No Ammonia Spike!? Help!

[subversion]

I'm currently cycling a brand new tank with live rock. It's a 10g aquarium and I have 5.5lb of live rock in it, 4.8lb of dead rock, and 8.5 gallons of water. It's day 7 now, and my ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate tests are still showing 0ppm. None of them have ever changed. pH is 8.2, specific gravity is 1.024. I haven't bothered buying any other test kits yet.

I added a drop of diluted ammonia to a test tube of aquarium water just to make sure the kit wasn't defective, and it detected the ammonia no problem.

What should I do now?! Is it normal for it to take this long? I've been expecting an ammonia spike from the live rock. :worried:


Extra info that may or may not be useful:
-I'm using RODI water and Red Sea Coral Pro salt.
-I have a small handful of live sand from my lfs in right now, but other than that the tank is bare bottomed.
-I have one circulation pump moving the water at a slow-medium pace.
-The tank has a hood and the current lights aren't great. My good lighting is in the mail.
-I have not done a water change and have only had to add about a cup of fresh reverse osmosis water due to evaporation.


Additionally, here's a picture of my live rock, just for good measure. It looks like an employee was using it in a display and broke some chunks off, and I bought the chunks. It came covered in 4 corals, some coralline and green algae, and a bunch of brittle stars. All are still alive and happy.

Thanks so much!

 

[Shewillbemine]

There's a chance you will never see ammonia spike but it's odd that you are also not seeing nitrates.

To be perfectly safe, you might want to add that ammonia into the tank (about 10 drops) then test to ensure your kit is accurate.

Then test again the following day. If ammonia is gone, nitrites are gone and Nitrates are negligible, you're cycled.

 

[subversion]

Sounds good! Thanks!

 

[Coralreefer1]

What are you using to cycle your tank?

 

[Deftones2015]

If the live rock was in their tank for a good period of time, it may be good. You may have had a mini cycle, which happens with good live rock. I've added established live rock before to a new system and had a mini cycle that lasted a day or so. I would do as she's said. Put a small amount of ammonia in the tank and test to make sure it goes through the cycle. That is the only way to be sure the tank/rock is cycled.

 

[subversion]

Will do. The live rock seems to have been pretty well established before I put it in. I'll drop some ammonia in tomorrow morning and see what happens.

Thanks!

 

[Tom39]

I did not see in your comment that you are feeding the tank. So the question that comes to mind is. Are you ghost feeding the tank with fish food or a nutrient of some type? The bacteria needs food to thrive and populate in the tank. If you are not adding nutrients there is nothing to break down and nothing for the bacteria to live on. This may also be the reason that you have not seen the cycle in your test results.

 

[subversion]

Won't die off from the live rock have the same effect as feeding? From what I've read the live rock acts as a nutrient source for the cycle. Am I wrong?

I put 10 drops of ammonia in an hour ago. Current results are as follows:
Temp 78F
Specific gravity 1.024
Ammonia .25ppm
Nitrite 0ppm
Nitrate 0ppm

So that's something at least. I'll watch for a mini cycle in the next few days.
Thanks again for the help everyone!

 

[Sk8r]

You are not wrong. OTOH, it can help to add just a few flakes of fishfood daily, about 1 per 10 gallons, particularly if you have inverts that may need to eat. Ic can take up to 4 weeks to cycle. I don't normally even test until week 3, unless doing a tank move/resetup, which can be about 5 days, in a crosstown move.

 

[subversion]

I only have a few asterina and micro brittle stars that came in on the rock, so nothing that specifically needs to be fed. But if things keep acting weird I'll start feeding the tank just to cover all my bases.

Definitely not adding any corals or fish until I know exactly what's going on.

Thanks Sk8r!

 

[subversion]

Adding ammonia to the tank seems to have kick-started something. Ammonia was reading at .1 two nights ago and today it's at .05. Still no change in nitrites, but I did see a brief spike in nitrates at .2ppm yesterday, when there was no ammonia present. Looks like I'm getting a mini cycle of some sort, so that's a good sign! At this rate I might actually get to add living beings to the tank someday!

Fingers crossed everything is normal from here on out. Thanks again everyone!

 

[Dkuhlmann]

Since you have the pure ammonia dose it up to 2ppm not .2 and let it go from there. Test it 24 hrs later and see what your ammonia reads as well as your nitrites. It's possible that you have enough with the good live rock and live sand you put in there where you won't see a cycle and it will just consume the ammonia. But I would check all three ammonia, nitrites and nitrates when you dose the 2ppm and then again 24 hours later check all three

 

[subversion]

Did as you suggested. My tests right after I poured the ammonia in said 2ppm ammonia, 0 nitrites, 0 nitrates. Now, 23.5 hrs later I'm looking at 0 ammonia, 0 nitrites, .05 nitrates.

Is my live rock just amazing? I'm going to leave it all alone for a week either way, but I think I might be good to go...

Thanks much!