Is my tank finally producing detectable amounts of ammonia?

[mgudyka]

Hi all,

I filled my tank last Sunday. I tested my water for the first time on Thursday. Yesterday a kind stranger gave me some gravel from two of his active tanks. Today I visited my LFS and they advised on getting some snails so I picked up some nerite snails. 

I tested my water again this evening. Does it indeed look like it is detecting some ammonia? Is it just a continued waiting game from here?

[joseph lambeth]

if your just starting a tank you wont see any ammonia in clean aquarium water. if the gravel has dried out the live bacteria has died off. if you had a cycled tank with 0 ammonia you would have some measurement of nitrate. if you had old filters with poop and stuff on it I would clean it in the tank your starting up so you have live bacteria entering your tank. 

[Schwack]

Yep, most of the cycle is just a waiting game. Assuming you've got stuff living and pooping in the tank, ammonia is being produced. With a couple of snails, it's probably not much, but it's there. Things are generally considered "cycled" once you're detecting nitrate but not ammonia or nitrite. I've had mixed results using handfuls of cycled substrate, these days I typically add an entire cycled sponge filter to get things rocking right away. Once you're seeing nitrates, you'll know things are getting close. It might be worthwhile to continue adding food to the tank to help increase ammonia production.

You'll also want to stock the tank slowly once things are cycled. These bacteria can double in number every 7 hours, or so I've read, and going from processing the waste from a few nerites to the waste produced by a bunch of fish could create a bit of a problem in terms of keeping your water suitable for fish.

[Toobit67]

It's hard to judge from a pic...  but it looks to me like there is just a slight tint of green in that test tube..

I would say yes, you have a detectable amount of ammonia there,  a very tiny amount... but it's a start)