Crazy high nitrates during cycle? Help!!

[Landenb20]

Hey I just got my first saltwater tank, 3g Pico reef and plan on having minimal bio-load (so parameters stay as stable as possible). But I’m 9 days into cycling and nitrates are tested at 80ppm!! Nitrates and ammonia stay at zero but I have no clue why my nitrates are so high. I have 4 hitchhiked stomatella snails from live rock. Can someone tell me what’s going on and if I should do a water change or keep topping off for about a month and test after the month? Please help!!!

 

[Landenb20]

see how reliable that is


we did testless visual based cycling and we made a prediction and it stuck without variation. that's sick man he he
b

ammonia test kits? we don't need no stinkin'

Dang! I’m glad I can get another perspective of reef keepers because a lot just promote more and more buying extra things and I’m glad some people aren’t crazy over the top about knowing every single exact parameter to their tanks!!

 

[brandon429]

fact: I have cycled my own reefs with a pile of those rocks above, I have never owned a reefing test for ammonia, nitrite or nitrate ever. not ever. I have never waited 30 days for dry rocks to cycle, have only used skip cycle insta reef rocks that macna conventions use.

-have cycled about ten thousand tanks online exactly by inserting myself uninvited into the thread and testing predictions and not one has failed, live rock is this consistent. dry rock is that consistent if we went there (takes longer obviously) and nobody's initial fish have died using updated cycling rules.

-in cycling threads if a new reefer posts free ammonia everyone believes him or her. if the exact same readings from the exact same test are applied to the tank post cycle, well after cycle closes as in months or a year later, then everyone chimes in that api is notoriously wrong we can see it in hundreds of posts. The tests are the same, the context changes to the crowd and that makes troubleshooting hard, its dependent on context and not actually on what bacteria do.

but visual cycling depends on things we can see. and smell. if you had any dangerous ammonia you'd smell it for sure, and the tank would be cloudy, and nothing opened, and opposite of your pics.

now we are free to totally clean out any misbehaving system and never have the uglies, that's the benefit.

you can lift those rocks out and set them on your counter for 30 minutes every time you want, and nothing happens. they do not uncycle, they stay cycled.

(the crowd thinks im lying he he)

ok then, here's a fifteen year old pico reef being drained for 33 mins. that's live rock, corals and a shrimp holed up in there somewhere and then what the system looks like 12 hours later:



next morning after my corals and rock were as cold as jerky during the drain. appeared dry (corals get drained in the wild, they're adapted)

 

[brandon429]

the only reason I posted that was to show you the raw locked in power of skip cycled rock. this is why everyone pulls it off.

you didn't even have to offer your rock the courtesy of being in water for the trip home, if it was within a few miles

you will never need to own a bottle bac here, these bacteria never undo


you are least likely to get dinos of any new tank posted today. live rock confers anti-dinos diversity.

you are free to upgrade tanks without recycling, rip clean them free of the uglies, do 100% water changes if you want, you can not uncycle those rocks without boiling, freezing or applied medication.

the reason we cycle correctly is so that future manhandling of the tank for compliance reasons can be done consequence-free

my reef wouldn't dare try to be invaded, it knows better. it does not matter that my example is from a vase, it only matters that any system which grows an eight pound solid rock of red brain coral from a fingernail original chip is a reef.

 

[Landenb20]

fact: I have cycled my own reefs with a pile of those rocks above, I have never owned a reefing test for ammonia, nitrite or nitrate ever. not ever. I have never waited 30 days for dry rocks to cycle, have only used skip cycle insta reef rocks that macna conventions use.

-have cycled about ten thousand tanks online exactly by inserting myself uninvited into the thread and testing predictions and not one has failed, live rock is this consistent. dry rock is that consistent if we went there, nobody's initial fish have died using updated cycling rules.

-in cycling threads if a new reefer posts free ammonia everyone believes him or her. if the exact same readings from the exact same test are applied to the tank post cycle, well after cycle closes as in months or a year later, then everyone chimes in that api is notoriously wrong we can see it in hundreds of posts. The tests are the same, the context changes to the crowd and that makes troubleshooting hard, its dependent on context and not actually on what bacteria do.

but visual cycling depends on things we can see. and smell. if you had any dangerous ammonia you'd smell it for sure, and the tank would be cloudy, and nothing opened, and opposite of your pics.

now we are free to totally clean out any misbehaving system and never have the uglies, that's the benefit.

you can lift those rocks out and set them on your counter for 30 minutes every time you want, and nothing happens. they do not uncycle, they stay cycled.

