Seeing the spikes is not a panick, its great, because you know you are building up the quanitties of bacteria you need to break down waste. Without "seeing" the cycle, you don't know your tank can break down wastes effectively.

Also, why did you do water changes during the cycle? You were removing waste that should have gone towards building up bacteria levels.

If you have very little die off, and did water changes, and didn't record any spikes, I wouldn't be confident that your system actually cycled properly.

I couldn't agree more... usually water changes are done at the end of the cycling process - if there ever is an end - or rather when livestock starts to be added as anything added or subtracted will affect the bioload capacity even months down the road. While a system may take only a few weeks to go through the nitrate cycle, I feel it takes a year or longer to totally stabilize as observed through the various stages and fluctuations of nuisance algae that ALL tanks go through. Everything is always in such delicate balance - so adding livestock to any system, but especially a small system is going to create some bacteria imbalances that will take time to sort out. Sometimes when fish are brought to a new tank they get stressed and sick very easily no matter what the acclimation procedure is. Once that happens, a fish can succumb very quickly, especially in a "sterile" environment such as a young system.

From what you have posted I see someone being very conciensious but disappointed at failure... sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but welcome to the club. Keep doing everything as you have been, and once the ammonia and nitrite have been cycled out, give it another shot. I tried Percs in a couple of "newer" systems, and could never seem to keep them... this really pi$$ed me off when I'd see some swimming away happily in somebody's nano as I was always providing more space etc etc etc... now I have 4 that I put in a system that was over 8 months old, (buying 4 hoping TWO would survive after my abysmal previous attempts), and I still have all of them over a year later... go figure! I think the hardiest clown species are Maroons as I had my first long term success with one of those, but I think your tank size should limit you to Percs or Oscellaris... :mrgreen:

I would feed you tank as if you have had 2 clowns in there, and monitor the nitrogen cycle to see what happens in your tank. Your system should be able to break down the wastes into nitrates, if you are cycled you wont see any ammonia or nitrite.

If you get spikes, then you tank wasn't cycled to begin with, and I would get the LFS to hold your 2 corals for a while until your tank cycles. (throw in a chunk of raw shrimp for the bacteria to feed on)

Ok, I get what you're saying about the value of actually seeing and being able to say "Yes, the ammonia spike happened last week" that makes sense to me.

I will disagree however with water changes being detrimental to the cycle. My understanding and belief is that as long as there is detectable ammonia the cycle is proceeding. Allowing it to reach toxic levels doesn't speed things up and doesn't help anything. Detectable ammonia to me means that there is more than the current level of bacteria can handle and the cycle is proceeding normally. I've always been told that a tank will cycle just as fast if you maintain 0.25 ppm as it will if you maintain 1 ppm and keeping the levels lower will make life easier on all the other desirable inhabitants of the tank (beneficial bacteria, in this case hitchhikers and other organisms) that have to live in there as you go through the cycle.

As far as die off from the rock, I should qualify that there was some just not as much as I was expecting. Everything I've read led me to believe that this is because the rock was mostly cured. Now correct me if I'm wrong, but if a tank is keeping up with ammonia and nitrate production (from some LR die off, waste from inverts, etc) is that not how you would define a cycled tank?

It is a bit misleading.

Your bacteria levels in the rock will balance out with the amount of waste being produced. More waste, more bacteria.

Imagine if you get very little die off, and do water changes, then you don't get much waste, so you don't get as much bacteria. Then you put fish in, and start feeding them, creating higher levels of waste than your existing bacteria can break down. The bacteria will rapidly re-produce to this new, higher level of waste, but in the meantime you have ammonia present in your system, followed by nitrite.

So the trick is really to not increase the waste level quicker than the bacteria can multiply to keep up. I like to cycle my tanks "hard" with lots of waste, probably to the point where bacteria dies off when I put livestock in it.

You really don't know if your tank is cycled or not right now, so you need to create some waste in there without sacrificing more fish, so feed your tank, measure the levels, and see what happens, otherwise you are just risking killing more livestock.

Or try a hardier fish like a damsel, but they are a PITA down the road.

You are right though, cycling without water changes is harder on the life in the live rock, it is a trade-off.

Either way you do it in the future, measure the nitrogen cycle every day or two so you know what is happening.

You are correct that "detectable" ammonia is enough for bacteria to be handling the load. However, if you keep removing/lowering that detectable ammonia by doing water changes there will never be enough of a bacterial population required to reduce those levels to zero, which would make your cycle last longer IMO. Same goes for the bacterial populations that reduce nitrite and nitrate. So while it seems that your tank is cycling, really to me it isn't cycling properly.

Just so you see the other side, I'm a firm believer in not letting the ammonia go up during cycling. I was doing water changes twice a day to keep the levels down and save as much life as I can :mrgreen:
The down side to cycling like that, is you have to add your livestock very slowly and I waited 4 months before adding any fish.

I added bactervital during my cycle to boost the bacteria levels quicker. Can't say if it worked or not, but I was happy with the life that made it through my cycle.

Update time:

My home computer has been down for a while so I haven't had a chance to write. Coral's are all good as new, I've been testing my water every night (and have been since I put the Coral's in) and feeding as per the recommendation, My levels have been steady 0's across the board. I have no detectable ammonia, nitrite, or nitrate and a Ph that is keeping fairly stable at 8.4 so I am fairly confident that this tank is cycled, but I will keep my eye on it for another couple of weeks and see what happens.