Hi there!
A few weeks ago I ordered a custom tank, while waiting for it to arrive, I decided I would start “pre-cycling” my rock, so after getting the aquascape to where I liked it, I rinsed everything of with RODI water and put everything in a brute container full of salt water. I brought it to 78 degrees and have kept the water moving with a cheapo Amazon wave maker.
I made a bit of a mistake and added a capful of MB7 which I later learned wasn’t great for cycling. A few days later I found some microbacter start xlm and dosed that. Being that I had no fish, I also dosed some ammonia. I put in what SHOULD have been 2ppm but the salifert test kit either wasn’t working properly or I am just bad at reading but it looked to read basically 0. After that, I assumed that the concentration of the ammonia was lower than I thought (6%) so I added some more, not quite double. In any event, this would have brought the concentration up to slightly under 4ppm, but the test kit still wasn’t showing this.
I thought I’d do another test though so I took a bit of the water out and dosed what should have been a very high amount of ammonia. Exact concentration unknown but >> than the max value on the test kit. It showed up but looked to only register maybe 1.5 ppm. At this point I didn’t really trust the salifert ammonia test and just decided to leave it be.
It’s now been about 3 weeks (2 after adding MB start) and I did some tests. Pics below but nitrites are probably 0.75, nitrates probably 10-12 and ammonia.. looks like 0 but again, I don’t trust the test. The dilemma I’m having is whether or not I should add more ammonia / has what I’ve added been converted at this point?
From what I’ve read, 1ppm of ammonia will translate into 2.7ppm nitrite and then 3.6ppm of nitrate. Working backwards, to get 0.75ppm nitrite, we would have used ~0.25ppm ammonia and to get the 12 or so ppm of nitrate, probably about 3.3ppm of ammonia has been “processed”. With this being the case, approx 3.5ppm of ammonia has been accounted for which is what I calculate I added in the beginning.
Is it safe to assume that my ammonia is actually near zero at this point in which case, should I re-dose to 2ppm?
Also, with fish less cycling, should I be doing a water change to keep the nitrates below a certain threshold? If so, what concentration? (Note that a complete water change will be done once I transfer into the actual tank.)
Long read but thank you for the feedback!
A few weeks ago I ordered a custom tank, while waiting for it to arrive, I decided I would start “pre-cycling” my rock, so after getting the aquascape to where I liked it, I rinsed everything of with RODI water and put everything in a brute container full of salt water. I brought it to 78 degrees and have kept the water moving with a cheapo Amazon wave maker.
I made a bit of a mistake and added a capful of MB7 which I later learned wasn’t great for cycling. A few days later I found some microbacter start xlm and dosed that. Being that I had no fish, I also dosed some ammonia. I put in what SHOULD have been 2ppm but the salifert test kit either wasn’t working properly or I am just bad at reading but it looked to read basically 0. After that, I assumed that the concentration of the ammonia was lower than I thought (6%) so I added some more, not quite double. In any event, this would have brought the concentration up to slightly under 4ppm, but the test kit still wasn’t showing this.
I thought I’d do another test though so I took a bit of the water out and dosed what should have been a very high amount of ammonia. Exact concentration unknown but >> than the max value on the test kit. It showed up but looked to only register maybe 1.5 ppm. At this point I didn’t really trust the salifert ammonia test and just decided to leave it be.
It’s now been about 3 weeks (2 after adding MB start) and I did some tests. Pics below but nitrites are probably 0.75, nitrates probably 10-12 and ammonia.. looks like 0 but again, I don’t trust the test. The dilemma I’m having is whether or not I should add more ammonia / has what I’ve added been converted at this point?
From what I’ve read, 1ppm of ammonia will translate into 2.7ppm nitrite and then 3.6ppm of nitrate. Working backwards, to get 0.75ppm nitrite, we would have used ~0.25ppm ammonia and to get the 12 or so ppm of nitrate, probably about 3.3ppm of ammonia has been “processed”. With this being the case, approx 3.5ppm of ammonia has been accounted for which is what I calculate I added in the beginning.
Is it safe to assume that my ammonia is actually near zero at this point in which case, should I re-dose to 2ppm?
Also, with fish less cycling, should I be doing a water change to keep the nitrates below a certain threshold? If so, what concentration? (Note that a complete water change will be done once I transfer into the actual tank.)
Long read but thank you for the feedback!
