Cycling/chemistry question

[ying yang]

Hi there so asked questions other week on if qt cycled or not and added little bit about is dt cycled as amnonia reads quite high ( on a api test kit) .
Ghost feeded every other day for first week and then few weeks later started adding doctor tims amnonian chloride a few times upto 2ppm and seachem stability for 1 week which took it to the 5 week mark.now we at 6 weeks,advice of brandon was dt fully cycled as longer than 30 days plus used bottle bacteria.

But my concern now is i remember gluing then mortar my rocks together USING TAP WATER ( no declorinator used ) instead of rodi water on the mortar which i see on aquaforest you tube video they say pour in rodi water but couldnt see nowhere on packet say use rodi. Watched video after mortared all rocks together .

I initially thought well not all people use rodi water and just use dechloronated tap water or leave the tap water in a bucket and let it gas off for 24 hours plus.so it would be ok but now thinking if one substance is higher than the other then ( in the rocks - in the water ) nature tries to level this out by leaching out or in to level .or if the chlorine/chloramines inside the mortar and slowly leaching out and killing the beneficial bacteria as they trying to mulpily reason why amnonia is at 2ppm always for last couple weeks.
So anyone used tap water to make their mortar mixes to stick rocks together and had similar problem ?
Anyone did same and had no problem?
Any chemists here can tell me i made a boo boo or just being silly ? ( i hope not made boo boo as quite some money in rocks/glue/mortar already,so wouldn't like to have to get new rocks and start again or leave rocks in dt for x amount time etc)
1 of the rocks got considerably more mortar than the other as had accident and went crashing to the floor so smashed into small pieces so needed more mortar
Any opinions/advice or telling me agree im being paranoid about using undecloranated tap water making mortar or not ha ha.

 

[Cell]

No worries.

 

[ying yang]

Here api test results incase anyone wants to know them.i know my question not on reliability of api test kits but will have significant part to play in my question ( well maybe )

 

[Cell]

API Ammonia false positive is not uncommon.

 

[ying yang]

Yeah thats what brandon told me on my results for this dt and its cycled and put fish in when im ready,due to being ghost fed for a week and bottle bac also and even if dont use either these methods then nature cycles it in 30 days anyway even if we dont add anything to the tank ( off course salt water and surface area etc) but aslong as wet nature will do it for us kind of thing.
Even though fish in qt are 2 common clownfish and relatively cheap ,i dont want fish suffering if it is high amnonia ( i used to kill spiders,insects when younger but these days i put them out the window and not kill them ) so this my concern but guess will find out when put fish in dt hey.

 

[Cell]

I always run a Seachem ammonia badge in QT tanks. Not terribly worried about cycling because frequent water changes.

 

[brandon429]

TCoach in the general forum just provided us with a beautiful contrast between seneye and api on a known cycled reef with corals and fish.


the seneye reads .004 free ammonia

heres api in clean white room light


many folks can get api to true yellow, matching real time status. I don’t know why the majority cannot, that’s undefined why api reads so high in this reef when the tank pics show normality and seneye shows thousandths ppm/ uber safe zone

even after tan conversion that’s still an inaccurate api read.


**ps that’s api freshwater / all he had to compare so to be spot on accurate we need to know if the cards are different between the two or the reagents, always a nice little confound in place but this at least shows how api can steer us into concern

 

[ying yang]

Hey brandon i read you often saying some of these test results cause us to go into " panic and choas overdrive " and then want to go to lfs and buy some bottle bac or amnonia detoxifier and boy oh boy is this so true.
My head this last few weeks telling me that used doctor tims one and only bacteria bottle on qt tank and amnonia 0ppm result but on dt i used cheaper seachem stability bacteria so therefore doctor tims must be better so i must go spend more money and buy doctor tims for dt and some prime just incase and anything else that lfs recommends ha ha.basically putting everything in tank except the kitchen sink .and thing is other part my head believes what you say about cycling/ bottle bac or let nature do its thing for 30 days etc but as you say often we been conditioned to thinking certain things and amount research i done over the years tells me that certain things leach in or leach out chemicals making the doubt grow and panic chaos go into overdrice ten fold ^_^

 

[Garf]

Hey brandon i read you often saying some of these test results cause us to go into " panic and choas overdrive " and then want to go to lfs and buy some bottle bac or amnonia detoxifier and boy oh boy is this so true.
My head this last few weeks telling me that used doctor tims one and only bacteria bottle on qt tank and amnonia 0ppm result but on dt i used cheaper seachem stability bacteria so therefore doctor tims must be better so i must go spend more money and buy doctor tims for dt and some prime just incase and anything else that lfs recommends ha ha.basically putting everything in tank except the kitchen sink .and thing is other part my head believes what you say about cycling/ bottle bac or let nature do its thing for 30 days etc but as you say often we been conditioned to thinking certain things and amount research i done over the years tells me that certain things leach in or leach out chemicals making the doubt grow and panic chaos go into overdrice ten fold ^_^

What’s the pH of the water? Not used aqua forest stuff but I bet it still leaches calcium hydroxide.

 

[TCoach]

TCoach in the general forum just provided us with a beautiful contrast between seneye and api on a known cycled reef with corals and fish.


the seneye reads .004 free ammonia

heres api in clean white room light


many folks can get api to true yellow, matching real time status. I don’t know why the majority cannot, that’s undefined why api reads so high in this reef when the tank pics show normality and seneye shows thousandths ppm/ uber safe zone

even after tan conversion that’s still an inaccurate api read.


