Stalled cycle/bonehead move?

[Jogging stroller dad]

Hi reefers, I’m looking for some experience, strength, and hope here. I’m new to reefing and started 1 month ago with my BioCube 32. Things seems great, my kids are getting into this hobby with me so that is super exciting.
We have been cycling (fishless but we did use a raw shrimp from the grocery for 3 days) our tank and this week our ammonia bumped. We got a little excited last week and replaced some of our live rock for a “prettier “ one. We also started using reef fusion 1 and 2 because, well.. we want corals and a reef for our reef tank. Our ammonia has been at 0.25 for 2 days now?
Our bacteria is still alive I would think, we did lose some with the live rock sub and we certainly mauled the water column by changing that out.

I was hoping someone might have some insight. We used stability and pristine by sea chem. Should I just settle down and give it time ?

 

[Auquanut]

I would say that since you are still cycling, no harm, no foul. I've heard that the API test kits can give a false positive for ammonia. Don't know how valid that is. It couldn't hurt to add another ammonia source and extend the cycle. Give the new rock time to populate with bacteria. Seems to me that changing your aquascape before adding livestock was a good move. You want your tank to look good, and it does.

 

[TriggersAmuck]

When you say the ammonia bumped this week, what was the test kit reading? And was this after seeing a prior ammonia cycle (rise to a high value and then fall to 0), or was this the first time you saw the levels climb? To my eye, that API test kit appears to be showing a level of 0, not 0.25. You might want to first take a water sample to a fish shop and have them test it with any other kit besides API as a sanity check (and test Nitrite/NO2 while you are at it). Also, you could test your kit against straight RO/DI water as a reference to the 0-value color. Then, as Aquanut suggested you might want to give a bit more source of ammonia to make sure the bacteria can sufficiently respond to an increased load. I would recommend getting either Dr. Tims or Fritz Aquatics "Ammonium Chloride" solution so that you can dose a carefully calculated amount (no more than 2ppm) since you don't want to subject the live rock to either too concentrated or too long a duration of exposure to cause more die off. If the level drops below .25 overnight after dosing (same goes for NO2/Nitrite) then you should be good.

 

[TriggersAmuck]

Also on a side note, you mentioned you started using alkalinity and calcium dosing. I just wanted to make sure that someone advised you (or you researched it yourself) to test and "calibrate" the levels with a good alkalinity and calcium test kit. Eventually you will want to do the same for Magnesium (at least test the level since it appears Fusion 1 includes Mg in its solution).

 

[fuelman]

the api might not ever show true zero for ammonia. did the ammonia level rise then fall back down to the reading in the pic?. did the nitrite test show a rise then fall to the zero reading in the pic? & what is your nitrate reading? if you seen the ammonia/nitrite rise then fall back down, & your also showing nitrate on the test kit i would say your doing fine. i would do as Auquanut & TriggersAmuck suggested just to be sure. my first test kit was api, it showed 0.25-0.50 ammonia after a month & never went lower i bought a bunch of salifert & hanna checkers both showed 0.00 for ammonia. now i just use the hanna with the salifert as a backup if i get a odd reading i can check with a 2nd test kit. i also would 2nd the caution from TriggersAmuck on dosing anything at this point. without anything consuming alkalinity & calcium in the tank your levels can quickly get out of hand. your salt mix should be fine for a starting point, test your alkalinity,calcium,magnesium, for a starting point on your levels, then as you ad coral's to the tank test your alkalinity, calcium, magnesium to see what is being consumed & how fast before dosing those. it's not uncommon after adding a few small frags in a tank to not need to dose for a while, i never had to dose my 40 gallon just a weekly water change & was about two months before the coral's started to take off in growth before i had to start dosing my 240 gallon. but would test to see where alk,cal,mag are at now, just to be sure your levels are not to high.

 

[AdamB]

All the people above have great points and insight. I would worry about dosing now as that will come later once you cycled and your tank has aged enough to support.
The key to having a successful reef tank is to go slow .
Good luck

 

[hllb]

I gave up on api for ammonia and for nitrates. I still use the ph and nitrites. The api would never show 0 for me even when salifert did. You can take a sample to your LFS and have them test it.

Do you have nitrates?

 

[hllb]

I have some corals now but still not dosing my tank as water changes have been enough. I use the Red Sea kit for testing alk, mg, and ca. Ca is the only thing a bit low but I’m switching salts with the next wc so I’ll wait to see if reef crystals fixes the ca. No reason to be dosing in your tank yet.

 

[Jogging stroller dad]

Thanks, that is great info. We checked the ammonia a couple weeks ago and it read a true yellow. I like the idea of working out the bacteria before adding an occupant just to make sure we could handle a small bioload. I had no idea about the calcium/reef fusion. I will not dose anymore till I get a baseline Ca and on the advice of local fish store. I’m also going to use RO/DI as my ammonia control just to make sure. There are a lot of moving pieces to this and I don’t want to get ahead of where I am so I can get to where I would like to be.

 

[Jogging stroller dad]

the api might not ever show true zero for ammonia. did the ammonia level rise then fall back down to the reading in the pic?. did the nitrite test show a rise then fall to the zero reading in the pic? & what is your nitrate reading? if you seen the ammonia/nitrite rise then fall back down, & your also showing nitrate on the test kit i would say your doing fine. i would do as Auquanut & TriggersAmuck suggested just to be sure. my first test kit was api, it showed 0.25-0.50 ammonia after a month & never went lower i bought a bunch of salifert & hanna checkers both showed 0.00 for ammonia. now i just use the hanna with the salifert as a backup if i get a odd reading i can check with a 2nd test kit. i also would 2nd the caution from TriggersAmuck on dosing anything at this point. without anything consuming alkalinity & calcium in the tank your levels can quickly get out of hand. your salt mix should be fine for a starting point, test your alkalinity,calcium,magnesium, for a starting point on your levels, then as you ad coral's to the tank test your alkalinity, calcium, magnesium to see what is being consumed & how fast before dosing those. it's not uncommon after adding a few small frags in a tank to not need to dose for a while, i never had to dose my 40 gallon just a weekly water change & was about two months before the coral's started to take off in growth before i had to start dosing my 240 gallon. but would test to see where alk,cal,mag are at now, just to be sure your levels are not to high.

Holy Smokes, I’m going to stop the Reef fusion until I’ve looked into this further and have both a baseline value and an actual plan. Thanks !!!