newb question, ammonia levels and temp for beneficial bacteria to live

[cmross13]

long story short, i accidentally put too much Ammonia in my new tank for its fishless cycle. "how much?" you ask. WAY too much. drunken boner move. glad i decided to do fishless.

the next day, after fully realizing the proper way to add ammonia and reading that i should not let it get above 5ppm during cycling, i pulled a water sample to test(ammonia was at 4-8ppm) and noticed that i accidentally unplugged the heaters the night before, and the water was now down in the high 60's. boner move #2 complete.

so now i have cold water with WAY too much ammonia in it. did i kill all the bacteria? cranked heaters back up to 80, went to fish store, bought a bottle of AquaVitro Seed bacteria, went home and changed 20 gallons of water and added half the bottle. next day still 4-8ppm

2 days later another 20g change, the other half the Seed bottle, next day still 4-8ppm

2 days later another 20g water change, next day still 4-8ppm

today another 20g, still 4-8ppm.

so i just found a ppm calculator online. if i put 2oz of ammonia into 90 gallons of water, thats .022oz per gallon, which, according to this calculator, is 137ppm!!! if i bump that number up to 170 gallons due to the water changes, its still 73ppm! do i wait a week and keep looking for Nitrate then change 50% of the water, or just drain it now, add Fritz Turbostart, and start all over?

 

[cmross13]

i just did some more math. if i drain the tank completely, leaving only 3 gallons of water in it(sandbed), droplets, corners of sump, etc i'll never get ALL the water out unless i wait until summer for it to evaporate, refill with 87 gallons of new water, i'll STILL be at 2.5ppm if my math is correct. can i add some sort of Fritz Turbostart, Dr Tims, whatever at this point, or do ANOTHER 80 gallon water change to get it down to around 0.25ppm

 

[newfly]

Below 4-5ppm you should fine.

 

[GuppyHJD]

Curious - were you using household, non-scented ammonia?
For 90 gallons you put in 2 oz and should have put in 2 teaspoons?

 

[brandon429]

here's 8 ppm, not stalled and now full on reefing:

100% Water Change

So in my previous thread, I had an ammonia issue that was out of hand. As suggested, I did a 100% WC and now i’m wondering when I should start adding fish back. If anyone has suggestions, let me know!

www.reef2reef.com

its possible to input so much ammonia you can't have a filter, ive never seen it occur though in twenty years not one case. ive seen people wait for api 3 months to allow a start, low level ammonia going on and on and on and on

but you can see by the title of that thread, we didn't wait at all there. we waited ten days ish, then reef'd

when the directions said nothing over 5, those were very flexible directions.

 

[cmross13]

I used Dr Tim’s ammonia. I guess I was supposed to use 360 drops I don’t know how much that is but the 4oz bottle says “treats 200 gallons” so I dumped in roughly half. Yes, this was wrong. Four days after posting the OP, Ammonia, Nitrate, Nitrite all higher than tests can read.

I drained the tank down to about 1/2” of water in the sand bed, stirred the sand the best I could, and put 8 gallons back in, drained again. Refilled completely.

Next day everything was still in check. I added old fish. Tested today, wee bit of Ammonia, wee bit of Nitrate. Will change 20 gallons when I get home from work. Adding Red Emperor snapper Thursday

 

[brandon429]

that is a very customized approach to it all lol nice one

 

[MnFish1]

here's 8 ppm, not stalled and now full on reefing:

100% Water Change

So in my previous thread, I had an ammonia issue that was out of hand. As suggested, I did a 100% WC and now i’m wondering when I should start adding fish back. If anyone has suggestions, let me know!

www.reef2reef.com

its possible to input so much ammonia you can't have a filter, ive never seen it occur though in twenty years not one case. ive seen people wait for api 3 months to allow a start, low level ammonia going on and on and on and on

but you can see by the title of that thread, we didn't wait at all there. we waited ten days ish, then reef'd

when the directions said nothing over 5, those were very flexible directions.

You would be wrong - because - no one adds that much ammonia (without a mistake). For example - take it to an extreme. Take a bottle of ammonia (just pure ammonia) - and see how long it would take that bottle to 'cycle' - even if open....

 

[brandon429]

It was just to show whatever their test says, it didn’t stop our completion date.

with all this non seneye data being used to command everything we think we do, reported numbers vary, and nobody still has to be delayed or miss their start date.


in other words we don’t care what someone reports, it isn’t stopping their biofilter from establishing on a pre-known date even before the tank was set up. We can make all cycles comply by a desired date. Even if they leave out details in original description, or if they’ve input far too much initial ammonia such as the years dr tims label had everyone dosing twice over too much. Dr. Reef tested things out to eight ppm and the cycle worked fine, so apparently someone can input that much and then write about it ninety pages.

 

[monkeyCmonkeyDo]

Urine. You could habe urinated in your tank and done the same. LOL!
D