Yaaaaawn....
 

My cycle is taking soooooo loooong. That's all I really wanted to say really, no advice needed, I just needed to complain and you are the only people on the planet who would understand.

The ammonia hump crested and fell to 0 in 8 days, but the nitrites. Good lord. They hit 5ppm on the 10th or the 11th, and are just now maybe possibly potentially showing signs of coming down from the stratosphere.

Oh well, patience is a virtue in this hobby is it not?

LOL waiting for the cycle was the hardest part for me too.

Your beast is going to look amazing when fully set up.

i hate it aswell. i feel your pain.

When your tank is cycled it does Not mean it will not go to another "mini cycle"
And many after that, every time you change something in the tank this will happen.
It took 6 month to completely cycle my tank before i put any SPS in it.
If you just want fish you are ok after few weeks.

I hope you have an established tank to look at while you are wating !
or maybe a fresh water tank at the least.

mines 3 months old and i have sps.

What's this cycle thing you are talking about? Was I supposed to wait to put stuff in my tank? :) But really, I know how you feel. I probably rushed things a bit with my tank, but so far everything is doing great. SPS frags are starting to color up again already in my tank.

I almost bought plastic fish and coral yesterday, can't kill them ;)

I've been trying to future proof that by keeping a large supply of rotting shrimp in continuous supply in the sump. I know it's making this take way longer, but I want to create enough of a bacterial base on my dead rocks that I could put in a couple of large fish and already have the waste eating engine needed to support them from day one. On the upside, it's breaking my skimmer in like nobody's business.

I have a sad little 5 gallon pico reef that I ripped off from reef builders. I call it "eco-reef ghetto". However, it is growing two SPS frags pretty well, even with no water testing and 100% water changes whenever I feel like it.


Water test this morning... I clearly have 0.25ppm nitrites! yesterday it was way higher, so I'm on the right end of the curve! I also inoculated the tank with a couple of pieces of seed live-rock that I bought from one of the bigger stores, so I'm getting a pretty fierce diatom bloom too.

Hold on is that your first piece of live rock?