The few that have seneye and other digitals occasionally pop in and back up our ammonia statements factored by time only.
The timeframe of ~ three weeks, bottle bac, feed and live rock/active surface carryover = a cycled tank for all surfaces and I don’t know any other way to prove it other than using seneye monitoring which is accurate -or- a little trick we use to calibrate api ammonia tests so they’ll work correctly. Hard on large tanks bc it requires a full water change but if your tank is small, then it’s easy.
Calibrated zero api cycle proofing:
Change all tank water this gets you to known zero ammonia regardless of any tests bottom limit for accuracy. Take a new reading using api, that hue is now baseline zero ammonia.
Using liquid ammonium chloride for cycling, add tiny amounts into the tank and take api reading until you get a discernible color change barely. Not 2 ppm, the tiniest change you can perceive indicating free ammonia. Stop
Retest in 24 hours and it’s back to calibrated zero for proof of nitrifiers solely on surfaces. I don’t know if badges work for that test but if your tank couldn’t pass calibrated proofing it’d be the first in sixteen pages. We think today’s cycle science is wrecked by inaccurate testers #1 and #2 everyone is testing wastewater. We test the clean water and surfaces only in this way...adulterants like Prime water conditioner are factored in this way, but with wastewater testing + non calibrated kits we get the madness of the last 25 yrs cycling variations.
If your tank is huge/no full water change possible then you can proceed in normal fashion using other testers and current water for approximations
Your tank will pass based on times and boosters used is my firm prediction for digital testing or calibrated api testing.
Sorry for delay
B
