Cycle Parameters

[HuskerBioProf]

Hi all.

I just finished filling my 120 gallon tank with water over the course of the past week. It took a while to get the RO/DI water made, salt mixed, and pumped into the display tank. During that week, it has had dry rock in it (old live rock that had been left to dry out). I had rinsed the rock before putting it in, but there was still some dead stuff clinging to some of the rocks. I also am using sand from my old 75 gallon aquarium. The sand was in that reef tank about 6 years ago and has been stored in a bucket since. I rinsed it before adding.

Today, I added 17.5 pounds of live rock from the local fish store to seed the aquarium. After a few hours I had decided to run my "baseline" test kit before initiating the cycle.

Here are the parameters:
Ammonia: 2 (or slightly greater)
NO2: 0.5
N03: 10-20

I just checked my RODI and none of these parameters are detectable.

Do you think an ammonia spike happened from the die off on the "dry" rock/sand before adding any live rock?

Should I add anything to maintain ammonia? I was planning on letting something rot or do phantom feedings.


Thanks for the help in advance.

 

[rjjr1963]

I started cycling my rock in a plastic container several weeks ago. I cleaned it with muriatic acid and then bleached it. Ammonia is still sky high. I suspect it's all the dead stuff decaying. Don't worry about the ammonia it will go away eventually on it's own as soon as your bacteria begins to function properly. I wouldn't do anything to increase ammonia. Just wait until it drops to zero then monitor nitrites. When nitrites are 0 the cycle is done. You can dose pure ammonia then to see how efficiently your bacteria is functioning.