Reef nutrition

120 startup help?

Am I the only one who strongly supports using Dr Tims product for cycling?

I use Dr. Tim's every time and it's always worked wonders -- I've cycled two tanks in less than a week's time with it. In both cases there was still a mini cycle a few weeks later because I stocked to heavily, but nothing that was a bid deal.

I've also watched a LFS owner use it multiple times and have a tank ready in three days.
 
What? So different from my experience. But it's not like I can do things wrong. Just dump in the bottle.


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Fully cycled for meant 0 Ammonia, 0 Nitrite, Nitrates not rising.

@Gablami if you left the shrimp in there, it takes some time for it to really decompose, then it keeps producing ammonia so you will keep seeing nitrites.


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It took a long time even after the shrimp were gone. I did use a lot of shrimp though; I remember some on the forums thought I used too much.


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If you are doing natural cycling w/o seeding (from other tank or bacteria in a bottle) then the avg time is about 4-6 weeks.

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Ok so my Ammonia is down to zero, pulled out the shrimp bits 1 week ago and as of today still no nitrites registering. I have added most of the live rock from my 75 with the exceptions of rocks with critters or corals. Anyone have an idea how much longer until I see nitrites. I'm using a API test kit that's new as of last summer.
 
Did your nitrates increase? If they did, you may have just missed the processing of the nitrites to nitrates and your cycle may be done if ammonia and nitrites is zero since you moved all your live rock over from what I'm assuming was an established tank. I have seen in my tank that two ppm of ammonia can be processed completely to nitrates in under 18 hours.
 
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Yes I have nitrate increase, but m not sure if that is due to filter in my overflow to reduce noise, I have not entirely figured out my overflow setup the way I want yet. I was told that the canister filters on my 75 is what is causing high nitrates in it. So I only can assume that could be a possibility..?
 
If you have an increase in nitrates and 0 ammonia. I'm guessing you missed the nitrite stage.

This is why I like dosing ammonia vs shrimp. You know exactly when you have ammonia in the tank and all you have to do is test for nitrite then nitrate.


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Bio spira cycled 1 week. 2.0 ppm ammonia to 0 , dose 2.0 ppm ammonia again and it turn to 0 overnight. Gf's tank redo restart compete.
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