Hi!
Set up this tank a week or so ago.
Dropped in a piece of live rock and all the live parts are really alive. Tons of stuff comes out when I turn the pumps off. There were even two crabs. Can't really ID the one cause he's always hiding but he looks quite different from the green guy and he even molted yesterday (at first I thought I had a dead crab). There's even a mushroom that still seems to be doing rather well. He puffs up quite big when the lights are on and the water is flowing. I've been ghost feeding and monitoring all the variables associated with the API salt water and reef master kits daily. (And plotting the data in Excel because science) After more than a week ammonia, nitrite and nitrates are all still zero. Phosphate was super high the first two days but is now down to 0.25. Salinity is a bit low at 1.021, but water changes have slowly been bringing it up. The pretty red algae on the live rock seems to be spreading and I think I even saw a baby starfish once... Not to mention a ridiculous amount of serpent stars and tons of weird things I have no idea about. I never thought staring at a rock could be so much fun. My girlfriend thinks I've gone crazy. When will this ammonia spike happen? I'm under a lot of pressure to add fish but I really don't want to hurt them. I'm really quite concerned for the crabs and coral too (that I didn't notice till the rock was in the tank). The cycle isn't complete till I get nitrate starting to rise right? And the only way to get that out is water changes? This hobby is truly a test of patience.
