My first reef (90g)

[PoonTang]

Originally Posted by Rikotek

Well, the tank has been cycling for about a week now, I decided to take my first batch of measurements to see how things are progressing.

Temperature: 76

Salinity: 1.025 (added some water just now, trying to get it back to 1.023)

pH: 7.5 - I am told that my pH should always be above 8.1 I don't know yet if this is something remedied by the cycling process or if there is some sort of pH adjustment chemical/proceedure I need to use. If anyone knows that would be great!

Ammonia - 0.04 - Looks safe to me. I figured there would be more Ammonia this early in the cycle process but I guess it's going along better than I thought.

Nitrite - 0.0

All in all it looks like the cycling is going well but it is going to take a while longer before I begin to introduce any livestock or anything like that. Picking up some more rock from a coworker who got out of the hobby a while back. I will work on adding that and aquascaping until all of my levels read safe.

-Eric

Your ammonia reading will of course read really low because you have nothing that ads ammonia to your tank. You need to add ammonia to your tank to get your cycle started. Also your going to need atleast 1.5 pounds/Gal of LR for your tank. Tank will not be anywhere cycled after 1 week, this is going to take about 2 months. Dont worry about your algea outbreaks, they will come and go naturally as your tank progesses through the cycle.