If your PH is changing hourly, that's a big problem. Unless you're talking about very small changes, from 8.2 to 8.3 perhaps. Which is such a small change that it's impact to NH4 -> NH3 conversion is negligible, and easily managed by the biofilter.No true, and this seems to be the crux of the confusion here. All of Brightwell’s numbers in that page are total ammonia, and in fact most everywhere else as well. Almost no one in the reefing community discusses free ammonia levels (except Seneye users) for a host of reasons, including they change hourly as the pH changes.
We can verify with Brightwell if you want, but look at it this way. If you add 1 ppm total ammonia and the pH is 7.8, the tank would be cycled instantly. By your reasoning. You are still at 0.6 ppm total ammonia by the Seneye, and would only have converted half of the 1-2 ppm total ammonia Brightwell recommends adding for cycling .
And I have made no claims about instant cycling - in my case I waited the appropriate time for my specific kit, because my kit includes dosing raw ammonia. My kit is a fishless kit.
The claims I repeated from others, were made by the hundreds of people who are NOT dosing ammonia, and who did dump in a bottle of bacteria and instantly add fish, instantly cycle. With great success, over and over. I mean, don't take my word for it, go read those forums yourself if you doubt their claims.
Kinda similar to the 'instant cycles' where people take a big block of marinepure out of an established tank, add it to a new tank, and then add livestock.