(the crowd thinks im lying he he)

ok then, here's a fifteen year old pico reef being drained for 33 mins. that's live rock, corals and a shrimp holed up in there somewhere and then what the system looks like 12 hours later:



next morning after my corals and rock were as cold as jerky during the drain. appeared dry (corals get drained in the wild, they're adapted)

That’s honestly just crazy. You do so much research and everyone wants you to wait for literally over two months before adding anything! I was searching for just the right information to answer all my questions and I’ve finally found it and it it takes all the weight off my shoulder. Now that I know my tank is good to go, is it okay to add even more bacteria just to help out?

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Thank you for the advice! So high nitrates Arent as bad as everyone makes it seem like it’s okay to have higher than recommended? Also I plan on starting the tank with two zooanthids if that’s okay? I plan on dosing iodine and feeding reef roids to them.

I have a totally different interpretation than the discussion here.

80 ppm nitrate? Unlikely to be true.

0.8 ppm nitrite giving a false reading of 80 ppm nitrate? Very likely.

You cannot accurately measure nitrate in the presence of nitrite. With some kits, a value for nitrite will read as a hundreds times as much nitrate, even if there is zero nitrate. That is how they are designed. They convert a little nitrate to nitrite, detect the nitrite, then multiply the value up by some large factor.

 

[brandon429]

that and TAN conversions from ammonia readings I found to be very helpful in streamlining test interps/read in the chem forum.

Based on rock status we'd defer to assuming all cycling is complete vs incomplete

 

[brandon429]

Regarding adding more bacteria: there's no room for it to implant it will be wasted bac, competing for oxygen and with no where to attach it conveys no filtration benefit.

the type of carbon boosting they use to boon up bacteria for export is found in skimmed reefs and reefs that have marked waste metabolite issues, Randy mentioned you aren't likely to be in that range.


hard to resist, I know. bottle bac wont hurt but it cannot help. live rock doesn't take on more bac than what it shows up with, water shear and several natural actions keep levels steady, reliably, never in deficit

 

[Landenb20]

Regarding adding more bacteria: there's no room for it to implant it will be wasted bac, competing for oxygen and with no where to attach it conveys no filtration benefit.

the type of carbon boosting they use to boon up bacteria for export is found in skimmed reefs and reefs that have marked waste metabolite issues, Randy mentioned you aren't likely to be in that range.


hard to resist, I know. bottle bac wont hurt but it cannot help. live rock doesn't take on more bac than what it shows up with, water shear and several natural actions keep levels steady, reliably, never in deficit

You make a pretty good point. And as randy mentioned it could be a false test and it could actually be .8 and I hear a lot about how very unaccurate test kits can be and they’re more just a good reference to see the range or parameters.

 

[Landenb20]

I have a totally different interpretation than the discussion here.

80 ppm nitrate? Unlikely to be true.

0.8 ppm nitrite giving a false reading of 80 ppm nitrate? Very likely.

You cannot accurately measure nitrate in the presence of nitrite. With some kits, a value for nitrite will read as a hundreds times as much nitrate, even if there is zero nitrate. That is how they are designed. They convert a little nitrate to nitrite, detect the nitrite, then multiply the value up by some large factor.

You make a really good point and you might be onto something. I tested pure tap water and was still reading over 80ppm so it’s very likely that it was .8 ppm

 

[Garf]

so, it’s not so live, live rock then.

 

[Landenb20]

so, it’s not so live, live rock then.

The rock in my tank is live rock straight from a LFS from one of there tanks and it came with tons of good coraline algae and snails. I think it’s pretty safe to say it’s alive

 

[Garf]

The rock in my tank is live rock straight from a LFS from one of there tanks and it came with tons of good coraline algae and snails. I think it’s pretty safe to say it’s alive

Not fully, if you’ve truly got nitrites, as Randy suggests.

 

[Landenb20]

Not fully, if you’ve truly got nitrites, as Randy suggests.

My nitrates are testing at 0ppm.

 

[brandon429]

none of the ranges matter here, specific to this setup. I don't own nitrate test kits, or any thing other than temp and salinity

because there's no risk in nitrate reading anything when live rock is around.

if mine is zero, don't care.

if its thirty, don't care, Paul B reef is 150ppm nitrate and everyone loves his reef and reef ways.

dry rock setups are who care about nitrate, but when they test it (in a well post-cycled reef, no nitrite interference) they make reactions off test samples that any other kit would read fifty ppm differences on

there are hundreds of threads comparing 3 or more kits on a given sample for nitrate, none agree. we're all horseshoeing lol

maybe not the digital low range group, but that's 5% of reported numbers. titration readings are 95