Tank is not cycling

#6 old rock has organics in it that rehydrate when reef'd again.

Even if you added no ammonia and no bottle bac you'd still be cycled given this long of a wait. I have threads handy to link where we cycled a fully dry, never used rock system, in 30 days with half a pinch of fish food one time at the start. The bottle bac here were added - in addition- to natural complements input by means we don't have to pay for. I haven't seen a stalled cycle thread in 18 mos. It's like giving a man who's been walkabout for two years a big glass of icewater

Final summary: it's not biologically possible to not be cycled at month three submersion

Send a sample into aquabiomics if you want non nh4 proofing of cycle readiness.
 
brandon429 said:
#6 old rock has organics in it that rehydrate when reef'd again.

Even if you added no ammonia and no bottle bac you'd still be cycled given this long of a wait. I have threads handy to link where we cycled a fully dry, never used rock system, in 30 days with half a pinch of fish food one time at the start. The bottle bac here were added - in addition- to natural complements input by means we don't have to pay for. I haven't seen a stalled cycle thread in 18 mos. It's like giving a man who's been walkabout for two years a big glass of icewater

Final summary: it's not biologically possible to not be cycled at month three submersion

Send a sample into aquabiomics if you want non nh4 proofing of cycle readiness.
Click to expand...
I have never dealt with them but if chloramine is in the makeup water could it keep the tank population of bacteria suppressed over a long period of time.
Otherwise I would think the tank is cycled and the testing is wrong.
 
But that's never been shown once in all logged threads. Agreed it could happen

It will gas out in 48 hours max, then nature proceeds, that's why all readers have never seen that happen in a thread they're in. Not that they haven't seen a failed nh4 test; that's daily. It's that we've never seen the ending consequence of that happening, animal loss or ammonia noncontrol symptoms

We see ammonia issues routinely in qt systems, but never a display. Too much surface area. It's the actual symptoms missing in every stalled thread on the web that's a key recurring detail. We have threads of fully stocked reefs showing similar readings

Here's one of ten:
Sustained Ammonia spikes are misreads | Reef2Reef https://share.google/Yz6XkGf7gRPZi6h24

*yes there's infighting there, people hate getting paradigms challenged. It's the slow evolution of cycling science. Try and pick out the objective parts recurring in each example post/ debate

Every tank: symptomless

Every tester: never going to believe there's nothing wrong with the tank

Every instance: nh4, not nh3 which is 10x less

No seneyes present

No causative for the elevated readings

All coaches told them they might not be cycled

Multiple bottle bac bought for ghost condition

Objective science is in those patterns

All of those were running tanks years old and we still couldn't get them to believe, imagine if they were barely past the cycle date? Total rejection of science would occur, just to explain an nh4 reading that isn't used in reefing. Nh4 reads are for freshwater assessment.
 
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To entertain the worst case condition that is unlinkable: simply do a large water change here and go. That removes the metabolites causing concern, but not down to zero, because ready reefs don't run zero detectable ammonia. Even the rare cases of hard yellow api still have detectable nh3 any seneye owner knows. We should expect the presence of ammonia on basic kits in ready reefs; that rule change alone saves headache and allows us a clear time to focus on disease preps as the real risk


No reader in this thread has ever seen a single loss from ammonia in a display tank, but all of us have seen failed cheap test kits.


What brand is the test kit causing this thread?
 
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brandon429 said:
To entertain the worst case condition that is unlinkable: simply do a large water change here and go. That removes the metabolites causing concern, but not down to zero, because ready reefs don't run zero detectable ammonia. Even the rare cases of hard yellow api still have detectable nh3 any seneye owner knows. We should expect the presence of ammonia on basic kits in ready reefs; that rule change alone saves headache and allows us a clear time to focus on disease preps as the real risk

The #1 way to spot old cycling science vs new is any debate over the ability to control ammonia after day ten wait. If we're past day ten wait and not talking solely about disease preps, that's old cycling science that kills fish about 8 mos later. This is not meant to cause consternation in the masses honestly it's only to aim concerns to where the data shows due.

No reader in this thread has ever seen a single loss from ammonia in a display tank, but all of us have seen failed cheap test kits.


What brand is the test kit causing this thread?
Click to expand...
If he has chloramines in his water every water change and make up water may be adding chlorine and ammonia to the tank. I am sure in winter make up water would have to be added daily. I suppose it would depend how big the reservoirs and how often water is made.

The chlorine may be the issue and ammonia is just a symptom.
AI says
Chloramine can take weeks to dissipate from water, much longer than chlorine, which typically dissipates in a few days.
So over weeks more is added to the tank in the make up water.
 
