Changing salinity midstream of a nitrogen cycle
Posted: Fri Mar 28, 2008 7:31 pm
Hi, this is my first post.
I’ve been doing my homework and started cycling a new tank. I purchased ammonia from Ace Hardware and about 7 days into it, I’m keeping my ammonia levels around 3ppm, and nitrites have started to go up and are at about 2 ppm when I last checked last night. So all’s is well in the wonderful world of cycling.
So after reading around on the forums here, I just realized that I’m doing something wrong.
I’m planning on getting a figure 8, which I know likes light brackish at about 1.005 sg, (if I did my research correctly.) HOWEVER, I’ve been cycling using only freshwater thus far. The reason I’ve been doing this is because of the AP test kits I’ve been using for ammonia only has two test cards, (one for fresh water, one for salt water). It had no test card for brackish (which makes sense because brackish can be varied). So being the brilliant idiot that I am, 
I figured that once the cycle was complete, I’d pour in the marine salt until it reached 1.005, and viola! We got brackish water.
However, I stumbled upon a post saying that the bacteria in fresh is different than salt. Sooooo…..if I were to pour salt into the newly cycled tank, would I be killing off all good bacteria I’ve been trying to cultivate? What if I slowly added in salt, like say raise the sg from 1.000 to 1.002, wait a week, then from 1.002 to 1.004, wait a week, then 1.004 to 1.005, then add the f8?
Or would I be better off just starting from scratch? Your expert advice would be very much appreciated.
I’ve been doing my homework and started cycling a new tank. I purchased ammonia from Ace Hardware and about 7 days into it, I’m keeping my ammonia levels around 3ppm, and nitrites have started to go up and are at about 2 ppm when I last checked last night. So all’s is well in the wonderful world of cycling.
So after reading around on the forums here, I just realized that I’m doing something wrong.
I’m planning on getting a figure 8, which I know likes light brackish at about 1.005 sg, (if I did my research correctly.) HOWEVER, I’ve been cycling using only freshwater thus far. The reason I’ve been doing this is because of the AP test kits I’ve been using for ammonia only has two test cards, (one for fresh water, one for salt water). It had no test card for brackish (which makes sense because brackish can be varied). So being the brilliant idiot that I am, I figured that once the cycle was complete, I’d pour in the marine salt until it reached 1.005, and viola! We got brackish water.However, I stumbled upon a post saying that the bacteria in fresh is different than salt. Sooooo…..if I were to pour salt into the newly cycled tank, would I be killing off all good bacteria I’ve been trying to cultivate? What if I slowly added in salt, like say raise the sg from 1.000 to 1.002, wait a week, then from 1.002 to 1.004, wait a week, then 1.004 to 1.005, then add the f8?
Or would I be better off just starting from scratch? Your expert advice would be very much appreciated.
