Cycle help. No ammonia yet.

[J.Orchin]

Hi everyone!

So I’m a bit stuck in my cycling process. I had seawater delivered 12 days ago from Natural Seawater supplier. I used dry rock and live sand for my Fluval flex 123l.

My lfs advised me to use Seachem stability to start my cycle. I have been ghost feeding with flakes each day but haven’t seen an ammonia spike at all, no nitrites or nitrates yet. I’m using API tests for cycling as well as Hanna checkers for nitrate and salinity.
Is it still early days or should I be doing something else? Any advice would be greatly appreciated .

 

[brandon429]

fish food cycles aren't designed to spike your ammonia, unless you're using precision digital test kits ( a calibrated seneye benchmarked on a separate running reef tank) your testing is useless here. a testless cycle will benefit you far better because it has a known exact ready date, and you can begin reading up on fish disease protocols during the calculated wait time vs spend two weeks concerning over a cycle that seems stalled but is actually done on day 15 or sooner. waiting fifteen days covers all the bases and then some. a fish food cycle on it's very own, with no bottle bac whatsoever, cycles a dry start reef system in less than 30 days 100% of the time, we have examples on multiple threads of this recurring fact. the bacteria come from natural means when they aren't added by a bottle purchase

so you have both kinds, the natural bacteria and the bottled kind.

stability is among the slower tested bacteria of the ten types you could buy, so simply cut the wait time in half, 15 days total wait, and your tank is as cycled as any other cycle on this site and can't not be ready to carry fish. what you measure is the number of days in wait, it's not a parameter cheap non digital test kits can help you with.

your test kits can't help here because the cycle cannot fail under the stated conditions. they can only cause you doubt, and lead you astray into false cycle concerning and away from the real required disease preps to keep your fish alive past 6 months, see the disease forum for help threads going back ten years showing the trend of what happens when you skip disease preps.

 

[J.Orchin]

Thank you so much @brandon429 for your reply. I did start to think this might be the case as I couldn’t see why it wouldn’t cycle. I will take your advice on and definitely do my research on diseases