Have i done something wrong in my cycle?

[Sarah1990]

I set up my tank 4 weeks ago and added API bacteria and then dosed ammonia up to 2ppm
I added a small amount of ammonia every other day as I believed i should keep the ammonia up to ensure the bacteria had a food source. I realised at week 2 that i should have been waiting for ammonia to drop to 0ppm before doing again and so I left it.
It took around 5 days for the ammonia to go back to 0ppm. I then dosed to 2ppm of ammonia at the start of week 3 and the ammonia dropped in 24 hours to 0.2ppm but nitrites still sky high and nitrates off the scale.
I did a 10% water change as advised on here to help reduce the final water change and prevent algae.
48 hours ago I dosed ammonia to 2ppm, 24 hours later it was at 0.2ppm, 48 hours after dosing ammonia it's now at 0ppm but nitrites are at 1ppm still.
I feel so far from the end goal at 4 weeks in, am I doing something wrong?

 

[Big G]

Most cycles take anywhere from 30-40 days to complete.

False nitrite readings are very common with our simple test kits when testing at low levels.

Just keep testing the ammonia until you are getting the proper consumption at 24 hours after dosing. Then huge water changes to get the nitrate levels down to where you want them.

 

[Flippers4pups]

I set up my tank 4 weeks ago and added API bacteria and then dosed ammonia up to 2ppm
I added a small amount of ammonia every other day as I believed i should keep the ammonia up to ensure the bacteria had a food source. I realised at week 2 that i should have been waiting for ammonia to drop to 0ppm before doing again and so I left it.
It took around 5 days for the ammonia to go back to 0ppm. I then dosed to 2ppm of ammonia at the start of week 3 and the ammonia dropped in 24 hours to 0.2ppm but nitrites still sky high and nitrates off the scale.
I did a 10% water change as advised on here to help reduce the final water change and prevent algae.
48 hours ago I dosed ammonia to 2ppm, 24 hours later it was at 0.2ppm, 48 hours after dosing ammonia it's now at 0ppm but nitrites are at 1ppm still.
I feel so far from the end goal at 4 weeks in, am I doing something wrong?

I would discontinue dosing ammonia at this point and let it go. Once your tank showed high levels of Nitrate and still some Nitrite, that's the time to stop dosing ammonia.

 

[Bayareareefer18]

I would discontinue dosing ammonia at this point and let it go. Once your tank showed high levels of Nitrate and still some Nitrite, that's the time to stop dosing ammonia.

+1 to stop adding ammonia

The processing of nitrite was the longest part of my cycle. It seemed to never want to budge. I finally did a 50$ wc and added a bottle of bio spira. that did the trick for me. I cycled my tank for 2.5 months

 

[14 foot reef]

Randy Holmes Farley has covered this many many times. Also, like above mentioned, this is a 30 -40 day process. # 1 Stop the ammonia addition and just test for nitRITE. ( What test kit ) please dont say API. If API stop using that brand, get a better kit. Salifert or Red Sea.
Secondly (The Randy Holmes Farley part) NitRITES in the water will 100% give you false nitRATE reading on your kit. If you're testing 200 ppm of nitRATES, its because of the nitRITE in the water. Patience!!!!!!. You are only a week or so away from the completion of the cycle and once the nitRITES are gone, you will be testing about 25 ppm of nitRATES. Then do a water change and you are ready to start. If it were me, I'd sit tight for 3 months no lights once you've added a few fish. This will almost guarantee no new tank uglies and algae issues in the first year that most people suffer. Ignore this advise and you will most likely go through the uglies, with Dyno's, GHA, & cyno and a few other less than fun and attractive stages of your tank. PATIENCE is the absolute key here.

 

[brandon429]

Simple answer

Change out all your water for new, you are cycled and done.

You can re proof your cycle test once it’s all changed out. Messing with the wastewater is your testing issue, exchanging it will make those tests work as best as they can. You’ve reached the one month mark, what wastewater says doesn’t matter, we don’t expect it to line up

By not using digital ammonia measures, everybody is inputting random amounts of initial ammonia. Change out the variation wastewater, put in some crabs and snails and some zoanthids.

Updated cycle science knows nitrite does not matter in cycling or in reefing, but it did matter up until the updates. Only your ammonia matters, and that’s demo’d ready.

