6 week cycle FO no results

The friendliest place on the web for anyone with an interest in aquariums or fish keeping!
If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.

RPAQ

Aquarium Advice Newbie
Joined
Dec 28, 2017
Messages
2
First off want to say ive cycled 2 freshwater tanks in around 2 weeks using seachem stability. Attempting my first saltwater in a 20 gallon long.

My substrate is aragonite sand, using instant ocean salt and with a refractometer have salinity at .02ppm, temperature at 80 degrees and ph at 8.3. Also using R/O DI water with zero TDS.

Im also using an Aquaclear 50 HOB with sponge, bonded filter floss and biomax ceramic media and not using carbon that came with filter. I also have an API test kit and Seachem one and have verified its accuracy with DI water.

I used pure ammonia to start a fishless cycle and put ammonia at 2ppm. I used stability and in 3wks time got 0 results unlike i did with freshwater. I did a water change to reduce ammonia to 1ppm and introduced ATM colony marine. 3wks later amd still zero results of any kind.

My question is if anybody has any idea what the issue could be with cycling. It seems to me its been long enough to see results without attempting too add bacteria from a bottle. The only other thing in the tank that isnt of artificial variety is a zebra rock bought from an LFS. Starting to think i could wait 4 months and no bacteria will develop.
 
How much macro/base/live rock is in the system? How much sand?
If there isn't enough rock for the bacteria base to live on, that could be part of the problem.
Since you are using the pure ammonia method, are you continuing to dose to keep the ammonia at 2ppm when it reaches 0? Have you seen any nitrite levels?
The cycle can be a long process, a month or a tad longer...but what you stated is totally unrealistic in terms of normal length. I would suggest getting an old pair of panty hose and putting a cocktail shrimp in there. Tie it off and throw it in. This will give you a steady ammonia supply as it decays rather than having to worry about redosing. Then when your levels finally work themselves out, you can throw away the panty hose for easy clean up!
 
Well after waiting 2 months and seeing no drop in ammonia at any point starting a cycle I did a 90 percent water change and added Biospira making sure it wasn't expired. Tank was cycled in 2 days. Uknown reason why everything was stalled before. Just for anybody with issues in the future I can attest that the Biospira product works as advertised provided it is not expired and kept in proper climate before you purchase it.
 
Back
Top Bottom