Four weeks of cycling -- nitrites are 0, nitrates are at ~12, but ammonia won't drop.

[brandon429]

its hilarious to read about 45 dead snails where free ammonia was in doubt, tho. im convinced at one point in time there was darn sure some free ammonia heh, sure of it

 

[raketemensch]

Ammonia was up over 4ppm at one point, for at least a week.

I'm thinking about starting with a lawnmower blenny, supplementing with nori until there's more algae to eat. The QT is ready to go, so I might pick one up tomorrow, as I'll be very close to my LFS in the afternoon.

I was going to start with a CUC, but as you can see, there's nothing to clean!

 

[raketemensch]

if that was my tank Id simply change out all the water and add some motile creatures. not sure if copper will affect them its not common to have copper associated with displays for inverts but your medication plan may allow for that etc not sure on that part

I did pull 90% out of the water last Saturday and replace it. The copper came from actual copper pipe that was in the tank from the previous owner, Cuprisorb to the rescue.

 

[BeejReef]

I still think you're reading your salifert ammonia test incorrectly. For salifert nitrite and nitrate, you do lay the test card down on a table and set the vial on top of it and look through the top of the vial to compare the color. For ammonia, you hold the vial up in front of your face with the color card behind it and look through the side. It makes a real difference.

https://www.reefs.org/library/testkits/salifert/SalifertTestKitsinstructions.pdf

 

[raketemensch]

I still think you're reading your salifert ammonia test incorrectly. For salifert nitrite and nitrate, you do lay the test card down on a table and set the vial on top of it and look through the top of the vial to compare the color. For ammonia, you hold the vial up in front of your face with the color card behind it and look through the side. It makes a real difference.

https://www.reefs.org/library/testkits/salifert/SalifertTestKitsinstructions.pdf

That is actually how I do it, but I couldn't figure out how to get a good picture that way.

Looking through it, it's basically one notch above 0. I did a control test with tap water to see what actual zero looks like, there's definitely a negligible bit of cloudiness above that.

 

[brandon429]

the way to use your test correctly after handling reading calibration is not to seek the bottom end zero but any movement down. when you dosed to something above your current number, and it moved down to the current number, that's cycled, even if non saltwater verification shows its zero. reefs cannot hover at .5 day to day there's too much active surface area commanding it as food substrate by the minute.

if you were dealing in seneye numbers, none of this would be happening. its solely a domain for titration, this endless delay. take a sample of your reef water over to a seneye user/minstream user to measure it would be post comparative gold

I know the other samples will read zero, Ive yet to pinpoint why getting bottom end accuracy is so hard in reefing it could be cross reading issues (which dont happen in clean samples) Im not sure

I just know seneye wont agree, and a starting bioload is fine and that measures a cycle in another way/consistently.

 

[BeejReef]

the way to use your test correctly after handling reading calibration is not to seek the bottom end zero but any movement down. when you dosed to something above your current number, and it moved down to the current number, that's cycled, even if non saltwater verification shows its zero. reefs cannot hover at .5 day to day there's too much active surface area commanding it as food substrate by the minute.

if you were dealing in seneye numbers, none of this would be happening. its solely a domain for titration, this endless delay. take a sample of your reef water over to a seneye user/minstream user to measure it would be post comparative gold

I know the other samples will read zero, Ive yet to pinpoint why getting bottom end accuracy is so hard in reefing it could be cross reading issues (which dont happen in clean samples) Im not sure

I just know seneye wont agree, and a starting bioload is fine and that measures a cycle in another way/consistently.

I honestly think the main issue is that a huge percentage of people have off white colored walls, wood flooring, and/or soft white light in the living areas of their home. It's very hard to see anything as crisp white in that environment. Also, ammonia tests are so often on the yellow to brown scale. Slight yellowing of the water in a reef happens to everyone and helps explain why a sample of fresh mix salt or a new setup qt is able to show a hard zero while a mature reef struggles to.

 

[brandon429]

that is a really great call I didnt think about those at all, that yellowing condition you mention I remember Dan_P referring to it as gelbstoff, the marine biology books show that to be the yellowing/hazing condition afforded by particulates and organic breakdown in the water column.

I never could pinpoint the reasons for the variances, and, admittedly some users never have trouble Dr. Reef ran his whole bottlebac thread with clear, yellow api ammonia readings. nice call

those kits are great for discerning movement, up and down, its just that hard bottom line which comparison testing wont always rule out / but the living sample can't seem to attain when all other factors line up

 

[raketemensch]

So I finally gave in and picked up my first fish, a fire goby.

The irony is that it's not even in the tank in question, it's in the QT for a few weeks :]

 

[brandon429]

hey hows this stuck cycle tank doing

update

youre part of our microbiology of cycling thread, page one, so we'd like to see updates./

 

[brandon429]

What’s the summary in hindsight for this tanks cycle R