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ok so im cycling my 90g been cycling for a little over 2 weeks now. I let it cycle for a week and tested it and my ammonia was at .50 ppm. then i left for almost a week and came home and tested and ammonia nitrite and nitrate were at 0. took the advice of another reef club member and put a piece of raw shrimp in to spike the ammonia levels just to see how long it was taking. i left it in for 2 days which brings us to today. the shrimp was completely decayed and smells terrible so i tested my ammonia to see if it worked. well my ammonia is showing .25 ppm and my nitrite is at zero. I'm confused at what this means because i was under the impression that my cycle would take a month or so. I only used a piece of live rock that was like 7lbs to seed the tank and i added a medium bottle of stability. Any opinions? suggestions?
you have a ways to go before you are ready for fish. The ammonia level needs to be up around 3 or 4 ppm. Once it starts to come down you should see nitrites rise. Next they will start to come down and nitrates will rise. When you can go from a couple ppm ammonia down to 0 ammonia and 0 nitrite in a 24 hour period you can do water changes to get nitrate down. When nitrate is at or close to 0 you can SLOWLY start adding livestock. What test kits are you using?
