Ammonia went up and down, but no nitrites, nitrates

[jomechal]

Hi: I've been on the hobby since the early nineties. I'm back after 6 years. I'm using LR for the first time and It's been curing in the display tank. The LR was completely uncured and collected by myself from the surroudings of a reef. I took it home in an ice chest with seawater. I made tests for ammonia, nitrite and nitrate with the following results:

Day 4 Day 7 Day12
Ammonia Off the chart .6 ppm .00 ppm
Nitrite 0 0 0
Nitrate 0 0 0

This is the first time I've seen this. What happened with the nitrite spike? Why I have untraceable levels of nitrates. The test kit chemicals are new and no partial water changes were made and the bioballs were left on the w/d filter.

Has this happened to anyone? Has the tank cicled? Is it ready for Livestock?

Please advise.

Jose

[Ziggy953]

with the amount of LR you have in your tank I'm not surprised that you cycled so fast. If you are going to make a reef of this tank I would suggest getting rid of the bio balls and replacing them with LR rubble.

[artoledo]

Hey Jose! Welcome to AA!!!!

I have to agree with ziggy, you already had the beneficial bacteria on the rock itself and the amount of rock you threw in there cycled the tank super quick. Like ziggy said, throw some rubble in the sump and i think that should be good.

[jomechal]

I guess a visit to to the lfs is in order.

Thanks

Jose