Cycling new tank, no nitrites?

[falesdk]

I moved about 50 lbs of live rock into my brand new biocube 32 along with about a cup of the old sand bed and used 20 lbs of aragalive fiji pink along with 5 lbs of directsea (?) Live sand. I also put a handful of cheato into the refugium area. The move was literally up some stairs so i assume there was minimal die off.

For the first 2 days ammonia was about 0.5, nitrite and nitrate 0. Last night ammonia went down to 0.25 nitrite still 0 but nitrate showed at 5. Today Ammonia is somewhere between 0 and .25 (i think closer to 0 but i always have a hard time reading those color charts when the colors are in between) nitrite it still at 0, but nitrate went up to 10.

Is it not strange that i have not seen any nitrite, but clearly a cycle is happening? Is my test kit not functioning properly?

 

[LX20000]

It's a set of simultaneous reactions. If you have a lot more bacteria that consumes nitrites than you do ammonia, the ammonia reaction rate is slow compared to the nitrite reaction rate, so you do not see any significant nitrite formed... it quickly is converted to nitrate.

Anytime you have A->B->C If the first reaction is slow, and the second is fast, you likely see no B. If the first is fast and the second is slow, you will see B build steadily while A is consumed, and then B will peak when A is all gone, and B will drop off slowly from there. C of course, will start to build and not go down.

If you are making nitrates, you DID make nitrites.

However, perhaps the test kit reagents are toast, and you are getting a false negative. There is no way to know this. HOWEVER, it is possible to see little or no nitrite, especially if you started with lots of sand and rock that could have a huge store of nitrite munching bacteria.

Buy another test kit for yuchs.

 

[mcgyvr]

Save your money on the test kit IMO..
When you are using live rock,etc.. many times there will not be a cycle at all..
And yes if you have nitrates then you had nitrites...

All is well..

The "live sand" in a bag normal has considerable "dead material" in it so don't rush to stock it just yet.. Hold on and see how it goes..

 

[jgln]

Save your money on the test kit IMO..
When you are using live rock,etc.. many times there will not be a cycle at all..
And yes if you have nitrates then you had nitrites...

All is well..

The "live sand" in a bag normal has considerable "dead material" in it so don't rush to stock it just yet.. Hold on and see how it goes..

This always baffled me. How can a sealed bag of sand sitting on a pet shop shelf have anything living in it? Anything good anyway.

 

[falesdk]

Alrighty, well i guess ill just ride it out for a while, i thought for sure that id see at least a hair of nitrite. But maybe not. The test kit is brand new, and the ph tester is damaged, so maybe ill just have them switch out the whole thing instead of just having them give me a new ph tester when i go talk to them. �� Thanks guys!