How is my tank cycle looking?

[1Clown]

Disclaimer: It is already an established tank but I put 90% new dry rock in there and it has no sand bed, only 1 piece of old established rock plus a few bits of rubble in the filter. Live stock is 5 fish and around 15-17 snails.

I dosed ATM colony.

Day 1
Ammonia - 0.5 ppm
Nitrite - 0.05 ppm
Nitrate - 50 ppm


Day 2
Ammonia - 0.25 ppm
Nitrite - 0.01 ppm
Nitrate - 50 ppm


Day 3
Ammonia - 0.25 ppm
Nitrite - 0.01 ppm
Nitrate - 50 ppm


Does this look normal or is it bad? When can I turn on the skimmer and when I can I do a water change?

Thanks.

 

[brandon429]

Number of days underwater is all that matters, because your bioload would be dead if your system couldnt process ammonia.

once you are out past 48 hours with that much bioload your bottle bac added / or the ability of the retained live rock is known safe.

these fish-in cycles are becoming very common and don’t backtrack or build up ammonia out past a couple days proofing time


if by day three you have clear water and active normal fish, you are set.

 

[brandon429]

Turn skimmer on now and change water in a few more days. Not any of the posted test readings above were factored as api is not assumed accurate post to post and independent ways developed.

only the submersion time, water clarity and bioload behavior are needed to know to measure your cycle

 

[1Clown]

I turned the skimmer on yesterday (day 4) and today's test results are the following.

Day 5
Ammonia - 0.15 ppm
Nitrite - 0.01 ppm
Nitrate - 25 ppm

 

[brandon429]

Question

How are fish and water clarity, post pics

what tester reads hundredths ppm nitrite / what brand is nitrite test

 

[1Clown]

Question

How are fish and water clarity, post pics

what tester reads hundredths ppm nitrite / what brand is nitrite test

I didn't tell the full story of this tank at the start but it's been up and running for almost 2 years. In recent times I neglected it badly due to work and a free brown zoa frag which took over my zoa rock completely and turned me off.

So recently I decided to rescape it hence adding 90% new rock and throwing away my zoa garden gone wrong. Only original rock I have in the tank is the one on the right with the anemones attached.

Fish are doing great and loving the new scape, water looks good. I haven't added any phos or carbon yet as I wanted the ATM Colony cycle to not having anything else in the tank.

All tests were done using Salifert test kits, I did have a Red Sea kit for Ammonia but as it expired I could only get a hold of a Salifert one. I got the 0.01 Nitrite reading because the test kit tells you to divide the result by 10 once you have cycled the tank or the reading is lower than 10 when measuring from above the container. So my reading looking through the side of the container (as instructed) was 0.1 hence the 0.01 result. I will be cleaning the filter on the right in the coming days too lol.

 

[brandon429]

fantastic setup, just great. the positioning of the fish indicates ammonia in the thousands / safe zone, nitrite is fully neutral in all cycles so it wont factor, and nitrate is for algae tuning. that cycle is done

its not possible to have stuck low level ammonia, above the thousands safe zone, in a system with healthy fish not hovering at the top for oxygen and when using more than enough surface area, that rock.

clean water, all proofed. seneye would rate your ammonia .002 or thereabouts

the anemones would never open in the slightest bit of ammonia, which would be compounding to lethal levels if something was askew/can't hold at a given level. ammonia is always in motion, going up to lethality or staying in the thousandths if no dead fish are in the system. no middle ground, when surface area is present. a cycle cannot be undone, or retroscale in ability its simply locked into place and done here.

if you did a 100% water change, it still works, a done cycle cannot be harmed by full water changes due to bacterial adherence vs being in suspension. a closed cycle can demo ammonia control before bioload is present (or during lol) and it wont be undone by a full water change. you meet these criteria.

that above is why tank pics and submersion history beat any measure for ammonia other than seneye = cycling 2020 vs 1998

 

[brandon429]

once a person gets off on a cycle rant, its fun to not stop.

your tank is also able to carry whatever the maximum bioload it could ever carry, right now.


cool cycling fact #2343

cycles dont ramp up in ability to carry more or less based on the feed you give (the forum gasps, eighteen doubters fire up)

once a system is 'active' or: ammonia trends down from a setpoint measure, the surface area is as able as it will ever be-even if you waited twenty years the rocks wont carry more fish bioload than they do right now. *cycles do NOT set to the degree you provide food, bac have been getting fed long before us. *cycles have ability related to their avail active surface area...active is active. there isnt half-able surface area, its either active or its not. yours is active, fully. Dr Reef has already measured depositional rates for the bottle bac you used.

the entire sand rinse thread (30 pages of ripping out sandbeds from old reefs, no loss) is built on this principle; not a guess. its a core fact of surface area mechanics that keeps us from killing reefs when robbing half the surface area instantly, without ramp down, and keeping the same bioload. (all their same fish is ran by rocks just as easily as rocks + sand)

its amazing to think that ammonia going down, zero not required + surface area means a cycle is as powerful as it will ever be and can't be made stronger given time.

all you can do to add long term bioload capacity is add more surface area and let it activate. surface area is the limiter, not amnt of ammonia dosed or withheld.