When to stop testing Ammonia / Nitrite?

Jib · Sep 11, 2020

I have had my tank cycle for almost a month, and have been testing Ammonia, Nitrite, and Nitrate daily. I have not had a reading showing ammonia or nitrite since cycling, or after adding my fish.

Is it ok to stop testing ammonia and nitrite? Or should I continue to monitor?

I was going to keep checking Nitrates as this varied more recently. Anything I should start testing for?

brandon429 · Sep 11, 2020

you can stop testing now, nitrate can be useful for algae and coral tuning.

heres why you dont need ammonia testing further, or nitrite, for the life of the tank:

1. nitrite has no bearing in reefing any longer its excluded from all factoring.

2. ammonia is ok at day 30

Jib · Sep 11, 2020

brandon429 said:
you can stop testing now, nitrate can be useful for algae and coral tuning.

heres why you dont need ammonia testing further, or nitrite, for the life of the tank:

1. nitrite has no bearing in reefing any longer its excluded from all factoring.

2. ammonia is ok at day 30

Great, appreciate the confirmation.

brandon429 · Sep 11, 2020

we know a missing fish can cause an ammonia spike, but we wont need a test kit to tell if there's a missing fish either. also, Ive never seen any reef where a missing fish did anything notable other than degrade. ammonia is so locked in after the cycle, Ill never personally need to test for it and I have never owned an ammonia test kit since I started reefing in 2001, ammonia is that predictable.

nitrite just plumb doesnt factor anymore bc its not freshwater-factors heavily there. updated cycling science lets us choose an effective hands off date for ammonia and nitrite testing, back in the day you'd never know when it would creep on you/have some bottle bac handy (sales pitches tied into old school ammonia testing we now know it will never ever ever drift out of spec)

brandon429 · Sep 11, 2020

some reasons people might like ammonia testing:

quarantine tanks, limited surface area setups (which excludes all display tanks, they have rocks and or sand)

digital automated testing. seneye. if you are on vacation and a fish dies, it will alert you lol and you can ponder that now + be skiing lol/ I guess you could call the tank baby sitter in some way via that alert but in the end all reefs lose fish and they just reef on, live rock and sand is that powerful of a constant ammonia scrub.