 

[Quietman]

Agree... just found out that nitrites are much less toxic for saltwater than freshwater. I waited 6 weeks...lol.

 

[Sarah1990]

Randy Holmes Farley has covered this many many times. Also, like above mentioned, this is a 30 -40 day process. # 1 Stop the ammonia addition and just test for nitRITE. ( What test kit ) please dont say API. If API stop using that brand, get a better kit. Salifert or Red Sea.
Secondly (The Randy Holmes Farley part) NitRITES in the water will 100% give you false nitRATE reading on your kit. If you're testing 200 ppm of nitRATES, its because of the nitRITE in the water. Patience!!!!!!. You are only a week or so away from the completion of the cycle and once the nitRITES are gone, you will be testing about 25 ppm of nitRATES. Then do a water change and you are ready to start. If it were me, I'd sit tight for 3 months no lights once you've added a few fish. This will almost guarantee no new tank uglies and algae issues in the first year that most people suffer. Ignore this advise and you will most likely go through the uglies, with Dyno's, GHA, & cyno and a few other less than fun and attractive stages of your tank. PATIENCE is the absolute key here.

It is a red sea teating kit

 

[Sarah1990]

I'm only testing nitrite now not nitrate as I'd been advised that it gives a false reading until theres no nitrite.
So I need to stop doing ammonia until theres no nitrite at all? Will the bacteria the change ammonia to nitrite not start to die off then? That's what I'm worried about

 

[brandon429]

Once a cycle is done it cannot undo. Even by 200 full water changes, only medication like antibiotics sustained could reset the cycle.
Nothing you can do makes the cycle get weaker.

You’re down to the simple choice of accept the cycle being ready and change out all the algae feed water created, and begin, or wait longer based on random readings of wastewater.

 

[Sarah1990]

Thank you all I was worrying too much about meeting the exact readings of what I've read, I will prepare some water for a big WC

 

[brandon429]

Hey if you’ll do that and input some easy starter stuff we’d like to track tank inhabitant health for our cycling thread, I have a cycling thread and it only factors time underwater as the final say on whether a new reef is cycled / ready / can support life. No bad calls made so far, we should test with your setup


If you have a reef light setup made for coral, run it on low (high levels new tank grows algae) and grab some easy starter items, update us I’ll link to the microbiology of cycling thread

The whole point of the thread is discerning a start date for reefing without using test kits. Your tank meets 100% of the criteria we’ve used for sixteen pages

It’s better to hold off on fish until you choose a disease prevention approach, but the supporting items/ clump of decorative macro algae, some crabs, cheap coral, all that is go. Feed lightly, be changing some water weekly to guide it.

additional source of confidence: all cycling charts one can locate show ammonia under compliance by day 30. Nitrite and nitrate don’t factor because they don’t ‘burn’ fish, only ammonia does, and we also don’t have to test since every chart shows:
Ammonia and nitrite are linked, and sustained zero, by day 30

They don’t bounce up (charts are not made using wastewater) and they don’t hover at .25 only our testers do that

Nitrate is always diverging up while the other two params are locked at zero before day 30 (algae binding and degassing can remove it for testing)

Those patterns are reliable, why test when u have the #days, which is the other axis on all cycling charts. I like this way of cycling because we don’t have to hesitate or buy things/ fund retail to be sure of the start/go date.

 

[lost66]

I don't want to hijack this thread but I feel like I am doing something wrong too.

So basically we should wait till ammonia drops to 0 (or around .25 if we use API tests) ? I am cycling my tank for around 40 days now and I am reading the same thing for like 2 weeks.

I made a 30% water change but I have exact the same results. I went to my local fish store and asked them to test the water and they have the same results (they also use API tests). They recommended to add more bacteria and they sold me Stability. I am dosing it daily for 4 days and I check nitrites but now, after reading this thread I think I should rather check ammonia instead.

Where I am in the cycling process?

 

[brandon429]

At no time in reefing has a setup ran and dosed for thirty days failed to cycle, not once. Yours is done, beyond 30 days.

duration cycling is that reliable. You can't overdo or underdo things to make it fail or be lesser cycled than another system.

