haha thats weird, mine definitely never restarted, and I've used both the safestart and stability. Who knows.
The Cycle from Hell!
- Thread starter twhittle
- Start date
haha thats weird, mine definitely never restarted, and I've used both the safestart and stability. Who knows.
Ammonia is the start of the cycle. By using AmmoLock you may be in effect crashing the colony that feeds off of the ammonia turning it into nitrite and thus crashing the rest of the colony. If your ammonia levels aren't going off the charts you are best served doing water changes.
I could be wrong here, but I'm fairly certain the ammonia that is neutralized by ammolock or prime or whichever product you choose to use is still useable by the nitrifying bacteria and should not interrupt the cycle. I could be wrong but I seem to remember looking into that.
OP, when you thought your tank had cycled, ammonia and nitrite was 0ppm, but what was your nitrate level at that point?
I used Seachem stability when cycling my tank (~300 including sump) and it took much longer than I anticpated. It wasn't so much the product, but my bio load was so low it took a VERY long time to get traces on ammonia. Finally, I got traces of ammonia never greater than .5ppm, then traces of nitrite at no more than .5ppm. My nitrate never exceeds 5ppm, and I noticed slightly less (with API kit) since I did a recent large water change. My point here is that I had low nitrate to begin with that was produced based on my low bio load. Something to keep in mind, hence I was asking about what nitrate reading you had when cycled.
BTW, using Prime should not alter your readings. I don't know if that's true for equivalent products. Good luck.
I used Seachem stability when cycling my tank (~300 including sump) and it took much longer than I anticpated. It wasn't so much the product, but my bio load was so low it took a VERY long time to get traces on ammonia. Finally, I got traces of ammonia never greater than .5ppm, then traces of nitrite at no more than .5ppm. My nitrate never exceeds 5ppm, and I noticed slightly less (with API kit) since I did a recent large water change. My point here is that I had low nitrate to begin with that was produced based on my low bio load. Something to keep in mind, hence I was asking about what nitrate reading you had when cycled.
BTW, using Prime should not alter your readings. I don't know if that's true for equivalent products. Good luck.
Prime can alter your readings in the sense that even if any ammonia was neutralized with the product, a test kit is still going to read ammonia. I think thats the most common misconception about Prime. People think it removes ammonia from the water entirely.
In the context of what I meant, taking an ammonia test (w/API) should result in the same ammonia reading with or without having used Prime. So technically how is that altering your ammonia test results?
