Cycling and the next step

[wk1428]

This is my first saltwater aquarium and I am taking it slow. I have been cycling for 8 weeks. My readings as of today is 0 for ammonia, 0 for nitrite and 0-5 ppm for nitrates. I started off with pure ammonia from petco, 2 weeks ago i did a water change and added microbe lift nitrates. I have been phantom feeding ever since and my ammonia hasn't really changed.

When I was first reading I was under the belief that once the nitrate cycle is over you can start adding fish but then when I double checked two weeks ago I started reading about an algae cycle that occurs. I started reading about this algae cycle because I am within one at the moment. The water change that I did earlier was triggered when I saw the algae which, from my understanding signifies that the nitrate cycle is over.

Here are my questions. Am I suppose to clean off the diatoms or let them cycle? I have yet to see hair algae, am I suppose to wait for that before I add fish or not? Can I add my macro algae yet? Or should I wait til this cycle is over? When do I add a CuC? My light are running right now. Do I turn them off and kill the algae or just continue on. Do I continue phantom feeding?

 

[wk1428]

 

[mcgyvr]

Your cycle is over..
After that the "ugly stages" often kick in.. Typically thats diatoms then green hair/film algae then sometimes cyano..
You add a CUC now to attack that "ugly stuff"..
You do not need to wait to add fish..
You can add macro algae now to out compete the other algaes that may come..
Your lights aren't needed now but its typically best to just have them on to get past the ugly stages vs that happening later.. you can run your lights at a reduced light schedule to avoid feeding the diatoms/algae too much.
No need to continue phantom feeding. The bacteria can survive a long time without any additional food/ammonia being added to the tank.

Your second post with the imagur link got "jailed" because this site has some anti-spam feature that jails those from new users until a moderator approves it.. (typically 24 hours or less) It will show up then.. We can't see it yet.

 

[wk1428]

okay thank you. I was worried I got the pictures wrong. Thank you very much. Finally question. I understand I need to do a 2 week quarantine on invertebrates to get rid of hitchhikers. Is it okay to add the invertebrates to the main tank and then add fish two weeks later?

 

[FishAndPhysics]

Not sure where you heard 2 weeks. There are two concepts I have heard for quarantine of inverts:

a) Quarantine to avoid pests which attack inverts: for example, parasitic flatworms which attack coral. This is best achieved by observation, i.e. isolating the animal(s) for a sufficient amount of time for this issue to be noticed. This is usually practiced by people with many thousands of dollars in coral livestock. Myself, and many others, accept the risks for non-coral inverts (honestly, I suspect nearly non-existent) and merely inspect our corals carefully (perhaps dip) before adding.

b) Quarentine to avoid pests which attack fish: certain parasites, most notably ich and velvet, enter an "encrusted" stage which in principle could attach to a rock on a coral or a shell on an invert and then be carried in to your system. To avoid this, you must keep the inverts in a fishless system for 76 days (the so called fallow period). This is usually practiced by people with many thousands of dollars of fish livestock.

I suspect you are in neither camp regarding livestock value. My advice would be, worry about quarantine of your fish first (introducing illness through fish is of course extremely common) before you worry about quarantining inverts.

 

[scattered]

If you remove the light then algae has less of a chance to compete for nutrients (nitrates) than the emerging denitrifying anaerobic bacteria.

If you remove the light it is boring too, yeah?

Personally I try to encourage algae to establish itself. I like my rocks to take on a green tint. That means green algae is outcompeting lower order algae. Not film, not hair, just a green tint. Encrusting coralline algae often comes next if water parameters are kept steady.

In order:

Diatoms
Dinoflagellates (possibly)
Cyanobacteria
Hair algae

It is all nutrient export - don't let those algae outcompete the anaerobic bacteria. Or attack it with water exchange. I am working towards both myself.

I am not familiar with all the new products.


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