New 22G custom nano reef stuck cycle

[EranL]

Hi there,
After years of thoughts i finally decided to get back to the hobby after a short journey in my childhood. I feel stuck for a while and get a lot of conflicting opinions from the internet and local stores and hobbists so I need some guidence.

I bought a fresh/saltwater aio aquarium setup, that included 60×40×40 tank with 4 chamber rear filtration and 1000 ac return pump with 8mm id plumbing.

To that i added:
Dry AF rocks
AF sand(dry with no bacteria)
Noopsyche k7 pro iv
150w Heater
Seachem matrix
Jebao MLW-5 wavemaker
Inkbird temp controller
Nature dimension ATO
I use Red Sea marine test kits

The aquarium is running for almost a month, started cycle with a 2oz All In One bacteria by Dr. Tim and some dry food pellets. After getting to 0.4-0.8ppm and seeing no change for a week i was told to get the ammonia higher with small piece of chicken in mesh for few hours. I got to about 2-3ppm ammonia level week and a half ago(tuesday of the week before last).

Today I tested the water again:
1.2 ammonia
0-0.015 nitrite(no change since the start of the cycle)
2 nitrate(also no change)

I was also told to check phosphate to ensure im not on 0 and that's why the cycle is stalling, which is +1ppm.

Is this normal? What should I do?
I'm starting to worry somthing with the set up has to do with this since it isn't an aquarium which is specifically for saltwater. Added some photos for your impression.

Thanks for the help.

 

[Tahoe61]

Are there any nitrates?
How long specifically has the tank been cycling?

Congratulations on your new tank!

 

[Boxed Fish]

the issue could be starting with dry rock instead of live rock. use imagitarium bacteria starter port half the bottle in and that will remove ammonia over night. nitrites will take longer to convert but the ammonia will be gone. doesn't look like your light is on. make sure your light stays on as if livestock was in it.

 

[Fish Fan]

Hi there,
After years of thoughts i finally decided to get back to the hobby after a short journey in my childhood. I feel stuck for a while and get a lot of conflicting opinions from the internet and local stores and hobbists so I need some guidence.

I bought a fresh/saltwater aio aquarium setup, that included 60×40×40 tank with 4 chamber rear filtration and 1000 ac return pump with 8mm id plumbing.

To that i added:
Dry AF rocks
AF sand(dry with no bacteria)
Noopsyche k7 pro iv
150w Heater
Seachem matrix
Jebao MLW-5 wavemaker
Inkbird temp controller
Nature dimension ATO
I use Red Sea marine test kits

The aquarium is running for almost a month, started cycle with a 2oz All In One bacteria by Dr. Tim and some dry food pellets. After getting to 0.4-0.8ppm and seeing no change for a week i was told to get the ammonia higher with small piece of chicken in mesh for few hours. I got to about 2-3ppm ammonia level week and a half ago(tuesday of the week before last).

Today I tested the water again:
1.2 ammonia
0-0.015 nitrite(no change since the start of the cycle)
2 nitrate(also no change)

I was also told to check phosphate to ensure im not on 0 and that's why the cycle is stalling, which is +1ppm.

Is this normal? What should I do?
I'm starting to worry somthing with the set up has to do with this since it isn't an aquarium which is specifically for saltwater. Added some photos for your impression.

Thanks for the help.

Welcome to Reef2Reef and back to saltwater tanks!

#WelcometoR2R

I think you're in fine shape. A cycle with dry rock and sand and Dr. Tim's One and Only usually takes about 3 weeks

I would first remove the chicken from your tank (I never thought I'd have to type that )

Then, just continue to monitor ammonia until it falls below about 0.25 ppm, and you should be good to start safely stocking some hardy livestock. Or, you could test your system by increasing the ammonia to about 2.00 ppm using something like Dr. Tim's Ammonium Chloride, Fritz Fishless Fuel, or "baker's ammonia", which can be found at many grocery stores. Measure the ammonia again in 24 hours, and if it's under about 0.50 ppm to 0.25 ppm, you're cycled. You can safely ignore nitrite as it's nontoxic in saltwater tanks.

Good luck!

 

[Mr. Mojo Rising]

I've never heard of phosphate being part of the cycle, phosphate of 1 is high, stop dosing phosphate IMO.

I'm not sure of the timeline, when you added that chicken, but I would just wait for the ammonia to drop on its own, and it will, cycles don't stall. Don't do anything else or add anything else IMO

 

[EranL]

I've never heard of phosphate being part of the cycle, phosphate of 1 is high, stop dosing phosphate IMO.

I'm not sure of the timeline, when you added that chicken, but I would just wait for the ammonia to drop on its own, and it will, cycles don't stall. Don't do anything else or add anything else IMO

Welcome to Reef2Reef and back to saltwater tanks!

#WelcometoR2R

I think you're in fine shape. A cycle with dry rock and sand and Dr. Tim's One and Only usually takes about 3 weeks

I would first remove the chicken from your tank (I never thought I'd have to type that )

Then, just continue to monitor ammonia until it falls below about 0.25 ppm, and you should be good to start safely stocking some hardy livestock. Or, you could test your system by increasing the ammonia to about 2.00 ppm using something like Dr. Tim's Ammonium Chloride, Fritz Fishless Fuel, or "baker's ammonia", which can be found at many grocery stores. Measure the ammonia again in 24 hours, and if it's under about 0.50 ppm to 0.25 ppm, you're cycled. You can safely ignore nitrite as it's nontoxic in saltwater tanks.

Good luck!

