Am I done cycling?

[Afarouki]

Hey everyone

I have a 65 gallon and did with-fish cycling (Two clownfish). I used MicroBacter start with dry rock and live sand.

I’ve consistently read 0 Ammonia, Nitrite, and Nitrate for 2 weeks.

That didn’t really make sense to me, so I thought maybe my testing kit was not precise enough. I was under the impression that I’d read some level of Nitrate elevation to show the cycle completing. I didn’t notice any ammonia or nitrite spike early on either.

I went to a LFS and they measured the same readings of zero. They told me since the fish have been there for two weeks with these readings, the tank is cycled and it’s safe to add additional livestock.

What do you guys think?

 

[Mr. Mojo Rising]

drop some fish food in your tank and test tomorrow. If you get ammonia, tank is not cycled, if you get nitrate, tank is cycled. Should never be readings of 0 on all three, its not possible.

EDIT: sorry, saw you had 2 fish still alive, that should be good to go (slowly)

 

[Azedenkae]

Hey everyone

I have a 65 gallon and did with-fish cycling (Two clownfish). I used MicroBacter start with dry rock and live sand.

I’ve consistently read 0 Ammonia, Nitrite, and Nitrate for 2 weeks.

That didn’t really make sense to me, so I thought maybe my testing kit was not precise enough. I was under the impression that I’d read some level of Nitrate elevation to show the cycle completing. I didn’t notice any ammonia or nitrite spike early on either.

I went to a LFS and they measured the same readings of zero. They told me since the fish have been there for two weeks with these readings, the tank is cycled and it’s safe to add additional livestock.

What do you guys think?

I think it's fine. There are reasons why nitrate can be zero, such as if there are corals, algae, etc. consuming the nitrate.

Alternatively, you have non-nitrifying (micro)organisms consuming the ammonia purely as a nitrogen source instead. Which is not bad per se, just not technically 'cycling' per se.

 

[Afarouki]

I think it's fine. There are reasons why nitrate can be zero, such as if there are corals, algae, etc. consuming the nitrate.

Alternatively, you have non-nitrifying (micro)organisms consuming the ammonia purely as a nitrogen source instead. Which is not bad per se, just not technically 'cycling' per se.

Okay, thanks!

Currently no coral or visible algae in the tank (though I assume algae is there, so that might be it)

 

[brandon429]

Your lfs is correct it’s cycled completely.

if you did a 100% water change to export any floating bacteria, the ones stuck on surfaces would resume the bioload carry upon refill that’s the direct definition of cycled- immune to full water changes. See Dr Reefs bottle bac study thread that’s how they measure completion. You don’t need a water change, that’s just the proofing mechanism if you wanted to test it.

your tank is cycled to carry more fish, it’s specifically not just limit cycled to carry two, it can carry a full load but if you input more fish skipping disease preps they’ll die from disease issues unrelated to cycling, see the fish disease forum


its a false false cycling notion that we have to feed bacteria to the degree we want to be cycled, that’s false and made up info. The wait time among any given feed covers all areas in cycling bac, this has already been studied for years and apparently your lfs is hip to the game.