What we need to move forward on this thread:

A Pic of the tank

A Pic of the actual test kit reading/ a Pic of the vial I'm curious how it rates compared to readings collected from perfectly normal reefs.

In the pic of the tank there's a chance we might see proof of cycling details such as new algae or cyano growths. Little details really start to add up once we dig deeper.

What's the disease prevention plan for this tank, if it's fish first then corals, expect disease risks in a few months. This isn't debbie downer; it's the reason Humblefish stays busy every day for five years. Addressing current prevention plans and advising on how to play catch up with them is all of Humble's business day every day. Have a plan ready; don't attempt the catch up.
 
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1000020673.jpg
 
the massive initial dose of ammonia is cleared but the predicted api test kits can't register it correctly nor can api register ammonia correctly in ten thousand other tanks running just fine, searchable results show.

Of all test kits in reefing, reefers know not to trust api. There's thousands of threads on api ammonia misreads where I'm not posting in them to sway; yet the pattern exists in all stuck cycling threads that when api says stuck, all coaches instantly believe api.

Final summary: no cycling chart exists (that wasn't written by a reefer with an api kit) that shows ammonia taking longer than ten days to drop and stay dropped.


There are no seneye posts that show ammonia taking longer than 48 hours max to clear, in all cycling approaches logged. Only this test kit and red sea causes these issues. The type of test kit used was determined by the title of the thread before confirmation pics.

Myriad threads exist that measure the ability of dr tims bottle bac; it works well.

That there's no algae is ok, there's also not much light on the system either that would have just been a lucky confirm among confirms already in place.

The system is covered in filter bacteria but the least reliable tests in all reefing can't read the levels correctly.

Here's what will go down:

More waiting, into the fifth and sixth month, will occur until ammonia changes to yellow to fit the old rules, months and months after the metabolites finally clear. Fish will then be added from a pet store, they'll do fine just like they'd do now. Then corals, snails and shrimp, all passing without fallow.

after months and months of hyperfocus on api ammonia, no planning or belief that disease is the real fish killer is in place, stocking continues where groups of animals and inverts from the pet store are added as the months go by.

If completely lucky nothing goes wrong and the reef runs fine, 20% chance. If follows the course of most reefers, 80% chance, fish losses begin at stocking month 8 and testing for parameters will resume to find the cause because no training on disease preps came from the cycle coaches who now believe api.

That's how stuck cycle posts work, 0% disease prep and 100% trust in the test kit everyone doesn't trust.

A cause has to be found to explain the title of the thread.

Very nice tank though, with that much surface area it'll carry any degree of bioload you want anytime you're ready to stock it.
 
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That is the pukey green I mentioned of an API ammonia test that has been corrupted chemically by something in the tank chemistry. It is a green not on the card.
I got that when adding a lot of Prime to suppress the ammonia spike from 150 pounds of TBS live rock picked up at the airport added when I set up the 240. I was trying to keep the animals that came in the rock from dying and mostly succeeded.
 
The next time you make a reef like this, a much better way to cycle:

Set it up, add one pinch of ground up fish food and nothing else, wait 30 days and you're cycled with no testing. The wait is extended to 30 in that case since no bottle bac will be added
For sure it's a recurring theme that repeated doses of prime interfere with the api kits
This thread is a direct match to all stuck cycle threads online. The cycle is done but the test kits will be chosen to be believed in this case so that something can explain the title of the thread. In my linked example prior, for nine pages fully running reefs also had a dark color indicating loss of a cycle for no apparent reason, it's the kits not the real biology in play.

Do you have a disease plan in place? Fallow/qt?
 
If you have ammonia the test will show it starting around 2 ppm. It just never shows zero correctly.
 
Ok thank you. in short: tank is cycled.

Problem:

cause of bad test read is the chloramine, put in by the local water company, sitting in my tank from the original mix of salt water and from the top offs from evaporation.

solution:

Long term - get a filter (ouch price tag is huge) that will take out the chloramine. then do a large water change.
short term - while waiting for the shipment of the filter, buy distilled water or water from LFS for the quarantine set up.
 
st0ned0g said:
Ok thank you. in short: tank is cycled.

Problem:

cause of bad test read is the chloramine, put in by the local water company, sitting in my tank from the original mix of salt water and from the top offs from evaporation.

solution:

Long term - get a filter (ouch price tag is huge) that will take out the chloramine. then do a large water change.
short term - while waiting for the shipment of the filter, buy distilled water or water from LFS for the quarantine set up.
Click to expand...
You don't need to buy an entire filter for chloramines. If you have an RO or RODI, just replace your carbon cartridge with this.
 
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