**ps that’s api freshwater / all he had to compare so to be spot on accurate we need to know if the cards are different between the two or the reagents, always a nice little confound in place but this at least shows how api can steer us into concern

Brandon, not a fair comparison . That test was at lunch yesterday when the Seneye was in this range.

however, just did a retest, and here are the numbers now.

 

[brandon429]

.5= still eighteen new posts for stuck ammonia

nice alignment and nice clear pics there.


The state of ammonia testing in our aquarium hobby is in disarray but we are teetering on consistency as newer meters arrive on the market. its true seneye has no ref for itself, no fact checker other than hundreds of other seneyes that agree with cycling charts

nobody has benchmarked them against a Hach...Jay has access to a hach and seneye corp could send him a seneye so they’ll gain respect hintz we need to get Jay a tuned seneye to mess with and compare




ive become jaded in that bottle bac is great for skip cycling, instant hospital setups, but there’s a counter loop where testing and dose reaction keeps us in a constant doubt state and retail buys, and that loses reefs vs retains them with thorough undertaking, predicting what will result from action X.


in my opinion this is ideal. Developing our reliable intuit sense....reefs tend to follow prediction they dont stray much given hardware luck and typical reaction time (the fellow who crashed his tank on vacation wasn’t home to remove the first two + dead fish)

in my cycling opinions I’m always looking for two things: attachment points and time underwater. Each reef offered keeps meeting those two factors, consistently.

when we factor in the tests that show reefs self cycling given about sixty days or less (dry start setups no dosing no feed, take on natural bac and self cycle free of charge) that reflects back on all starvation concern posts and the means bacteria have to gain feed without our offers. The pattern is that all/most ammonia concern posts meet these predictable arrangements and we know something is amiss in the test, not the prediction biology.

 

[Cell]

.5= still eighteen new posts for stuck ammonia

nice alignment and nice clear pics there.


The state of ammonia testing in our aquarium hobby is in disarray but we are teetering on consistency as newer meters arrive on the market. its true seneye has no ref for itself, no fact checker other than hundreds of other seneyes that agree with cycling charts

nobody has benchmarked them against a Hach...Jay has access to a hach and someone could send him a seneye hintz




ive become jaded in that bottle bac is great for skip cycling, instant hospital setups, but there’s a counter loop where testing and dose reaction keeps us in a constant doubt state and retail buys, and that loses reefs vs retains them with thorough undertaking, predicting what will result from action X.


in my opinion this is ideal. Developing our reliable intuit sense....reefs tend to follow prediction they dont stray much given hardware luck and typical reaction time (the fellow who crashed his tank on vacation wasn’t home to remove the first two + dead fish

in my cycling opinions I’m always looking for two things: attachment points and time underwater. Each reef offered keeps meeting those two factors, consistently

I'd be interested to know the percentage of cycle confusion posts using a Dr. Tim's product. I've slowly formed a sentiment that for whatever reason, Dr. Tim's cycling products/protocol is needlessly technical and confusing compared to some of it's competitors like Bio-Spira.

 

[ying yang]

What’s the pH of the water? Not used aqua forest stuff but I bet it still leaches calcium hydroxide.

Ph 8.0 on api test

 

[Garf]

Ph 8.0 on api test

How about nitrite?

 

[ying yang]

TCoach in the general forum just provided us with a beautiful contrast between seneye and api on a known cycled reef with corals and fish.


the seneye reads .004 free ammonia

heres api in clean white room light


many folks can get api to true yellow, matching real time status. I don’t know why the majority cannot, that’s undefined why api reads so high in this reef when the tank pics show normality and seneye shows thousandths ppm/ uber safe zone

even after tan conversion that’s still an inaccurate api read.


**ps that’s api freshwater / all he had to compare so to be spot on accurate we need to know if the cards are different between the two or the reagents, always a nice little confound in place but this at least shows how api can steer us into concern

Here picture of saltwater and freshwater cards.
I can only see slightly different colour on high range ph test.the purple different higher you go and slightly different colour lower down ph like 7.2- 7.4 etc
Both tests exactly same tests except freshwater got low range ph test also.
Watched some you tube videos testing and got same results on same water using freshwater and saltwater so pretty much imo the same reagents used but print saltwater on box and they make another sale lol ( but im not a chemist )

 

[brandon429]

I have never seen that comparison before that is very very helpful in future posts!

 

[ying yang]

How about nitrite?

Nitrite for last few weeks been constant 0.25 but not tested in over a week.give me 5 minutes i do test now

 

[ying yang]

Nitrite showing up at 0.50 ppm
Nitrate showing up at 10-20 ppm ( closer to 10 ppm)
On dt i did a maybe 15% wc 2 days ago ,this the only wc i done in 6 weeks it had water in the tank.tank 300 litre dt and roughly 50- 60 litre in sump so roughly 300 litre system after displacememt of rocks/ sand etc

 

[ying yang]

Did take 1 rock out last night disturbing sand slightly and add 5 small rocks on sand bed

 

[Garf]

Nitrite showing up at 0.50 ppm
Nitrate showing up at 10-20 ppm ( closer to 10 ppm)
On dt i did a maybe 15% wc 2 days ago ,this the only wc i done in 6 weeks it had water in the tank.tank 300 litre dt and roughly 50- 60 litre in sump so roughly 300 litre system after displacememt of rocks/ sand etc

So it’s converting ammonia slowly into nitrite, so it’s working. Your problem may just be related to the amount of ammonia you’ve been adding to the tank. Increase circulation/oxygenation and don’t put any more food/ammonia in. if you could do a massive water change, that would speed things up.