Ammonia level
 

How long should it take in a 28g cube for the ammonia level to cycle? Set up for 1 week with 19 # live rock and 13# base! using liquid stability as directed . Ammonia was off the chart, did a 5 g water change and made no difference. Any advice appreciated. Getting brown algae like crazy.

Have you verified with another amonia kit?

No I haven't

I would. It doesn't make sense to me that you would still have amonia in the system unless you have something big rotting in the tank.

What did you do to start the cycle? What are your amonia, nitrite, and nitrate readings?

Nothing in the tank to rot, started with live rock and liquid stability. Ammonia is over 6, nitrite is .3 and nitrate Isis under 5

Was the live rock cured? Sorry, I should have asked that first. If not I don't know how long it takes to cure.

Have you been monitoring levels every day or so? What has the nitrite been doing? You have some so the cycle isn't done. If it is going up then you clearly do have amonia. If it is going down then you know where you are at in the cycle.

I don't think you need to be using stability either.

No, live rock was not cured. This is the first time I checked the nitrate and nitrite just been watching the ammonia

Okay, I should have asked that first. I'm not sure how long it takes to cure, never done it myself. I almost didn't think of that. I don't really see un-cured rock for sale in my area. I would say stop adding stability, stop doing water changes and wait it out. You aren't just cycling you are curing the live rock. Do some reading on curing live rock and you should get an idea of what you are looking at for time.

A normal cycle will see amonia go up first. Then as amonia comes down nitrite will go up. Then you are waiting on nitrite to come back down.

The problem is the rock is not cured and will have a lot of die off. So you are waiting for all of the dead bacteria and organisms to rot off and stop producing amonia before the rest of the cycle can really stabalise. Or at least that is my understanding from what I have read.

Ok, thanks for your help. Thats kind of what I figured, let it go and it'll take what it takes.

Sometimes it takes eight or more weeks to properly cycle. From what I understand.