Artificial Cycling

[bob115]

How quickly should my rock and sand process ammonia such that I can consider it cycled?

 

I'm curing it in a bucket and dosing ammonia right now which means that if it takes it down from say... 4ppm NH3 to .5ppm NH3 in 24 hours it would only take my tank's levels down by ~.6ppm in the same time.

[brandon429]

if it was cured live rock from the fs, instantly, no cycle needed. others take a different view

 

 

do not add raw ammonia to cured lr, just set up the tank

 

 

you add raw ammonia to dry lr you are cycling

 

wet pack caribsea substrate is ready, other than that need more details about your sand

 

 

before continuing, need to know if you bought cured or uncured lr. I know you said you are curing it, but lots of times that means someone brought home lr that was already cured thinking it must be cured again because it relocated tanks.

 

if you are using dry rocks and natural bacteria seeding, meaning no bottle bac, but you are adding ammonia to boost those levels of natural bacteria, I say about 7 weeks to being able to handle an initial small reef bioload. w bottle bac, a NON API ammonia test kit to guide by, and raw ammonia, the record to being able to handle some fish in an avg tank is about 9 days

[bob115]

Its bottled bacteria (Tim's one and only) and a bunch of dry rock. Been dosing ammonia between 3 and 4 ppm. I already had nitrates after 36 hours and am continuing to dose the ammonia.

 

 

Though my ppms are a bit misleading because its a much smaller volume (a bucket) than the tank. My question is, how fast should the biofilter be able to process ammonia in the tank?

[brandon429]

most likely the results of species in suspension vs established colonies, recently dosed bacteria that aren't truly long term yet. i think you got nitrates because the water column, not the surface area, was loaded with bacteria. not the same as true biofiltration which in your case will still come lighting fast compared to how we did in the 90s w dry substrate.

right there is a reason test kits are secondary in tank cycling. false implications. test kit indicated some nitrifying bacteria present, keeper adds quick bioload, ammonia crash when water column colonies not enough

 

the timeline is the trustworthy source, you need mid two weeks safe although some did lighting fast. not worth much more of a rush than 14 days imo

 

I personally would never own an ammonia test kit for any reason out of fear of coming off like the timeline was second guessable. it would haunt me like a nitrogen bearing apparition in the night or something. dry cycling easy to do without any testing

cured cycling even easier!

[bob115]

Uh... I'm not entirely sure about what you mean with finding the culprit. And I in no way meant to imply that I thought it was cycled, I just wanted to know about how fast it should be able to process ammonia to estimate about when the cycle would be done.

 

I used an api test kit for the nitrate, and it came somewhere above 0 and a bit below 5. Based on the ammonia I added, and what was left at the time, the actual measurement would be somewhere in the 1.5 to 2.5 range depending on how much nitrite was present (which I don't have a kit for).

 

I'm loosely measuring the ammonia with some test strips I got just as a ballpark of when I need to dose more ammonia. I dose based on about how much is left and add known amounts of ammonia to reach 3-4ppm.

[brandon429]

2 weeks predictably ok, 3-4 solid with how you are going

 

not insinuating you thought it was cycled but moreso for other readers to see how test results have to be compared to known timing as well, just a thought

[malady]

tims one and only helps cycle quicker.

 

Used it numerous times.