Thank you for the fast replys,
Well the timeline is a bit complicated so i'll try my best to be clear.
Three and a half weeks ago I set up the tank and added the dr. tim and microbelift gel bacterias, with some dry pellets fish food in order to get the ammonia going(sadly i couldnt find pure ammonia where I live). I run it that way while adding some more pellets and got my ammonia to about 0.4-0.8 and was stuck with those readings for two weeks.

A week and a half ago I was told that I haven't reached a high enough level of bacteria to waken the bacteria, and guided to add a piece of chicken for few hours in mesh, which got me to about 2-3ppm(taken it out right when i got the result i wanted). Since then I have been checking my ammonia levels every other day, which slowly started decreasing towards 1.2 reading. that's where i'm at now.

 

[EranL]

Are there any nitrates?
How long specifically has the tank been cycling?

Congratulations on your new tank!

as of today:
1.2 ammonia
0-0.015 nitrite(no change since the start of the cycle)
2 nitrate(also no change)

A bit complicated, look at my replay I tried being clearer

 

[EranL]

the issue could be starting with dry rock instead of live rock. use imagitarium bacteria starter port half the bottle in and that will remove ammonia over night. nitrites will take longer to convert but the ammonia will be gone. doesn't look like your light is on. make sure your light stays on as if livestock was in it.

I'm leaving it off cause I dont wanna get a algea bloom, especially becasue the chicken got my phosphate above 1.

 

[EranL]

I've never heard of phosphate being part of the cycle, phosphate of 1 is high, stop dosing phosphate IMO.

I'm not sure of the timeline, when you added that chicken, but I would just wait for the ammonia to drop on its own, and it will, cycles don't stall. Don't do anything else or add anything else IMO

Did dose at all was probably a result of the chicken, I tried checking with Dr. Tim's customers service to ensure that something isn't wrong. I was told that if you accidentaly get your Phosphates on exact 0 the bacteria won't be able to multiply and the cycle stall as a result.

 

[Boxed Fish]

Did dose at all was probably a result of the chicken, I tried checking with Dr. Tim's customers service to ensure that something isn't wrong. I was told that if you accidentaly get your Phosphates on exact 0 the bacteria won't be able to multiply and the cycle stall as a result.

you could be dealing with multiple issues with leaving your lights off, one it helps PH stay stable. the PH in your tank could be below 7.6 which makes bacteria go dormant and access organics from the chicken also could lower PH alot more. the lights being off wont help bacteria grow and form in your tank as light is needed to metabolize bacteria. you said it your self that you feel the tank is stuck in a dormant stage. turn the lights on and check PH of water and dose bacteria again. low PH means low o2 in water.

 

[EranL]

you could be dealing with multiple issues with leaving your lights off, one it helps PH stay stable. the PH in your tank could be below 7.6 which makes bacteria go dormant and access organics from the chicken also could lower PH alot more. the lights being off wont help bacteria grow and form in your tank as light is needed to metabolize bacteria. you said it your self that you feel the tank is stuck in a dormant stage. turn the lights on and check PH of water and dose bacteria again. low PH means low o2 in water.

I did all the trouble shooting I could,
PH is at 8.2 - made sure to direct the nozzel and the wavemaker so it disturbs the water surface, salinity 1.026, temperature 25c. About the light the one concensus Ive heard both online and irl was to leave them off during cycle as they are not needed and only cause algea.

 

[Fish Fan]

There's absolutely nothing wrong with keeping your light off during the cycle, many people do it that way.

I still think you're fine, it's just going to take a little more time for the ammonia to come down, at which time you're good to either test it by redosing ammonia and checking again in 24 hours, or simply adding some hardy livestock.

 

[ScottJ]

I think you are doing ok. Ammonia is coming down and you are showing some nitrate which indicates ammonia is being converted. Three weeks isn't unheard of for a dry rock start with Dr Tim's from what I've read. Leaving the light off is fine,

 

[EnterName]

you could be dealing with multiple issues with leaving your lights off, one it helps PH stay stable. the PH in your tank could be below 7.6 which makes bacteria go dormant and access organics from the chicken also could lower PH alot more. the lights being off wont help bacteria grow and form in your tank as light is needed to metabolize bacteria. you said it your self that you feel the tank is stuck in a dormant stage. turn the lights on and check PH of water and dose bacteria again. low PH means low o2 in water.

Nitrifying bacteria like Nitrosomonas and Nitrobacter do relatively fine at low pH. They won't become inactive at 7.6 and can handle significantly lower values (Burton & Prosser 2001). In cultures, ammonia oxidizers can even tolerate a pH of 5.8 and nitrite oxidizers can deal with 6.5. Some acid-tolerant oxidizers have been found working below 5 (Gieseke et al. 2006, Fumasoli et al. 2017). OP only needs to provide carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus, oxygen, and some time. Supplying oxygen can certainly speed up the process, but many people cycle in buckets with little surface agitation and semi-closed lids, and it still works.

pH also won't increase unless there is significant photosynthetic activity going on. Right now there isn't much algae in the tank (dry rock and dry sand), and I'm not sure freshly started tanks have many autotrophs to begin with. The nitrifying bacteria are chemolithoautotrophs (chemoautotrophs), so they don't require light either. Nitrosomonas are even photophobic (Lu et al. 2023). Obviously they still grow in well-lit tanks, but it doesn't really look like it benefits them.

 

[EranL]

I think you are doing ok. Ammonia is coming down and you are showing some nitrate which indicates ammonia is being converted. Three weeks isn't unheard of for a dry rock start with Dr Tim's from what I've read. Leaving the light off is fine,

The nitrite and nitrate level are the same from day one sadly so it's no indication I fear. I have read that red sea salt gets low reads of nitrate.