Cycling Concerns

Rowan Savage

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Hey Guys,

I've been cycling my 15 gallon tank now for just over two weeks now. I starting with dry rock and sand and decided to try using red seas reef mature kit to speed up the cycle. I added the ammonia source and the bacterial supplement at the specified intervals. I also added a small piece of live rock from my LFS to seed the tank. The issue is my ammonia and nitrite were elevated for almost two weeks with no noticeable decrease, NH3 ~ 2ppm and NO2 >1ppm and NO3 ~30ppm. I did ~60% water change as I suspected my nitrite could have been too high. After the water change the NH3, NO2 and NO3 are now sitting around 0.2ppm, 0.5ppm and 5ppm respectively but have not changed over the past few days.

I suspect I'm being impatient but also find it unusual that the ammonia did not start to decrease over the first two weeks and is not decreasing now. I'm using Red Sea test kits and there is also diatom and green algae growth in the tank.

Thanks in advance.
 

taricha

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Patience is never the wrong answer, but there are other bacterial products that can work reliably faster than that.
Adding biospira or Fritz would be fine to do.
 
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Rowan Savage

Rowan Savage

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Unfortunately I live in Australia and those products haven't made their way over here yet. My ammonia is still sitting at 0.2ppm and my nitrites >1ppm. I now believe that the constant ammonia reading is a false positive caused by Prime residue I used while bleach curing my dry rocks from a previous tank. Hopefully the nitrites come down soon.
 

taricha

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My ammonia is still sitting at 0.2ppm
Sorry. I missed that. 0.2ppm on a total ammonia test should be interpreted as zero. You are right to conclude it's not a real ammonia measurement.
 
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Rowan Savage

Rowan Savage

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As I've been looking in other forums for similar issues I've noticed people saying nitrite doesn't really matter, is there any truth to this or is it more of an opinion?
 

brandon429

why did you put a reef in that
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-and there is also diatom and green algae growth in the tank-


That means cycled. There’s no time that secondary growths occur where the primary ones (filter bac) haven’t already implanted first. Rule of visual benthic growth cues

That alone confirms your cycle even if you were reporting 2 ppm ammonia, your test levels have no bearing on the assessment because Red Sea causes hundreds of misreads a year that I collect in other threads. Post your tank pic
 

RockBox13

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As I've been looking in other forums for similar issues I've noticed people saying nitrite doesn't really matter, is there any truth to this or is it more of an opinion?
Nitrite matters, but you’re cycling and establishing the bacteria for that process is what cycling is about. Adding a bacterial supplement that will help seed the dry rock would help very much. Once you go with a bacterial product stick to the same one.
 
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brandon429

why did you put a reef in that
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No, he’s been done a while already. He was cycled before the growths showed up. There isn’t cycling action still needed, time to select a disease protocol for the fish.

There isn’t any more cycle testing needed at all for this tank.

I had hoped for a tank pic from the original poster for the thread.
 
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RockBox13

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No, he’s been done a while already. He was cycled before the growths showed up. There isn’t cycling action still needed, time to select a disease protocol for the fish.

There isn’t any more cycle testing needed at all for this tank.
My mistake. I must have gotten confused with the post about the bleach cure instead of the two weeks cycling. Which was literally the first thing said. Attention to detail is my specialty!
 

Randy Holmes-Farley

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As I've been looking in other forums for similar issues I've noticed people saying nitrite doesn't really matter, is there any truth to this or is it more of an opinion?

The myth that nitrite was significantly toxic comes from the freshwater hobby where it is very toxic. But in seawater, the hugely high chloride level (19,000 ppm) successfully competes with nitrite for binding sites on the organisms and it doesn't get in well. It's obviously fine to measure it for fun, or to be sure it isn't interfering with a nitrate test (which is a big issue), but it never needs to be measured for toxicity reasons.

I discuss all of these issues in the article below, and give all of the published toxicity data that was available when I wrote the article:

Nitrite and the Reef Aquarium by Randy Holmes-Farley - Reefkeeping.com
 
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Rowan Savage

Rowan Savage

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Sorry for the late reply and thank you everyone for the input. Here are some pics of my tank with a close up on the diatoms which were all over the place about a week ago but seem to have run their course. still getting a nitrite reading of ~1ppm.

Would adding the rest of my bottle bac be of any benefit or should I just let it play out?

tempImagezDdZfP.png tempImageAbn3Vk.png
 

brandon429

why did you put a reef in that
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same visual id troubleshoot ran there. similar threads pretty cool.
 

PharmrJohn

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Whatever you decide to do, just do it slowly. Randy et.al. really knows what he (they) is (are) talking about so I'll not override ANY of their suggestions. My first thought was that you might have had a false reading with your ammonia, but I am flat out unsure of the chance of that happening. I would have expected that to go up after the WC to previous levels. But you do have a small tank, so it may have already cycled with the additives and live rock you put in.
 

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