Added live reef rock, ammonia flew up?

[anniebanana267]

Hello, I’m cycling my tank and I had 3 pieces of dry rock in it before, but i decided to swap those out for about 16 pounds live reef rock yesterday. My ammonia was at 2 ppm yesterday and I’m testing it today and it’s giving me results of 4-8 ppm. I’m freaking out because I have 2 stomatella snails in there that came as hitchhikers on my rock, but I’ve grown to love them already and I don’t want anything bad to happen to them. Can adding live reef rock increase the ammonia? Will my snails be okay? I thought adding the live rock that already had the bacteria would decrease the ammonia faster. Please help!! Picture of my tank for reference.

(p.s I do have some rock residue on the bottom from them slightly chipping while I was arranging them. Might sound dumb but could it be that that's increasing the ammonia?)

[nicholc2]

Any time you add LR to a system there's going to be a cycle.  How much of one depends on how much LR you have added and if it's an established system or a new one.  Even LR that's been "cured" in a PS will have some die off.  It's inevitable.  If it was cured LR from an established system then that should help reduce the length of cycle time, but it has to happen.  It's part of the process of the bacteria repopulating in your tank.

 

The snails might be OK or might not.  Unfortunately there's no way to be sure.  If they originally came as hitchhikers way back when then they have more than likely already been through a cycle and are tough as nails, but it could go either way.  Sorry I don't have a better answer.

[Clown79]

That's looks like Walt Smith rock.

 

Was it actually wet? If it was dry rock, then yes, pretty common for ammonia to be present. I didn't experience that with caribsea liferock but did with caribsea reg. Dry reef rock 

 

Live cured rock that's established doesn't necessarily cause a cycle. If it's established there might be a small spike but often non at all unless you allow the rock to dry.

 

Dirty liverock with die off will go through a cycle.

 

Dry rock can cause spikes.

[anniebanana267]

Thanks for all your help, the ammonia has gone down, it’s now at a 0.50 and lowering. It was live rock from a tank filled with water in my lfs. I’ve been adding microbacteria from a bottle so maybe that helped although I didn’t believe it. Thanks again!

[Clown79]

Not all liverock will cause a cycle. If it's cured, it should not cause a cycle unless it's allowed to dry out or sit out of water for more than an hr.

 

Not all dry rock causes a cycle. Some does, some doesn't.