cycling high nitrites and nitrates

[kenith]

I'm about week 2 into establishing some dry live rock and reading the following using salifert.
Ammonia- 0.25 ppm
Nitrites- 4ppm
Nitrates- 100ppm+


I usually don't register nitrates until nitrites are near 0. Thoughts?

[bertoni]

There's no way to predict how and when bacterial colonization will occur. Those numbers seem to be reasonable, in my opinion, and I wouldn't worry. Tanks go through a wide range of paths when they're being set up.

[kenith]

Thanks bertoni. I was curious as to whether the nitrites were too high and possibly stalling on the nitrite consuming bacteria.

Should I keep adding ammonia at this point, at least a little daily?

[DrPheel]

one dose is good enough to start the cycle as you can see from your tests ! It's also a good way to see how patient you are when starting a SW tank :P

Once ammonia and nitrite test at zero, try a good WC to take care of Nitrates if present and you can then bring ammonia to 2ppm and see if the tank can process in 24hrs

No worries , you will be reefing in no time :beachbum:

[CStrickland]

You're nitrates might be lower than your test is reading. I'm not sure with salifert, but my API test will read a little bit of nitrite as a lot of nitrate. I guess they aren't different enough for the test to distinguish, which usually isn't a problem since once your cycle is further along the nitrites will be converted fast enough to keep them from accumulating and tricking the nitrate test. It can make tracking the cycle a little confusing.

The dr. Tims website does say that elevated nitrites will "stall a cycle" I believe they advise water changes to keep it below 3 if it spikes. Being that they are a company that sells a variety of unnecessary cycle enhancers, I'm not sure how much to credit that. I think not much. But that's where people get that notion from.

[bertoni]

I might add a tiny amount of ammonia now and then, but daily seems like overkill. The nitrite level might be high enough to reduce bacterial growth. If you have the energy, you could do some water changes to drop it. That might speed the process a bit.

[disc1]

You're nitrates might be lower than your test is reading. I'm not sure with salifert, but my API test will read a little bit of nitrite as a lot of nitrate. I guess they aren't different enough for the test to distinguish, which usually isn't a problem since once your cycle is further along the nitrites will be converted fast enough to keep them from accumulating and tricking the nitrate test. It can make tracking the cycle a little confusing.
.

It's an issue with any nitrate test that uses a color change. There's not a good reaction to get a color change from nitrate. So those tests all rely on reducing some small part of the nitrate to nitrite and then detecting that. Ever notice how the reagents are the same except one (the reducing agent) and for many kits the nitrate test doubles as the nitrite test with the only difference being leaving out the reducing step and using a different color chart.

But long story short, since a nitrate test relies on turning a small portion of the nitrate into nitrite to detect it, if there is much nitrite already there the test can't tell that from the nitrite it made and will read as if there were a lot more nitrate there.

[kenith]

Thanks all. Im not concerned with how high nitrates are, rather that I'm reading off the charts nitrites and nitrates. Normally, I should be getting lower nitrites, then high nitrates as the cycle is ending. Perhaps these rocks are just cycling differently