Um Ammonia after cycle?

[Jkraft136]

So ran my test this week. Ammonia is reading .25-.5, nitrites 0, Nitrates 20, Ph 8.4.


Why exactly am i seeing ammonia after its already cycled?

 

[fishsticks]

how long has it been cycling for?

 

[Jkraft136]

It cycled about 2 weeks ok when i had 0 on ammonia, nitrites,nitrates


I added more sand about a week ago and i'm worried now that it started a mini cycle

 

[fishsticks]

you have only cycled your tank for 2 weeks? then u added more sand?

needs to cycle for way longer mine cycled for about 2 1/2 months then i added a small chromis to get it going some more, but in the begining after 1 1/2 months of cycling i added hermits and snails to speed it up then the chromis. if you only cycled for a few weeks i wouldnt worry its not done cycling... im still new myself but thats what i went through.

 

[fishsticks]

also when u get it going, dont worry about supplements in my opinion just worry about one great and important thing is water changes i do one every2 weeks but i do huge ones i do 25-30% changes. also if im not mistaken since your nitrates r pretty high u can do a 10% water change to bring them down, but give it a sec some pro's will tell you what happened and what needs to be done.

 

[Jkraft136]

no my tank cycled for over a month. I haven't had any ammonia or nitrite readings for over 2 weeks. now for reason I'm seeing ammonia again. maybe the live sand I added last week started a mini cycle

 

[yote]

Adding the new sand may have kicked off a minicycle.Or it could be the test kit.
A lot of the ammonia kits will .25 when its actually closer to zero.To be on the safe side,treat the tank as if its cycling again and have your LFS run another ammonia test.

 

[fishsticks]

o ah over a month yea +1 yotes

 

[Jkraft136]

Im currently using the API saltwater master test kit

 

[daugherty]

if you addded abunch of sand it killed all the bacteria that was on the surface of the old sand and that is why you are having a mini cycle i bet

 

[Jkraft136]

well I did add about 40lbs of fiji sand on top of my carribean sand because I liked how fine the fiji looked

 

[Teixeira29]

U might of started a mini cycle when you added new sand. I had to wait almost 2 monthes to cycle my whole tank. A tanks a little while!!
Good Luck!!

 

[yote]

Basically,when you added that much new sand,you choked out the bacteria that had established itself.That kicked off another cycle to replace the dead bacteria.

 

[Jkraft136]

Well LFS said ammonia was reading between 0 and .25 and its hard to tell. Nitrates were at 20. Well doing a 25g change atm with distilled water. People in walmart were looking at me funny

 

[yote]

Well LFS said ammonia was reading between 0 and .25 and its hard to tell. Nitrates were at 20. Well doing a 25g change atm with distilled water. People in walmart were looking at me funny

Try going in there with 4 or 5 5gal salt buckets and 4 5gal water jugs:mrgreen: