first saltwater, dry rock, cycling with pure NH and seneye

[brandon429]

it would be neat to do this trick on the setup

input the pre calculated amount of liquid ammonia into the system known to cause a rise of 1 ppm

post a reading of the seneye kit about 3 mins after, and a reading by the red sea 3 mins after. then do 10 mins/10 mins on both testers, lastly do it at one hour. The seneye should be resolved back to original baseline and we can learn about lag times, if any, for the red sea kit in comparison. fun way to use your kits + verify some cycling shock absorbency

 

[Garf]

Hey everybody

So im going to detail here my first build and most of all my cycling process with the seneye sensor. Im at my first salwater experiment but have been for close to 20 years into freshwater. This is the 3rd time i am using ammonium chloride to start a cycle in a tank and as im getting used to it it make that one the easiest for me so far.
So lets start with a little look at the set up

I used a 72 gal bowfront marine land aquarium

To wich i added a sump of 20 gal

and refugium of 35 half full also used as my overflow backup.

I builded those out of lexan polycarbonate 1/4 thick, i used methylcetate to fuse it and than made a seal out of cyanoacrylane gel and baking soda, covered with GE silicone 1200 (i had the polycarbonate and wanted to make it work) it is really strong and my test in water and hot water showed the seal to be as strong and stiff as epoxy.

I think keeping the skimmer off is just the best during the cycle to be sure 100% of my bacteria stays into the water and im letting the socks get as dirty as they want

The ATO system is directly connected to the city water system wich is pumped underground in mountain and read a constant 0ppm for the past 4 years. It also explain why im running 12 freshwater tanks aside this new one and wanna go even bigger as we start breeding many species with my girlfriend.
Return pump flow at 800 GPH and i have a 1200 gph powerhead installed . The overflow is custom made out of glass by myself and help aerate my water (trying to lower PH slowly)

I have put 40 pound of arag alive pink fiji sand in my sump and 40 pound of arag alive black Hawaiian sand in the display tank. For the aquascape i've used around 50 pound of dry marco key largo rocks (10 were flat cut) and followed a lot of the BRStv trick to get a flow and different level for a multi species reef tank, hoping to be able to have SPS LPS and softies in one tank...

So the tanks was filled with water on the 23 april 2023, salinity set at 1.026 using instant ocean reef crystal.

Waited 2 days to dose my ammonium on the 25 april. I dose at 2 ppm according to redsea regeant test. i find it work faster by not reaching the limit bacteria can tolerate (in freshwater though) i dose faster later as you will see

got my seneye set up by april de 28 using a compac PC i found for 80$ on amazon, set with the probe on a different system for it so i can now use my cellphone app wich is a bit more annoying than on the pc itself as the app get one reading every 30 minutes where the PC is instant live reading all the time .

Using the seneye made me discover a new variation to the cycle wich is different reading to NH4 and NH3. The first stable reading i got were NH4 4.3 ppb (wich is 0.004 ppm) and 0.035 ppm of NH3 (note here that my red sea reagent test still test 2 ppm nh3/nh4)

I actually dose 20 ml of microbacter7 and 20ml of microbacterclean daily and today on 5 of may , 10 days after i dosed first ammonium, i got a seneye reading of 0.005 ppm of NH3 and the NH4 is still stable at 4 ppb. Red sea test is lower than 0.2 ppm. I have a high nitrite (over 1 ppm) and nitrate just started to show for the first day at a low 2ppm color wich mean all the beneficial bacteria started to grow .

At this point i need to dose again to feed them. So today on 5 of may i added a new 2ppm of ammonium regarding red sea test. I do get a really similar reading at 0.036 ppm NH3 and 4.31 ppb NH4 with seneye. I did crank up my heater a bit hoping to get 24°c tommorow

My PH is high but as everything seems to be in harmony i decided to let it be at least during cycle. The 90% water change at last day may make it better i hope.

No light during cycle to avoid bad algae growth. Only for picture and they are not well installed yet. The cabinet will also be covered after cycle

Tanks info :
72 bowfront display + 40 running under cabinet
Day :12
Red sea reagent test reading :
Dkh: 9
Cal: 400ppm
Mg: 1380 ppm
Sal: 1.026
PH: high 8.95 low 8.7
Nh3/Nh4 : 2 ppm
No3 : <1ppm
No2 : >2ppm

Thanks for pointing stuff i may not understand properly, there is so much to learn here . I honestly can feel that i may end up switching my monster freshwater tank to reef one day ... Even with a empty tank. The geek in me is just enjoying that complex ecosystem care

I seriously doubt you’ve got a pH of 8.8. Now, the seneye calculates NH4 by considering NH3 and pH and computing the NH4 value, that’s probably why that’s all to coch.

 

[yougo]

I honestly gotta admit that my seneye reading was false . My PH pen and the red sea test give me a reading of .6 less than the seneye and they are both at same reading wich is 8.3 PH . As for the ammonia since i took off the wood off of my system (was holding the sump ove my refugium and use as a splash guard) the reading went back to minimal.

