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Old 09-04-2013, 07:33 AM
worstist worstist is offline
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Default New Tank & Cycling Questions

Hi this is my first saltwater tank but had freshwater tanks before.

REEF
Tank: 165G 66x24x24
Sump: 73G 48x22x16

100 LBS of BRS Reef Saver Rock
Added Dr Tim's Nitrifying Bacteria
Fishless Cycle w/ Ammonia
Pure RO Water w/ Instant Ocean

Day 1: Added to 3 PPM Ammonia w/ Periodic dose 1 PPM dose every 4-5 Days after Week 2.

PH Steady throughout.
No ammonia tested after Day 7.
Trace nitrite showed up Day 7, Trace nitrate showed up Day 9.
Nitrite was over ranged from Day 10 - Day 25.
Nitrate reached its peak of my test kit on Day 25 160+ PPM.

The only confusing thing I have was...
I tested on Day 27, my nitrite dropped to zero which is normal. But, I haven't read anywhere that the nitrate will drop drastically as well. I tested multiple times and it was only 20 PPM.


Never read about this before, anyone can chime in on this?



Also, I'm going to wait a week before adding any fish into my tank. I was thinking of adding some green chromis (7-8) but read about aggression issues, but will I have a better chance of them surviving because of a big tank?

or

I add a couple clownfish and maybe a blenny first. I am worried that I fishless cycled and built a high amount of bacteria. Will only adding a few fish have a negative effect on the bacteria? decrease population. Maybe I should add more?

Thanks, hopefully you can understand what I'm trying to ask.

Last edited by worstist; 09-04-2013 at 07:37 AM.
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Old 09-04-2013, 08:58 AM
JmeJReefer JmeJReefer is offline
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The chromis aren't aggressive. Very easy fish, cheap but cool to look at too. A good start to ur tank.
I've no experience with larger tanks so I can't help ya there...good luck
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Old 09-04-2013, 01:54 PM
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You could try dosing with a carbon source to keep your bacteria populations up. Vodka specifically was what I was thinking of; but there is a lot to learn about that so do research.
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Old 09-04-2013, 02:06 PM
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I wouldn't try anything as drastic as carbon dosing on a new un-established tank. My only guess for a 160ppm NO3 reading on day 25 and a 20ppm NO3 reading on day 27 without a drastic water change in between is an error in testing on one or both of those days. I would suggest seeing if you can get another test kit and confirm your latest reading. If you think your cycle is done, ghost feed your tank for a few days and see if that has any effect on your ammonia levels. If there's no ammonia spike and the nitrate levels slowly start coming up a bit, do a water change and add a bit of a clean up crew and a fish or two and slowly build up that bioload.
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Old 09-04-2013, 02:58 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by worstist View Post
But, I haven't read anywhere that the nitrate will drop drastically as well. I tested multiple times and it was only 20 PPM.[/b]
I'm not sure I understand the question. Were you expecting Nitrates to drop lower than that, or were you expecting nitrates to be highter or are you trying to drop it lower than that ?
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Old 09-04-2013, 03:31 PM
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Wait one month not one week after the cycle finishes.
Additives to cycle a tank are an unnecessary expense. A dead shrimp or two would done the job

You do not have to any additives to your new tank.

Wait have patience .All successful reefers will tell you this.
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Old 09-04-2013, 04:11 PM
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For a larger tank a few chromis would be fine, around 5.... You should be dosing MB 7 from brightwells to keep the bacteria going and feed sparingly. If you do decide to add fish make you don't add too many at a time. Usually rule of thumb is 1 fish per month. If its a few chromis wait a month before adding anymore so your tank has a chance to balance out.

Did you add any small pieces of live rock to the macro rock to transfer some life to your dead rock?
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Old 09-04-2013, 08:09 PM
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Yah my question before was anyone experience the big nitrate drop like I did. It's weird because I tested it multiple times and it slowly built up 20, 40, 80, 160 than 20.

Last night i dosed 1 PPM of ammonia again to see if it would convert it.
I double checked the readings again today.

PH:8.2
Ammo:0
Nitrite:0
Nitrate:20

Should I keep dosing ammonia every few days to keep my bacteria up?

I rather not add a piece of live rock if its not necessary, the reason I chose all macro rock was to not get any pests, or anything I'm not aware of.

I think I'm going to add 5-7 Chromis to the tank and leave it for a month to make sure my bacteria levels are good.

Should I do a big water change to get my nitrate levels down? They are at 20 now.
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Old 09-04-2013, 08:22 PM
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You shouldn't have to add any more ammonia, that is only when you start the cycle to get bacteria going. As I suggested before brightwells mb7 will keep the nitrification bacteria alive, along with the fish!
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Old 09-04-2013, 08:42 PM
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First off, it sounds like you've done your research on this and have done everything pretty by the book. I'm impressed. The jury one whether or not the bacterial supplement helped is out (be VERY suspicious of bacterial supplements that aren't refrigerated along their entire chain of custody, very few living things are likely in it by the time you get it if they aren't), but it definitely didn't hurt.

