Nitrogen Cycle advice

[sammoj]

Hi

I started to cycle my tank 35 days ago using Red Sea Reef Mature. The tank is:

500l EA Reef Pro, 40Kg real reef rock (artificial not live), Caribsea sand bed (dry sand), Red Sea Salt, temp at 27 degrees C (to try and encourage bacteria growth). Skimmer on as dosing with NoPox as per Red Sea kit instructions.

I followed the exact day by day instructions but never saw a peak of more than 0.4 on Ammonia. By Day 14 I should have been adding fish but was stuck at 0.2 Ammonia and 1 Nitrite so didn't do so. Day 21 Nitrite at 0.5 and Ammonia at 0.2 so I purchased another kit and added the entire bottle of Nitrobac and 50% of the Bactostart bottle. This gave me 0.75 Ammonia and 1 Nitrite, settling to 0.2 Ammonia and 1 Nitrite a week later at day 28. During the first 21 days I was trying to clear a cloudy calcium precipitation so i made the mistake of putting filter wool in the a sock and changing it every 2 days which i think probably did not help the cycle.

In an effort to get things going I switched to Seachem Stability and dosed a double dose on day 1 and single dose for the next 5 days to today at day 35. The tank is now showing 0 Ammonia for the last 3 days and Nitrite went up from 0.5 to 1 and now back at 0.5 for the last 2 days.

I really need to get my old tank shutdown now to complete some decorating so I have purchased some Seachem Prime. If I understand this product right it will detox the remaining Nitrite but not preven the Biofilter from processing it and should allow me to add a couple of my fish to get the cycle properly going? Is it now fairly safe to add a small bioload, ie something like a clown and file fish to the tank as it is a fairly large tank at 500l?

Any advice or thoughts would be most welcome.

Thanks

John

 

[sammoj]

A few extra bits of info i should have mentioned:

I have moved 1 piece of live rock and a marine pure block from my old tank into the new one about 2 weeks ago to try and help seed it. I have also added 2 weeks ago 1Kg of Maxspect Marine Sphere biofilter balls to the tank.

J

 

[daviesp007]

I’m not sure what the ammonia source is for the method you used, but it sounds like you just need to get ammonia in there for the rest of the cycle to get going. When I cycled a tank, I stuck a raw shrimp in the tank, and leave it for 72 hours, this works well for me. Might want to give that a try. I would hold off a carbon source for a bit to let the cycle progress naturally. If you find that it cycles to the nitrate stage and gets stuck for a while on that, then add a carbon source and you should be good.

 

[sammoj]

I'm not sure what the ammonia source is for the method you used, but it sounds like you just need to get ammonia in there for the rest of the cycle to get going. When I cycled a tank, I stuck a raw shrimp in the tank, and leave it for 72 hours, this works well for me. Might want to give that a try. I would hold off a carbon source for a bit to let the cycle progress naturally. If you find that it cycles to the nitrate stage and gets stuck for a while on that, then add a carbon source and you should be good.

Ammonia source in the red sea kit is the Bactostart bottle, it has had 3 of these now. I have also started 'ghost feeding' this week with the stability bacteria, so a couple of cubes of brine shrimp over the last 5 days.


J

 

[daviesp007]

I would add a raw shrimp and leave it in there for 72 hours, then pull it out and monitor the ammonia levels. if you can get a shrimp with the head on, even better. It won't smell great when you pull it out, but you should see ammonia increase. If it does not, it could be your cycle is done.

 

[bertoni]

The ammonia has disappeared, so the cycle is over. I'd do some water changes, and wait for a while. There's nothing that detoxifies nitrite, despite any advertising, but nitrite isn't very toxic.

If you're worried about the filtration capacity of the tank, adding a small amount of fish food, about ¼ what you'd feed the first inhabitants, for a few days would be a decent test. I wouldn't add any more food than that. I don't see the point.