Ammonia levels

[XtremeFromHell]

i started a thread about my tank last couple of days here it is for a reference and pics of whats going on ..
http://reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1714006

Any ways about my ammonia.. im in the middle of week 3 cycle and my ammonia is at 0ppm.. i dont think i remember it peaking too much, the highest it went i believe was somewhere between 0 and 0.25ppm.. should it have gone higher than that then drop? its been stable for the last week, my nitrites and nitrates have also been at 0ppms.. in the begining of week 2 i saw diatoms growing out of the sand bed they have grown a bit but havn't really grown anymore and have stayed there... my question, is everything good? or should there have been a higher ammonia peak? and also if i needed a higher ammonia peak is there something that i should do to accelerate it?

[thegrun]

It is likely your live rock was well cured (it looks that way in the pictures) and you have seen as much of an ammonia spike as you are going to get. You could blend up a raw shrimp and dump it in the tank and monitor the ammonia/nitrite levels. If you only have a minimal jump (.25 or less) in ammonia or nitrites, your inital cycle is done and you can add your clean-up crew.

[XtremeFromHell]

hmm. thanks for the info!, i will be adding raw shrimp soon, on my other thread they told me to blend shrimp and milk together ..

i hope my tank has cycled already so i can start adding some clean up crew into it. although i wasnt prepared to start picking out what i want.. i guess it might be that time lol...

[wooden_reefer]

It is likely your live rock was well cured (it looks that way in the pictures) and you have seen as much of an ammonia spike as you are going to get. You could blend up a raw shrimp and dump it in the tank and monitor the ammonia/nitrite levels. If you only have a minimal jump (.25 or less) in ammonia or nitrites, your inital cycle is done and you can add your clean-up crew.

Yes, one instantaneous reading of ammonia of 0.25 can be rather good or very bad.

If you have few bacteria that convert ammonia to nitrite, and you get only 0.25 ppm, it means you will never get a good cycle if you don't add any ammonia.

However, if there is already a lot of such bacteria and the ammonia is down to 0.25, it means the first part of your cycle is done.

Cycling with partly cured or cycled LR is tricky.

Nitrite can be a better test but is too not conclusive.

But adding a moderate amount of ammonia source is a way to make sure.

You will never have problem with this unknown if you cycle with dry and dead medium, dried up live rock or crushed coral etc. Here, there must be a nitrite peak.