How many times had you been testing the nitrate before you got the 160ppm reading? Was there a steady climb over a period of time, or did it go from very little nitrate to 160 in a matter of a day or two? If it's the latter, I would be likely to suspect testing error, which is much easier to do than you'd think. I'm doing a huge batch of ammonia and nitrate tests on some soil samples right now (using the same process and equipment you'd use for testing seawater... I really should bring some tank water in to the lab!) and it's shocking how easy it is to contaminate a sample. I had to throw out an entire batch of 30 samples because I had dried the extractant vials with paper towel, which quintupled results. doh!

If that's not the case though, and you saw a steady progression from day 9 to day 27 (5ppm, 15, 40, 55.... 140, 160 or something like that) I'd be more inclined to believe your earlier tests, and be suspicious of your most recent tests. I'd first try getting a second test kit for nitrate and seeing if it agrees with with a reading of 20ppm.

If it does agree, a sudden drop in nitrate could mean a couple of things in that case -
are you using sand? If so how deep of a sand bed? I don't think it's outside the realm of possibility that an anaerobic layer could have developed in your sand between days 9 and 25, but a drop of 140ppm in two days seems excessive even if that's the case. It's also possible that your rocks are starting to de-nitrify, though I have a hunch it would take them longer to build up such a capacity (if anyone tries to tell you they actually know how long it would take for such a de-nitrifying layer to develop inside dead rock or sand, they are grossly over-estimating the current state of knowledge on the subject).

Have you been lighting your tank during this process? I can fathom that a flush of even microscopic algae, diatoms, or other nitrogen consuming organisms would make swift work of available nutrients, but chances are good you would see evidence of them if they were present and multiplying fast enough to drop your levels so suddenly, is there any discolouration in your sand/rock/glass/water or any noticeable growth of anything with a pigment?

If the answer to all those questions is no... to be perfectly frank I don't think you need to worry about it. Without lab grade analytical equipment and some pretty insane-balls testing protocols, it's next to impossible to know what's actually going on in our tanks chemically at any one moment. Your tank started out a literal marine desert, with very little by the way of microbial life, so at that point, it's really very simple to figure out what's going on - ammonia is dosed at X concentration therefore ammonia levels in the water will be X concentration. However, over the past month your tank has developed a system wide functioning population of at least two entire clades of bacteria that are constantly reproducing, growing, and likely other clades of bacteria that are consuming the millions of them that have probably died since this started. Now the question of what's going on chemically gets harder and harder to answer - more balls are in the air so to speak, they're all moving, and the test kits we use are only the tiniest, highly simplified window in to a complicated process. It's like trying to watch an opera through the wrong side of an apartment peep hole. As more waste consuming and producing organisms from all trophic levels get added, the cause and effect of specific life-related parameters are going to become almost impossible to causally relate to one another. At the most macro scale you'll know that more food equals more waste equals potentially more algae, but if you look across tanks, and at a very fine scale, you'll start to see that the exact details of how much and what kind of food, how much waste, how much and what kind of algae often seem to fly in the face of what your snapshot in time chemistry tests seem to suggest should be the case.

To be perfectly honest, what your nitrate levels are at this exact moment don't really matter. What matters is that your ammonia cycle is complete, and I would probably agree that it's time to stop adding ammonia and look at adding a couple of hardy fish (chromis's are a good suggestion). Some people would wait longer, but the tank is going to have to adapt to the new additions whether you add them now or add them later and I don't think you'll see a dangerous ammonia spike if you add them now. You're eventually going to enter a phase where long term trends for available nutrients matter, but right now things will probably be all over the map as various forms of life enter, bloom, then fit in to the mini food web your'e making. If over the next few months your nitrate and phosphate levels stay consistently high, or you're getting persistent uncontrolled algae, you should probably look in to one of the systems that directly exports nutrients from you water - especially if you want to keep corals, but for right now, take the 20ppm nitrate on it's face value and don't stress too much about it, it will likely be different in a week.

My only other piece of advice is that if you are planning on someday doing some sort of carbon dosing, be that liquid or carbon, I would be inclined to suggest that you're better of starting it now than later. Some people on here will disagree with me, but I'm not saying you need to do it to control your current levels of nutrients. I've read a nauseating number of forum threads about nutrient control through carbon dosing, and one of the fairly consistent themes I've seen is that people who start doing it late in the game often go through a pretty brutal period of system shock, cyano outbreaks, and coral losses. I think that's why there's so many people who have sworn off biopellets for good. I've now added BP both late in to a tank's development, and right at the very beginning before any fish or corals were present, and I can say that the difference in outcome has been striking. I've got no research to back it up, but I think if you let your system evolve from day one with a carbon source, you can avoid many of the problems that are associated with them.
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