Amonia

[Qckslvr]

So my wife and I kicked off the 90 with Dr Tim’s All in One, and fed the tank Ammonium Chloride. Dr Tim’s claims ready same day, etc. I picked up a Salifert test kit, and it has been two days now. Each time I test the tank it is in the .15 range. Do we give it more time? Put more Dr Tim’s in?

The tank isn’t all virgin rock, we took two of the large rocks from our 30 and put them in the sump.

 

[Turkeysammich]

Fishless cycle usually takes 2weeks to a month. You add dead rock and live rock to seed. Then bottle bacteria ( optional ). You add your ammonia to whatever the bottle says. Then you wait. Ammonia will go up then down. Nitrite will go up then down. Nitrate will go up then down. Then your cycle is complete. You have a new baby aquarium that is just born. You need to treat it like a baby. Slow and steady. At this point. You can add more ammonia and it should be all gone in two to three days. That’s how your supposed to do a Fishless cycle.

 

[MichaelB]

No fish until zero ammonia it's highly toxic to them even low doses.

@Coral Hub (Nathan) sells some pns bacteria that could help. We also have some members with bio bricks soaking to help seed aquariums. There is a dbtc for requesting them.

 

[richiev]

How much all in one did you use, and how much ammonia? Ammonia stalling when you used the bottle bac and when seeded with existing rocks seems unexpected.

No chance you dumped a crap ton of ammonia in there? Additionally are you confident in your ammonia reading? Salifert hopefully is reliable, but I know the API ammonia test can give incorrect non-zero readings.

Also if you're adding any more ammonia, I'd pause on that. For me, once I see ammonia zero I'd consider it good to go for initial items.

 

[tribbitt]

highly recommend waiting until undetectable or at minimum exceedingly low ammonia reading before adding livestock of any kind. To answer directly, yes, give it more time.

Adding seeded media can speed this up significantly. If ammonia is not decreasing, I wouldn’t add any more for the time being

 

[PizzaOven]

Despite what companies claim on the bottle, there is no such thing as an instant cycle. I once did an experiment (in freshwater, but still relevant) where I tried different bottled bacteria products compared against pre-cycled media and a control.

Below was a picture of my setup. Four containers with water, ceramic media, and an airstone for some water movement.

I dosed each container with 2ppm ammonia and measured every couple of days. Guess which finished first? Yep... cycled media. After 19 days, neither bottled product made a significant dent in the ammonia.

That's not to say the bottled products do nothing, both finished faster than the control:

I was surprised it took 32 days to clear ammonia using these products as directed! Definitely not instant. Low temps in my house (60F-70F) probably slowed things down a bit. My takeaway is that pre-seeded media is far more effective than any product you can buy in a bottle.

Definitely wait for that ammonia to clear before adding livestock. Add more seeded media if you want to speed it up. As others pointed out, the club has seeded polyp lab blocks you can borrow.

Good luck!