No Ammonia spike

[TRichardson79]

I have had my 75g up for about a week and half. I have 85 lbs of base rock and seeded it with 15lbs of live rock from an established tank, also the person gave me a cup of live sand to seed my sand bed. I have been adding a bit of fish food daily, for the past 5 days, to kick start the cycle. The food has been broken down.
I have not seen a significant ammonia spike and the nitrites and nitrates are also at zero.

SG is at 1.024. Temp is 78. Ph is 8.2

Now is it too soon to see an ammonia spike? Surely it would have risen by now, I would think anyways. But I am new at this. Need help from experienced reefers.

[wooden_reefer]

Originally Posted by TRichardson79

I have had my 75g up for about a week and half. I have 85 lbs of base rock and seeded it with 15lbs of live rock from an established tank, also the person gave me a cup of live sand to seed my sand bed. I have been adding a bit of fish food daily, for the past 5 days, to kick start the cycle. The food has been broken down.
I have not seen a significant ammonia spike and the nitrites and nitrates are also at zero.

SG is at 1.024. Temp is 78. Ph is 8.2

Now is it too soon to see an ammonia spike? Surely it would have risen by now, I would think anyways. But I am new at this. Need help from experienced reefers.

Try not to add a bit of fish food daily. You can already have enough or too close to enough nitrification bacteria to process the small amount of ammonia.

Add more at once instance to achieve a 1 ppm N ammonia pulse at least.

If your rock is dead to start with (you do not want to save any lives on the rock) and if you plan to have a high bioload later, you should add to achieve 3-5 ppm.

Most dry fish food has 50% protein and protein has about 15% nitrogen. You can calculate the expect ammonia concentration this way.

[TRichardson79]

So correct me if I am wrong, the LR that I am seeding the base rock with has enough nitrification bacteria to process the small amount of ammonia that was produced from the fish food? Now I should add quite a bit of fish food to achieve an ammonia reading of 1 ppm?

Should I atleast be seeing detectable amounts of nitrates?

I am running the skimmer and a power filter with carbon due to the fact that the turbulence from the power heads are causing a sandstorm, with very cloudy water. I am confused because I thought I would have seen an ammonia spike by now.

[wooden_reefer]

Originally Posted by TRichardson79

So correct me if I am wrong, the LR that I am seeding the base rock with has enough nitrification bacteria to process the small amount of ammonia that was produced from the fish food? Now I should add quite a bit of fish food to achieve an ammonia reading of 1 ppm?

Yes and yes I believe.

If you have no lives to save on LR, you can have a somewhat high ammonia level and just allow bacterial activity to correct the water parameters. Do not change any water doing cycling in this case, since you do not have to be concerned about slightly higher ammonia, as there is no lives to be killed by the ammonia.

[bertoni]

I don't see any reason to force the ammonia spike. The rock should be fine as is. I'd let it sit for a while, and then start stocking slowly. A bit of fish food every day might help feed animals in the live rock.

[wooden_reefer]

Originally Posted by bertoni

I don't see any reason to force the ammonia spike. The rock should be fine as is. I'd let it sit for a while, and then start stocking slowly. A bit of fish food every day might help feed animals in the live rock.

There is no such a thing as forcing a cycle. A cycle will proceed or it won't.

If the existing nitrification bacteria will handle the small ammonia generated, there will no further growth of population.

Adding ammonia is not forcing anything, it is allowing a cycle to proceed that otherwise won't.

[bertoni]

I didn't say "forcing a cycle". I said "forcing an ammonia spike". Adding a bit of fish food every day should be enough to keep the nitrogen cycle going, at the very least. I don't see the purpose of adding ammonia to the system.