Question About Tank Cycling Time

[MMAX]

I have had my tank running since Feb 2/08. On the 4th I added live rock and on the 8th I put in 10 hermit crabs and 4 snails. I kept on testing for ammonia and the most I ever got was about 0.50 ppm. The last time I tested was the 24th and it came in as 0.25 with nitrites and nitrates at 0. Shouldn't the crabs, snails and live rock caused the ammonia to spike fairly high and why haven't the nitrites shown up yet?

[untamed]

Ammonia test kits are not very reliable, especially if they are the least bit old. You may be getting some ammonia and not know it.

How much "life" is on your live rock? I've seen a lot of LR that is basically just rock. If there's no life (and death) on that rock, then you won't be generating any ammonia to get the cycle going.

Try feeding your hermit crabs a nice chunk of fish from the grocery store. That ought to do it! If you can smell it, you're making progress.

[MMAX]

There's quite a bit of coraline and hair algae on the rocks which the crabs and snails have been taking care of. I recently noticed quite a few copepods running around and some weird kind of slug or snail (which I didn't buy) crawled out of one of the holes in the rock. I've had maybe 3 crabs die so far and didn't remove the carcasses hoping that would help. Maybe I'll try the fish. Should I be feeding the crabs also or can they just survive on algae on the rocks?

[mark]

Looking like you might be going through the cycle. Went into my logs and my NH3 spike with Hagen was a max at 0.6 and the highest for Nitrate was 0.1 and Nitrate of 5. Only used LR and waited until cycle complete before started adding.

Fr the log:
10/11 added rock NH3-0.6,
10/12 more LR NH3-0.6
10/18 NH3-0.3, NO2-0.1, NO3-5
10/28 NH3-0.1, NO2-0.1, NO3-5
10/31 NH3-0.0, NO2-0.1, NO3-5
11/03 zero all across

[Myka]

I'd try taking a sample of your water in to your LFS and get them to test it for ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate. See what that says.

Next time, don't add ANY critters until AFTER the cycle. Your cleanup crew isn't supposed to go in until AFTER the cycle. Most invertebrates are MORE sensitive to the cycle than fish are. Fish are usually the toughest thing in the tank. Of course there ARE some retardedly sensitive fish though...

[MMAX]

Well I guess it depends on who you talk to. Everyone seems to have a different opinion on what to add and when to add it. I don't really have a clue because this is my first attempt at a SW setup. The guy at the pet store told me the cleanup crew has to go in right away so the algae doesn't get out of control.

[Okguy]

Well you've learned your first major lesson in keeping a SW tank. Don't take what employees at pet shops tell you as gospel. In this case they are clearly wrong. The cleanup crew should go in after the cycle as most inverts are extremely sensitive to the cycle.

With no disrespect to the great vendors on this site who take the time to research and share their knowledge. I find it's only about 10% of LFS employees have adequate knowledge to help our tanks thrive.

One key thing to remember is that every time you add\do something to your tank a cycle will happen (it may be so small that it's not noticed but it does happen). So when you added water and then 2 days later added rock the cycle started again. Now when you add fish, the cycle will again start over. The reason for this is there will not be enough bacteria colonized to help process the increased bioload. One thing you can do to help the cycle along is to put a piece of raw shrimp in there (as Untamed mentioned) and let it decompose.

I would recommend taking the inverts out of your tank and have someone keep them for you while the cycle is happening or you'll lose a lot of them during the process.

Also remember that once the cycle is over and all reading are 0, the tank takes a good year to mature. You will probably go through several algae outbreaks during this time. Just be patient, keep a good maintenance routine and it will all work itself out.

HTH