hello all, i recently just started a 75g aquarium and it's been running for about a week, yesterday after almost a week i got my first reading of ammonia it was 1.0, so i was expecting it to rise more or drop slowly in the upcoming days but i check again today and it read 0. isn't it supposed to slowly go down or up? so i went and check my nitrites and they're also in 0. was it a false reading from my test kit when it read 1.0 yesterday?. how should i proceed with this?
cycle question
- Thread starter gaby_scan
- Start date
mcgyvr
New member
Did you start with
(1) dry rock
or
(2) "live" rock shipped to you and kept "damp"
or
(3) "live" rock sourced locally and kept "wet"
And what about sand.. "Live sand" or dry sand or no sand?
If (1) have you been ghost feeding the tank or any other method to introduce sufficient ammonia to the tank?
A reading of 1ppm one day and 0ppm the next with no nitrite spike is suspicious..
(1) dry rock
or
(2) "live" rock shipped to you and kept "damp"
or
(3) "live" rock sourced locally and kept "wet"
And what about sand.. "Live sand" or dry sand or no sand?
If (1) have you been ghost feeding the tank or any other method to introduce sufficient ammonia to the tank?
A reading of 1ppm one day and 0ppm the next with no nitrite spike is suspicious..
mcgyvr
New member
If you started with live rock that was kept wet then there will be no real cycle.
The point of cycling is to build up a sufficient bacterial population so that any ammonia,etc.. can be quickly processed into lesser toxic forms (nitrite then nitrate)..
Since you started with live rock that was kept wet and not allowed to dry out you brought with it all of the bacteria living on it..
At this point you are probably safe to start slowly adding whatever you want to the tank (clean up crew or fish,etc...)
The point of cycling is to build up a sufficient bacterial population so that any ammonia,etc.. can be quickly processed into lesser toxic forms (nitrite then nitrate)..
Since you started with live rock that was kept wet and not allowed to dry out you brought with it all of the bacteria living on it..
At this point you are probably safe to start slowly adding whatever you want to the tank (clean up crew or fish,etc...)
thanks a lot mcgyvr, if you wouldn't have told me this i would probably be testing the water for weeks lol.
mcgyvr
New member
No problem.. Its very common for people to not understand cycling or live rock like that..
This is 100% the reason that local fish stores have tanks of "live rock" all ready to go.. They want you to be able to walk in and buy a "Nemo" for your screaming daughter and get the tank, water, "live rock" ,etc... all in one sale and be able to go home the same day and set it all up and have that fish survive..
You only need to "cycle" a tank when you start with dry rock or get "live rock" shipped to you from most places that just throw some damp newspaper over it.. When shipped a good amount of the bacteria and living matter on it will die so you need to reestablish that bacterial colony and make it through the ammonia,etc.. that all that "die off" will bring..
This is also why companies sell "bacteria in a bottle" or other "quick cycle: products that hope to make the cycle short by dumping in a bunch of bacteria in one shot and not waiting for the population to grow to sufficient quantities on its own.. Bacterial levels grow/increase pretty darn fast on their own but when you dump a ton in or bring it in on already established/wet live rock you basically have little to no cycle at all..
