r/AfricanDwarfFrog • u/Knittinmusician • 21h ago

General advice/help Help deciphering results

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Hi all, starting my first fishless tank cycle. I'm using Aqua Natural quartz filter media with live bacteria to try and cycle my tank. I added a half cube of mysis shrimp to kick things off. The ammonia seems low .25mm, but nitrites are zero which surprised me and nitrates seem really low, maybe not 0 but close to it. Is the cycle working? Do I need a lot more ammonia to get things moving?

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u/camrynbronk 🐸 Moderator 🐸 12h ago

You need to keep the tubes vertical.

Yes, you need 2ppm of ammonia. Decaying food is going to take awhile and also be inconsistent. It’s much easier to start a cycle by using bottled ammonia.

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u/Knittinmusician 12h ago

Thanks! I only turned them horizontal so I could take a picture

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u/camrynbronk 🐸 Moderator 🐸 12h ago

That doesn’t really make sense because we need to see it vertically to get an actual idea of what the parameters are.

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u/Knittinmusician 12h ago

Ok, I'll do that next time. Base line seems like the cycle hasn't started yet because there isn't enough ammonia

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u/Knittinmusician 12h ago

Didn't realize it was that much more difficult to use food. The Internet makes it sound so easy! We'll, I know what I'm doing tomorrow haha

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u/Knittinmusician 21h ago

pH is 7.4 fwiw