Mini Cycle or Cycle Loss?

I have a 3.5g underwater filter tank that previously housed my betta for a few years. I decided to turn this into a shrimp tank.

This is what I did:
Put the water into a bucket
Set the filter aside, no rinsing
Took out all the gravel
Rinsed the tank, the underwater plastic part was so dirty
Put the underwater filter back in
Put new gravel in
Put old water back in
Topped off with faucet water and primed 3.5g
Put in moss, cholla wood, plants from established tank
Tossed in a piece of establish tank sponge
Let it sit a few hours
Put 2 rasboras in

I’m getting an ammonia reading

Would this pass quickly? Or did I lose the cycle completely?

 

Don't quote me, but I think it's just a mini-cycle, not a crash. What are your ammonia, nitrite and nitrate readings? to be on the safe side, closely monitor your water parameters for a few days, and do water changes to lower the ammonia and nitrites to a safe level.

 

I am a newbie so my opinion is principally based on reading. That said, procedure looks reasonable to me, assuming you dechlorinated the top off water and did not let the filter media dry out. Some of the cycle can live in the gravel and other tank surfaces so you may have lost some of it, but it should recover soon if you preserved the cycle in your filter.

Regardless, the procedure is probably the same. Water changes to keep ammonia low. Test ammonia and nitrites regularly, I would do daily. Keep the aggregate of the two below 1 ppm is what is commonly recommended. I would keep them lower. Treat with an ammonia detoxifier like SeaChem Prime until you have zero ammonia and nitrite.

 

What type of filtration media do you have in the filter? I ask because the submersed filter in my betta tank doesn't hold any media (it goes in a different compartment in the tank) and you didn't mention anything specifically about media, just the filter.

 

What type of filtration media do you have in the filter? I ask because the submersed filter in my betta tank doesn't hold any media (it goes in a different compartment in the tank) and you didn't mention anything specifically about media, just the filter.

I wasn’t sure what to call it . It’s a piece of foam like thing that goes in a column which attaches to the bottom underwater plastic piece

I’ll post when I take readings tonight. I only tested ammonia yesterday

 

I'm getting ammonia reading 0.25. nitrite 0. nitrate 10. ammonia reading is lower than last night of 1 ppm so guess it was just a tiny minI cycle!