No ammonia nitrates at 5ppm for 2 weeks

brandon429

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your cycle is done, want to prove it? we can easily. without guessing/

we pay for bottle bac to opt out of the normal wait times. how we test for ammonia, and nitrite, is where its off.
 

brandon429

why did you put a reef in that
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what aspect of this thread doesnt apply to your tank


Your submersion time is two weeks, with boosters of feed, using 5 day max bacteria

You are 100% cycled. Run what the thread says. That thread comes from coaching out thousands of cycles. What you paid extra for, bottle bac, worked. That your testers don't agree don't matter, they're wrong.
 
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Letterkenny

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Does this still apply to me too? I'm on day 4 of cycling a new tank. Amonia = 0 Nitrite = 0 and Nitrate is 8
If you don’t have ammonia and nitrite, usually your cycle is done. Generally, we just want to see how quickly that ammonia gets processed and nitrite will take a bit longer.
 

brandon429

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Two options exist so far: 1. Accept current ammonia and nitrite readings as infallible and wait # arbitrary days longer (search your brands test kit on Google to see if they have misread before choosing this option)

2. Use your test kit in an adjusted manner to prove it's cycled and that you weren't sold ~5 day bottle bac as a ripoff/ didn't work. The heart of this thread is bacteria supposedly taking twice as long as the directions said it would take, so either your tests are off and the bottle bac was dead or your bac was alive and the tests are off

Based on your linked example above, vote #2 / solid bet. There's a way to adjust your ammonia tester though if you want to.
 

brandon429

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cycling always seems arbitrary/never can tell when completed etc, never seems to work quickly but ask yourself this:

how do they get 500 reef tanks at MACNA all set up by friday, same day start, nobody stalls, nobody gets to show up more than a day or two early, no fish or corals die, and the tanks run for as long as you want to set them up?

if you apply that science to your tank here, you'll see where your cycle stands. my threads dont advocate cycle anarchy :) they use what reef conventions use as the way to measure cycle completion

knowing how to make a cycle comply, and by what date, means you can take your reef to a convention and it will live...you could sell things out of it to make $$

or you could move it, across town or to another state, or begin to reef. Knowing how cycles work are your actionable options for reefing, and doubting the cycle w lock you into total inaction/miss deadlines etc.
 
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Valum

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I think your comments was valid you stated about the taking time with the cycle you didn't say anything about patience fixing the pump your point u assume was things go wrong and you need patience to deal with this

Fyi Nitrite does kill fish it's like poison for them but I suppose you are correct in people kill them to a degree because people put fish in high Nitrite water but I guess that's the whole guns don't kill people argument

My thoughts would be to see if the nitrite dies off and when it does retest for nitrate and do a 50% change and wait a couple days and retest and add fish but then again you may get away with 5ppm Nitrite but the price of fish in the saltwater hobby I wouldn't personally risk it if it was freshwater id say add a hardy fish now because there really cheap and less sensitive
 

Valum

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Wont this be due to the pre cycled media or seeded media from were they are permanently plus the fact there short term and probably get a lot of maintenance to dilute the tank of any Ammonia or nitirite
 
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