The proof isn't what an approximation test says, it's whether or not the system can bear an entry bioload. Bioload in an uncycled tank dies overnite.
Change all your water for new

Then input some snails and crabs, whatever your first stocks will be

Update the thread pls, that's the proofing undeniable, entry bioload support proves a cycle is done. As soon as your initial stocks survive to day three the proof is done

And if they die overnite and create a smelly cloudy tank then I'll update the microbiology of tank cycling thread with the admittance. But they won't

 

[brandon429]

Even though your tank might not have been real live rock, we'd be too lucky to get two in a row, bottle bac gets tanks ready fast. 40 days under any arrangement of bottle bac and or feed is cycled, though we didn't see your rocks the timeframe underwater is still workable for the cycle call. This thread could turn out neat and helpful science: two opposing types of cycles called closed not from testing but from # days underwater verified by initial bioload support.

 

[Sarah1990]

I thought things like crabs needed algae before being put in a tank. But either way 4 weeks is 28 days not 40 I'm not quite there yet for your experiment am I?

 

[mich2599]

I don't want to hijack this thread but I feel like I am doing something wrong too.

So basically we should wait till ammonia drops to 0 (or around .25 if we use API tests) ? I am cycling my tank for around 40 days now and I am reading the same thing for like 2 weeks.

I made a 30% water change but I have exact the same results. I went to my local fish store and asked them to test the water and they have the same results (they also use API tests). They recommended to add more bacteria and they sold me Stability. I am dosing it daily for 4 days and I check nitrites but now, after reading this thread I think I should rather check ammonia instead.

Where I am in the cycling process?

That's a freshwater test that you are using.

 

[brandon429]

Mich excellent catch, excellent. It's one of many reasons I won't consider what API says, just too many confounds. I didn't see that, his lfs never bothered to verify it since they base cycling on test results not # days underwater (dry systems need time underwater, live rock systems are ready day 1)

I'm assuming lost66 is using dry rock for cycling, most do

Sarah we add cuc and feed them before there is algae, algae if it appears isn't the main meal bc we hand clean it out of the rocks if it appears and the clean up crew doesn't eat it. You can add corals first if you want, adding fish without reading up on fallow/quarantine systems from the fish disease forum results in a system where disease affects most any fish you add, so we hold off on them until you choose how you are prepping for fish disease.
Whatever you had planned to start out with, your tank is ready. If you don't want a cuc you don't have to, that was just an example of life you could start with.

*you don't need even one day of cycling, yours are skip cycle rocks they were ready day one see our examples below

*your tank is like the 200 tanks skip cycled at marine aquarium conventions. They show up Friday, make skip cycle tanks, then by Saturday fifteen fish and ten thousand dollars in corals are doing fine, and if the tank was left running for years it doesn't get weaker, they were ready day one.

None of this is an experiment check this work out team:

The microbiology of reef tank cycling.

You can skip your cycle. Ive been reefing online for twenty years and have never waited one second for a tank to cycle, because I buy rocks that are already cycled and move them home. Here's two: https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/octo-high-end-sps-skip-cycle-build.713256/...

www.reef2reef.com

Lost66 post a pic of your tank pls

 

[lost66]

I use freshwater test because I also have freshwater aquarium and on the internet I found out that there is almost no difference between these tests. Saltwater kit has no lower part ph and nitrate has slice different colors. Anyway, I went to my LFS and they had the same readings, I don't know if they used fresh water or salt water kit, they had plenty of those tests on their testing shelf with no labels which one is for which water. I purchased alkalinity, magnesium and ca from better brands.

I had brown algae bloom on rocks and sand as I have been told it's diatom and I removed it mechanically. I have some brown algae on the glass which might not be well visible in the picture.

If I add some CUC today, do you think I should feed them somehow? I don't know if I have enough algae for them to eat. I am thinking about hermit crabs and some snails, depends what my LFS has.

Most of those rocks were "used" and I cured them in bleach so I used dry rock.

 

[brandon429]

Just a little feed is ok for them, make em forage and work for it to find it, small amounts tiny amounts perhaps once a week, we don't want to begin algae challenges early on. Nice dry rock cycle, the diatoms you saw also come after nitrifying bacteria are present, nice bio confirmation. You met the required days underwater and the order of appearances supports that, your cycle is certainly done regardless of any test kit reading.

Whatever you want to start with, the system is ready.