KP Aquatics Live Rock - Is my cycle stuck?

[>>klong<<]

I got some live rock from KP Aquatics about 10 days ago. It was shipped in damp paper. I’m curing/cycling in my new 20g cube with no sand, some carbon and some Marine Pure gems. I started with 25-30% water changes daily for the first 4 or 5 days. I used Prime consistently in the beginning.

I have been seeing about 1ppm ammonia consistently for the past week. Nitrite is measurable but low. Nitrate is hovering around 2-2.5. Is this to be expected? I’m used to seeing ammonia disappear once I see nitrate. I’m using Red Sea tests.

Is this because I’m still experiencing die off/decomp? Should I be worried?

If I had to do it again, I would have gotten the rock shipped wet.

 

[brandon429]

You are fine

smell it, if it smells fine it’s ready. Your misreads are so easily explained if we search 1 ppm misread threads, there are thousands.

 

[brandon429]

Prime causes false ammonia reads. You’ll have to go off smell and visuals

smell the actual water, let us know. Then lift up a rock and smell it, this will be more accurate than any test you can use. Ten days is decent curing time, it’s not like we are on the first day after opening the box

 

[fishface NJ]

you are good to go.

I received a shipment of rocks from KP a few weeks ago. Shipped in water....rocks are wonderful

 

[Idoc]

Prime binds the ammonia, but doesn't remove it. It will actually release the ammonia after about 48 hours. I would think your water changes would have helped remove it, though.

You may still be experiencing some die off from shipping and settling into the tank.

You can sniff your rock, but unless you are an experienced rock sniffer, you may not know exactly what you are trying to smell, lol.

I'd personally add some bottled bacteria to be safe in order to give the nitrifying bacteria in the rock a boost.

Also, don't use an API test kit for ammonia... routinely errors with that kit.

 

[Reef man 89]

My 60lbs of kp shipped in water only got to .50 of ammonia. I just kept doing water changes to keep it at zero

 

[>>klong<<]

Prime causes false ammonia reads. You’ll have to go off smell and visuals

smell the actual water, let us know. Then lift up a rock and smell it, this will be more accurate than any test you can use. Ten days is decent curing time, it’s not like we are on the first day after opening the box

Thanks, Brandon. It passed the sniff test. I still wish I would have spent the extra cash for shipping in water, but that's a lesson for another tank.

I saw some critter tracks in the dust on the bottom of the tank, so I'm going to do a couple dips in 1.040 SG to see what drops out.

You can sniff your rock, but unless you are an experienced rock sniffer, you may not know exactly what you are trying to smell, lol.

LOL - after the dip I'll give it another week or so to be safe. I'm in no hurry. I just want to be done with all the frequent water changes . . .

 

[NeonRabbit221B]

i think your prime is largely causing misreads and binding and releasing. One large water change and retest/charge along

 

[brandon429]

Don’t do the low salinity dip. Is ok to wait longer but don’t stress it more

 

[LegendaryCG]

Thanks, Brandon. It passed the sniff test. I still wish I would have spent the extra cash for shipping in water, but that's a lesson for another tank.

I saw some critter tracks in the dust on the bottom of the tank, so I'm going to do a couple dips in 1.040 SG to see what drops out.


LOL - after the dip I'll give it another week or so to be safe. I'm in no hurry. I just want to be done with all the frequent water changes . . .

You might be surprised what ends up alive even shipped out of water. I ordered some gulf rock 2 years ago that was in news paper for 4 days at about 40F and I still have sponges, bivalves, cup corals, feather dusters, bristle stars, etc alive.

 

[Scoob]

I got some Kp aquatics rock a while back. It came wrapped news paper, and there was tons of life. I don't think I would have used prime

 

[brandon429]

The smell test is the final say here, he can start now.

since we don’t have any cycling authors telling us anything other than cycles stall, buy my bacteria to unstall, it’s ok for the hobby to be in a state of disarray in cycling. We get no objective truths to apply, we get retail truths.

 

[Dr. Jim]

I received KP rock 9 days ago. I had to perform 8 100% water changes (12 gal each) over the first 4 days to keep the ammonia below 1ppm (API). It creeped up to 2ppm briefly two times. I haven't tested anything in 2 days, but as of 2 days ago ("Day 7"), nitrites were still zero (Salifert) which I thought was odd since ammonia had decreased to 0.5.

Rock came with a lot of orange coralline which all died by day 4. Only life I have seen so far: 1 tiny snail, 1 small starfish, and 1 fireworm (that I have to catch). Rock is beautiful shape, though with lots of "tunnels."

What I find odd is that this is the second time I got KP rock in the past year, each time Next Day and the rock fouled quite a bit each time. I also bought rock from LiveRockNReef, shipped the same way, and they insist that you put it in an established tank right away. The rock didn't smell so I did just that and all was well. The rock wasn't as nice a shape as KP but it was loaded with life: 2 Rose Corals, mussels, sponges, spaghetti worms, macroalgae, feather dusters, limpets, snails, a nice gorgonian, purple coralline, friendly bristleworms (and aiptasia). My recommendation would be 3/4 KP (for nice-looking rock) and 1/4 LiveRockNReef to "seed" everything nicely (although I know this isn't the point of this thread)..

 

[NeonRabbit221B]

The smell test is the final say here, he can start now.

since we don’t have any cycling authors telling us anything other than cycles stall, buy my bacteria to unstall, it’s ok for the hobby to be in a state of disarray in cycling. We get no objective truths to apply, we get retail truths.

Can you smell .25 ppm ammonia? Are you mostly smelling die off from the rocks? What about organics that have no broken down yet? I agree cycling is far more simplistic than retail leads us to believe but how can smell out weigh a test

 

[brandon429]

We sure can smell it, google human detection range olfaction and free ammonia

we are very very good at smelling it in fact, so that we avoid eating or ingesting it as we hunt and gather, and blog

fast release / direct ammonia poisoning is all we care about, organics that slowly decay into ammonia by bacterial digestion are too slow to matter

agreed here he may have clams to lose in the future, ten days though is plenty for initial cure plus he’s not ammonia loop cascading or it would stink/ cat litter box style

wafts the whole house so that guests but not the owners knows there is a cat nearby but they pretend things are ok due to social norms, maybe its just been really damp in this doorway recently heh
This is all cat owners

jj
dog elitist joke

 

[RobB'z Reef]

i think your prime is largely causing misreads and binding and releasing. One large water change and retest/charge along

I agree, in fact I would never use prime to cycle a tank ever. I think your good to go

 

[>>klong<<]

I agree, in fact I would never use prime to cycle a tank ever. I think your good to go

Good to know, and it makes sense based on the education I just got about how Prime works. KP mentions it in their cure/cycle How-to, so I assumed it couldn't hurt. I'll stick with big water changes on the next tank.