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I decided to cycle my tank with ammonia cloride this time around. 15 years ago I added a damsel and waited a month befor adding anything else.
I have 57 lbs of old live rock and 60lbs of live sand in my 55 gallon tank (Red Sea Reefer 250, 65 gallon total) I added a bottle of Fritz #9 to the tank and half of the recommended dose of ammonia to start. After that I watch ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate lvls. Witch to be honest nitrites has been higher than I can test for, 1PPM is max on the Red Sea kit.
So with the Red Sea Nitrate kit I can dilute the tank water with RoDi (4ml RoDi + 1ml tank water) water and multiply it ×5 to get reading. The directions doesn't say I can do this with nitrite. Is there a test kit that can read over 1ppm nitrate? Or could i dilute the nitrite test if I do the math right?
After a few days Nitrite reads 0ppm and I dosed ammonia again and got a reading of 3ppm. the nexted day ammonia read <1, nitrite >1, and nitrates about 100ppm. So i believe my tank is cycled. At this point do i worry about nitrates getting to high?
I thought i would start seeing some kind of critters/life by now but i haven't seen anything with my eyes yet. I'm slightly concerned about this, but also know patients is everything sometimes.
Should i keep doing ammonia and monitor? I feel like i could add a fish at this point but I was planning on letting the tank cycle for long period of time. My plan was 4 months total, I'm only 1 month in. At what point do i worry about Nitrates? I willing to let the tank cycle as long as possible for the better overall health of the tank, but not really sure if I'm doing this right. So if I'm doing this wrong no amount of time matters.
Any information is appreciated.
I have 57 lbs of old live rock and 60lbs of live sand in my 55 gallon tank (Red Sea Reefer 250, 65 gallon total) I added a bottle of Fritz #9 to the tank and half of the recommended dose of ammonia to start. After that I watch ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate lvls. Witch to be honest nitrites has been higher than I can test for, 1PPM is max on the Red Sea kit.
So with the Red Sea Nitrate kit I can dilute the tank water with RoDi (4ml RoDi + 1ml tank water) water and multiply it ×5 to get reading. The directions doesn't say I can do this with nitrite. Is there a test kit that can read over 1ppm nitrate? Or could i dilute the nitrite test if I do the math right?
After a few days Nitrite reads 0ppm and I dosed ammonia again and got a reading of 3ppm. the nexted day ammonia read <1, nitrite >1, and nitrates about 100ppm. So i believe my tank is cycled. At this point do i worry about nitrates getting to high?
I thought i would start seeing some kind of critters/life by now but i haven't seen anything with my eyes yet. I'm slightly concerned about this, but also know patients is everything sometimes.
Should i keep doing ammonia and monitor? I feel like i could add a fish at this point but I was planning on letting the tank cycle for long period of time. My plan was 4 months total, I'm only 1 month in. At what point do i worry about Nitrates? I willing to let the tank cycle as long as possible for the better overall health of the tank, but not really sure if I'm doing this right. So if I'm doing this wrong no amount of time matters.
Any information is appreciated.