What reading is this ammonia test?

[LesPoissons]

Trying to cycle a tank and my ammonia text kits all seem to be awful. What reading would you give this?

 

[ScottJ]

That's a hard one! I would guess closer to 0.5. Maybe run it again?

 

[brandon429]

That wouldn’t help you, for us to give a guess

what specifically helps is this checklist:

-did you add ammonium chloride and get a prior higher reading, and then it moved down to that above


-is there rocks and sand in the cycling tank for bacteria to attach to


-have you met the # of days on the bottle bac directions for wait times, for the particular strain of bacteria used

per your pic above, we can find that reading in many running reefs doing fine


and we can find that pic in cycling threads where the tank is no where near ready- see how a pic without context is useless in determining cycle completion vs stall- answers to the checklist determine if your cycle is done.

 

[LesPoissons]

I’m adding Dr Tim’s ammonim chloride
(4 drops per gallon, 2 gallon tank) to get to a 2ppm level. this is a bare jellyfish tank- no rocks sand etc. I added new bio balls and filter media in the overflow for bacteria to grow.
Day 1 I added 8 drops of the ammonia and the bottled bacteria.
Day 2 the ammonia tested around 0.2 to 0.5
I added 8 more drops ammonia
Day 3 (today) the pic is my ammonia test result

 

[brandon429]

That brand is a ten day wait, regardless of any future actions or test reads. You’ve fed, so the right way to cycle the jelly tank is simply wait until day fifteen, five extra for safety, do a full water change to export the wastewater and you are done, and can’t fail to be done.

if you ceased testing from here on out, you’re still done on day fifteen anyway, wherever the filter surface area is in the system will be fully active. The way you know if a cycle stalls is if the bottle bacteria were dead, your ammonia could never drop from the 2 ppm higher level, and you'd have no nitrate. I bet there’s some nitrate there, even this soon.

 

[Reef.]

Welcome to the wonderful world of the Salifert ammonia test kit!

I would do a test on fresh salt mix from your stored water, then compare the two together. Should help.

 

[ReefRusty]

Ah the true ease of ready a manual visual test, I'm sure it will look different in another room or even outside..

 

[LesPoissons]

What do you mean by a full water change?

That brand is a ten day wait, regardless of any future actions or test reads. You’ve fed, so the right way to cycle the jelly tank is simply wait until day fifteen, five extra for safety, do a full water change to export the wastewater and you are done, and can’t fail to be done.

if you ceased testing from here on out, you’re still done on day fifteen anyway, wherever the filter surface area is in the system will be fully active. The way you know if a cycle stalls is if the bottle bacteria were dead, your ammonia could never drop from the 2 ppm higher level, and you'd have no nitrate. I bet there’s some nitrate there, even this soon.

 

[cmoore806]

The level doesn't matter as much as the fact that ammonia is there--so your cycle is incomplete. Just stay the course and wait for the ammonia sample/test to be white.

 

[LesPoissons]

Ah the true ease of ready a manual visual test, I'm sure it will look different in another room or even outside..

I havent cycled a tank in years. I dug out my salifert test (expires this month!) so bought a new sea chem (no expiration?) and found my good ole API. Lol. They are all garbage and give incredibly different results. Anyone have one they reccomend?

 

[Reef.]

I havent cycled a tank in years. I dug out my salifert test (expires this month!) so bought a new sea chem (no expiration?) and found my good ole API. Lol. They are all garbage and give incredibly different results. Anyone have one they reccomend?

they are mostly bad, do as I suggested above, it’ll help.

 

[LesPoissons]

The level doesn't matter as much as the fact that ammonia is there--so your cycle is incomplete. Just stay the course and wait for the ammonia sample/test to be white.

This is my plan as well since chasing specific #s just never works perfectly in reefing- but still, I just like to know aprox values. = ) Oh welll! lol

 

[cmoore806]

This is my plan as well since chasing specific #s just never works perfectly in reefing- but still, I just like to know aprox values. = ) Oh welll! lol

it looks like its over 1.5

 

[rimlessreefer954]

To me it looks like .05

 

[LesPoissons]

Crazy how differently we can perceive it’ I’m just going with “ammonia present “
As of today (day 5) I still have ammonia, but also nitrites (25+?) and nitrates (80). Here’s today’s test )top) compared to 2 days ago. I think everything is on par for day 5?

 

[ReefRusty]

Use natural light best is go outside and see what it shows. I found this worked better for me to determine the tests a bit better

 

[DaddyFish]

My best suggestion is test RO or fresh saltwater, side-by-side as a reference/control. Assuming your control vials are zero(0), then the tank vials can be more accurately judged. But it costs two test units every time.

 

[LesPoissons]

I posted this on the wrong thread. So day 7,
Ammonia is now maybe 0.5 and nitrites are 25 or more but it’s been like that for a couple
Days. Is this normal? The instructions say to do a water change if either ammonia or nitrite gets above 5ppm but I would have to change out almost all the water to get it that low. Is that what I do? Thanks!

 

[Dr. Jim]

I believe Dr Tim stated that if nitrites rise above 5 ppm that can inhibit the bacteria that convert ammonia to nitrites. Not sure how important that really is though if it is a big deal to do a 100% water change.
I think keeping ammonia below 1 and nitrites below 5 is more essential for new live rock (like from FL) that has inverts with the rock..