Ammonia spike?

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starles

Aquarium Advice Apprentice
Joined
Jan 24, 2011
Messages
29
Location
Kingston, Ontario
I've been having a hard time getting my tank to spike. The LR has been in there for 2 days, and last night i put two large shrimp in. I retested 12 hrs later and still nothing? How long does it take for the shrimp to create the spike?
 
It has to rot first. Give it a 2-3 days at least, but within a week you should see ammonia. (That's assuming the rock isn't fully cured. If that's the case you might not see any.)
 
If th LR was cured you will not have any spike (close to none) and may not have any cycle at all. With my 120 gallon I was adding fish after 12 hours.
 
The LR is cured, and the shrimp has been in their for 48hrs with no spike. If after 36hrs their is still no spike - should i add fish or ammonia to start the cycle? The ammonia won't kill the live rock if i put the bottled kind in will it?
 
The LR is cured, and the shrimp has been in their for 48hrs with no spike. If after 36hrs their is still no spike - should i add fish or ammonia to start the cycle? The ammonia won't kill the live rock if i put the bottled kind in will it?

I wouldn't add any pure ammonia or fish because there's no reason to. The decaying shrimp is providing ammonia. I'd give it a week until I starting being concerned. Did you test your nitrates before adding the shrimp? If not, then test them now. If at the end of a week you still aren't seeing any ammonia, but your nitrates have increased, that means you have beneficial bacteria present and they're doing their job. And you're cycled.

Have you tested for nitrItes?

With cured live rock, you may not see any spike. That's the way my tank went. But I still like to see the nitrates increase to know the cycle is established. Then you can do your water change to get the nitrates down to zero, and add a fish.
 
i havn't tested for nirates, but i have for nitrites. the ammonia, nitrites are both at 0. i'll test again tonight to see if anything has changed along with nitrates. thanks for your imput.
 
ok, good news the test results cam back:

ammonia .5 ppm
ph 8.0
nitirite .75ppm
nitrate 10. ppm

should i take the shrimp out and do a 5 gallon water change? It seems to be cycling? or do i leave the shrimp in to continue the ammonia build?
 
I'd leave the shrimp in another day if it was me. Don't do any water changes until the cycle is over. Doing water changes at this point just gets rid of that ammonia that you were looking for to start with!
 
Shrimp cycle

ok, so the shrimp was in there for 3 days before i removed it, the test results from that time was about the same as above. I then let cycle for 20hrs, and put a small damsel and four small hermit crabs in, to continue the cycle. now 24hrs hrs later i tested again, and the readings are showing 0 for ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate. also when i put the first and crabs in yesterday i over feed a little. not sure if the levels being at 0 is a good thing at this point? I think because i had the tank running with 15 lbs of LR and 50lbs of live sand, that it had already begun the cycle before i added the additional 25 lbs of LR. Thats why it didnt spike as much as i thought? does that make sense? any advise on whats next and how to know if there is enough bacteria in there?
 
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