Cycling Question

[TryingHard]

Need cycling advice. Cycling a 30 gal tank, live sand/dry rock. Salinity 1.019, Temp 81, PH 7.9-8.0 I am on DAY 6 of Dr Tims fishless cycle. I am an expierenced fresh water aquarist and have always done "fish in" cycle before but decided to try this out. Tonight my NH3 was .25 down from 1.0 from yesterday. NO2 is reading 5.0, the same as DAY 5. This is a good estimate as I am using API test kit and the Purple colors are hard to get exact. I decided NOT TO dose Ammonium chloride today beciase of the high NO2. I have read that could stall the cycle with too much ammonia. Any thoughts on this. This is a lot of info out there and some is confusing. My plan is to wait until BOTH NH3/NO2 are near .25 then dose and see how the tank responds in 24 hrs. Looking for advice.

 

[reefsaver]

It sounds like you're doing everything right mate. You're well on your way to a very nice aquarium especially with the attitude you're coming into it with. And that's coming from someone who cycled their first Reef, fish in method. Right now the tank is very sterile so my advice would be buy some coral on some live rock and get the bacterial diversity of the tank cooking because in it's current state, it's going to be total war in there. It's probably the funnest part of reefing in my opinion. Organisms take off and die off stabalizing over time. It's all each to their own at the end of the day. Like my personal ideal tank would be one with a high degree of natural biodiversity and basically as much biological filtration I can get into the tank as possible to help setup that self sustaining ecosystem of copepods, inverts and micro fauna. I'm not as careful as some other reefers where, your tank like I mentioned is sterile and it's beneficial as in there's nothing yet bad introduced into the tank so if you are extremely careful, you can control exactly what is going into the tank by dipping, cleaning and quarantining new stock. Freeing the tank of things like glass anemones "aiptasia", pest starfish, fireworms (not necessarily bad), algae like bryopsis, hair algae, bubble algae. But yeah get a nice big Zoanthid covered rock, or really any large rock with a bunch of soft corals like GSP, Xenia or Christmas Tree rock and get that war started.

 

[Dburr1014]

Need cycling advice. Cycling a 30 gal tank, live sand/dry rock. Salinity 1.019, Temp 81, PH 7.9-8.0 I am on DAY 6 of Dr Tims fishless cycle. I am an expierenced fresh water aquarist and have always done "fish in" cycle before but decided to try this out. Tonight my NH3 was .25 down from 1.0 from yesterday. NO2 is reading 5.0, the same as DAY 5. This is a good estimate as I am using API test kit and the Purple colors are hard to get exact. I decided NOT TO dose Ammonium chloride today beciase of the high NO2. I have read that could stall the cycle with too much ammonia. Any thoughts on this. This is a lot of info out there and some is confusing. My plan is to wait until BOTH NH3/NO2 are near .25 then dose and see how the tank responds in 24 hrs. Looking for advice.

Sounds like your okay.
My question is why 1.019 water?
That pretty low. Normal is 1.026 and some may go as low as 1.024

 

[MnFish1]

Need cycling advice. Cycling a 30 gal tank, live sand/dry rock. Salinity 1.019, Temp 81, PH 7.9-8.0 I am on DAY 6 of Dr Tims fishless cycle. I am an expierenced fresh water aquarist and have always done "fish in" cycle before but decided to try this out. Tonight my NH3 was .25 down from 1.0 from yesterday. NO2 is reading 5.0, the same as DAY 5. This is a good estimate as I am using API test kit and the Purple colors are hard to get exact. I decided NOT TO dose Ammonium chloride today beciase of the high NO2. I have read that could stall the cycle with too much ammonia. Any thoughts on this. This is a lot of info out there and some is confusing. My plan is to wait until BOTH NH3/NO2 are near .25 then dose and see how the tank responds in 24 hrs. Looking for advice.

An ammonia level>5 ppm can slow down nitrification.