Cycle has completely crashed

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AquaNewb

Aquarium Advice Apprentice
Joined
Nov 23, 2016
Messages
22
I did a fishless cycle that was definitely finished (took around 4 weeks).

At the end of the cycle, I ran out of my dechlorinator and switched to prime. Prime says to add 2 drops to 1 gallon, which seems like a very small amount, or "4 drops may be used safely" for high chloramine. I used 2 drops.

When I added fish, I have steadily climbing ammonia. I thought it was just more ammonia than I had been adding.

However, when I tested in morning as lights were out so plants couldnt be using nitrate, I had ammonia present with 0 nitrite or nitrate. So my cycle has completely crashed.

Does this mean I need to be double dosing prime? Is prime even any good. Prime is supposed to convert ammonia to ammonium; I wonder if this was converting all the ammonia I had been adding and starved the bacteria

I guess I am doing a fish-in cycle now... what a pain. Since all the bacteria are dead, I guess I need to get bacteria to seed the tank?
 
Ugh! How frustrating! Be reassured- any conditioner would have failed against chloramines.

Prime is actually very good, but chloramines are a [redacted]. We have water so thoroughly treated you can see the white. I doubled Prime until I decided I was using too much and switched to Safe ( almost same thing).

I cashed my cycle because of chloramines. I hate them.

If you are feeling impatient, you can get an Angels Plus Active sponge. We used them after nuking the tanks from columnaris. To me, they were worth every penny.
 
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