Last week i have stocked my tank with pods , 25 snail, 10 dwarf hermit, a emerald crab, a big live rock from a coral farm covered of coralline algae and microfauna , he is at 5 minutes away. Dragon breath and grape algae, Ive added a ricordea pure green mushroom frag and a hairy mushroom green frag and 3 pajama cardinal. (Got many trough trades so not big expanses)

Its been 4 days and everything look healthy. Looking at my numbers daily as i know i added a lot one time !

I will try to follow up with more picture soon !
Been heck of a week at work

As for the reading , i did add 2 time what was supposed to be 2 ppm of ammonia with ammonium chloride . I never seen my NH3 higher than 0.035 but nh4 went crazy around 400 ppb . Anyway it make 0.5 ppm and i did add 2 regarding red sea test and the chart of the product (fritz aquarium NhCL) so i bet the seneye was completly false reading (mostly if it calculate regarding PH and im off of .6 too high)

 

[brandon429]

Run the trim setting on it as our tuning thread mentioned by ingchris and make sure the slide is prep soaked in tank water. Set your trim to .004 nh3, thousandths ppm .004 and begin using it

Your system is well cycled now and that's an average high baseline any tank might run. They don't run the in hundredths ppm, the trim setting is for fine tuning, it may be time for fine tuning if you're not reading thousandths ppm nh3

The meter is then used after fine tuning to look for any stark changes in the system, it should be able to detect larger than normal feeding event changes too, then go right back down to .002-.004~

 

[yougo]

Little pic update !

Here the live rock i took from a local coral farm and friend. Its about 5 pound and brought me so many different life form since. Bristle worm , star , adult artemia and variety of pods .

There is some small aiptasia , i knew he had an outbreak that day but it open room for me to increase my clean up crew.
Something i learned from freshwater is that i want to be able to control those pest from the begining. I think a first outbreak in a mature tank would get me ticked more than now, and now i can plan to add some peppermint shrimp and nudibranch to control and balance my tank.

Yesterday i was certain i would have an outbreak of dinos as i started to see those orange dot covering all my base rock. But surprise, this morning almost every single of those spot have disappeared !! Make me hope for a not too ugly ugly stage

Im joining a video that shows the pajama hunting around and living an happy life

So far im 8 days with livestock in and i think i lost one hermit and thats it (empty shell and i cant find it) . Doing weekly water changes of 15% and all my stats are really stable .

Ph 8.2
Dkh , 9.5
Cal : 420
Mag : 1350
Temp : 25 °c

 

[yougo]

Little update .

A lot happened in the last week . I have seen dino have been showing up and leaving instamtly as the clean up crew seems to enjoy it and now there is some solid green algae that start to cover my rock work . I think i have passed trough the ugly brown and going to the ugly green (wich i prefer) now have been adding some purple up to boost alk and ca and try to promote coralline .

I also had a major Phosphate issue with a phos of 12 ppm (yes 12 not 1.2) result read on hanna (need to dilute sample 5 times) and api phos kit. Used phos guard since yesterday and now im reading 0.5 ppm . Will let phosguard until i got a reading of 0 .

Got some aiptasia from the live rock i got (and so many hitchiker bust mostly good one) so i decided to order nudibrach berghia to fight it but they did a great job and 2 days after all aiptasia were gone so i went to my buddy who have a coral farm and asked for aiptasia . Got a couple frag covered and literally aiptasia in a bag to feed my nudibranch . Id say at 5 they can eat 10 1inch aiptasia a day those are relentless. Today i found 2 nudibranch spiral egg.

Regardless of all these issue, i have seen trochus snail milking , peppermint shrimp and emerald crab molt , and the few first frag i have included to my system looks healthy

Added a yuma ricordea green and 2 frag of zoa that were COVERED of aiptasia and now they are super clean and all open

My new seneye slide have soaked 2 days in the tank water and still is off with the ph reading . I am wondering if i may have got a bad sensor.

I also received 2 unit of AI hydra 32hd to lighten up the reef as i could see i wasnt able to get good response from the coral with my viper spectra. Really different budget . Really different result . Im more than happy . Made my own program following some french knowledge from "le recif" podcast and mixing with saxxby preset on AI website

So far im stunned by the impressive reactivity of the system . The overall life developpement is so much more intricate than freshwater, and the margin is short as hell . All of this just make it more challenging but also more fulfilling. The knowledge it brings to create the perfect saltwater ecosystem is also by itself impressive.

 

[yougo]

Here some video

Tank parameter

Temp , 25.1
Ph , 8.3
Alk , 9.5 dkh
Cal , 460
Mag , 1380
Phos , 0.53
Nitrate , <2 ppm
Salinity, 1.026 (35ppt)

 

[brandon429]

Hey what does the ammonia nh3 specific form read

 

[yougo]

Hey what does the ammonia nh3 specific form read

The ammonia nh3 : 0.015 nh4 : 2.68 and ph 8.55 . Its closer but still not target to the battery of test used aside . I am certain my actual ph is 8.26 (ph pen and ec pen and red sea regeat test)

 

[brandon429]

Excellent feedback. That helps many people with future seneye tuning: must be trimmed to the thousandths ppm for accuracy. Being that close at the hundredths level is still pretty decent for no final trim+soak, darn good machine. You'd be able to use it to watch for any upward trending anyway should a fish go missing or something so it's still helpful for the tank, pretty neat to see where it landed at given no adjustments at all.