How to make your LFS's owner laugh his head off

[OPtasia]

Chalk another idiot mistake up on my idiot mistake list....

 

So, we've been using Dr. Tim's ammonia drops to do a fishless cycle in my Wife's new biocube 32. Our LFS owner gave us the bottle, and we've been using it and testing the water diligently to monitor the cycle. Any time we do a new tank, we're always chomping at the bit to do a cycle. The tank has Caribsea's life rock in it and live sand and a clump of chaeto in the refugia lit by a magnafuge light. For extra insurance, we dumped in a fresh bottle of bio spira. I've used the liquid bio spira with success in the past but this was the shelf stable bio spira from petco.  The cycle had been going along fine until a few days ago when I noticed the ammonia levels were dropping to near nothing and falling nitrite levels. We'd figured the tank was nearly completely cycled and we'd be ready for our first set of coral frags and inverts by the weekend. The pH, calcium, alkalinity and magnesium were all slightly lower than i'd like so I started dosing small amounts of two part to get it balanced. We reached that balance last night with the pH at 8.4, Cal at 550, Alkalinity at 9dkh and magnesium at 1400. 

 

Then, like an idiot, I added more ammonia drops to the tank yesterday. I figured, well the ammonia is running out so i'll need to dose it again. Wrong. I put in four drops per gallon per the Dr. Tim's instructions. What I didn't realize is that you're not supposed to repeat the doses on the ammonia. It's a "one dose and done" system of cycling at low nutrient levels. I didn't realize that and when we tested the water last night, boom ammonia and nitrite was well over 2 ppm (off the chart green and magenta respectively) and nitrates were so high, they were the color of vampire blood.

 

I thought, well crap I wonder what caused the cycle to crash? So, I ran to the LFS again this morning for a bottle of Dr. Tim's "one and only" and described the situation to the owner of our LFS. His eyes got as big as saucers and he burst out laughing like i'd told him the funniest joke he'd heard in a long time. He explained to me what an idiot I was for way overdosing the tank with concentrated ammonia as we talked about big time water changes to fix my mistake. I've just completed a 90% water change by siphoning out every ounce of water I could siphon and then added fresh saltwater to the tank. I'm very glad we haven't added any inverts to the tank yet.

 

So, the silver lining is yes, our tank is probably cycled but man...... Chalk up another idiot mistake. Especially when you consider we're both seasoned aquarists and know better. Durr. 

 

PS: Our bacteria colony in the tank is probably big enough to devour a turkey sandwich and ask for seconds.

[blasterman]

Actually, there's no joke here. I've ammonia cycled new tanks for years and prefer to do it this way. I just use bottled ammonia.

Once ammonia levels start to drop you need to keep adding ammonia to maintain the bacteria or they will go dormant.

So, your addition of ammonia when your tank was cycled didn't hurt anything. No different than adding fish at this point. Ammonia to nitrate conversion takes days to work through in my experience and nitrate should never start to elevate in a new tank.

It's post cycle maturing that affect corals. Algae and bacteria blooms now start to work through and this where things can bad for hard corals. 

[OPtasia]

Yes, but there is such a thing as adding so much ammonia to a tank that it becomes anti-bacterial. I'd been adding 2 drops per gallon of the Dr. Tim's ammonia to the tank for a week, which raised it to 10 ppm ammonia. The big question is was that enough to actually kill the beneficial bacteria in both bio spira and one and only. To be safe, I did a 90% water change and added another bottle of one and only. Currently, ammonia is zero, nitrite is 1+ and nitrate is 50+. The zero ammonia has held for 3-4 days now and i'm just waiting for the nitrite to break before performing another big water change to bring down that nitrate.

 

The filtration setup is as follows (biocube 32):

 

Sump chamber one: Nothing.

Sump chamber two: Stock media tray with the bottom shelf removed (more room for chaeto). Top layer is the stock floss & carbon tray for mechanical filtration, layer two is filter sponge (top section of the tray), the rest is chaetomorpha/refugium space. The refugium space is lit with a Magnafuge LED light 24/7.

Sump chamber three: Eshopps nano skimmer.

 

I am planning on modifying the Eshopps skimmer with a tube so that I can hang the succe micra powerhead underneath the skimmer instead of where it mounts on the side. That will buy me enough space to fit the skimmer in sump #1 where it'll work better.

[MuffinMonster]

When I cycled my tank I did 3 or 4 doses of dr tims liquid ammonia over the course of 3-4 weeks and my tank cycled fine. I don't think you did anything wrong, should of just let it run its course in my opinion and waited a bit longer for the last dose of ammonia to be cycled out into nitrate then did a big water change. I cycled my tank by dumping in a bottle of one and only- then dosed ammonia once a week for the next 3-4 weeks. After that I had 0 ammonia 0 nitrite and like 40 nitrate- did a couple decent water changes to bring nitrate down to 10-15ppm and added fish- waited another 4 weeks till I got my nitrate down to less than 5 before adding some lps and softies.

[HarryPotter]

Cycling is for the weak ?

[OPtasia]

3 hours ago, Dakoda said:

When I cycled my tank I did 3 or 4 doses of dr tims liquid ammonia over the course of 3-4 weeks and my tank cycled fine. I don't think you did anything wrong, should of just let it run its course in my opinion and waited a bit longer for the last dose of ammonia to be cycled out into nitrate then did a big water change. I cycled my tank by dumping in a bottle of one and only- then dosed ammonia once a week for the next 3-4 weeks. After that I had 0 ammonia 0 nitrite and like 40 nitrate- did a couple decent water changes to bring nitrate down to 10-15ppm and added fish- waited another 4 weeks till I got my nitrate down to less than 5 before adding some lps and softies.

Except for the overdose of ammonia, i'd agree with you. I did a 90-95% water change and managed to get half of the water out of the substrate as well. Ammonia is zero now, but there's still plenty of nitrite and rising nitrates. I'm not going to touch anything in the tank until I see a significant break in the nitrite levels. Once I see that break, i'm going to perform another big water change and add a single fish. Maybe a small assortment of snails, too, to keep the diatoms (already growing) and other algae in check.