Blakestanks
New member
I have a 34g Solana and i got it from a guy a few weeks ago who had it set up for a year, i moved to to my house and replaced 90% of the sand and used the same rock plus a little cured rock. A week ago before my chemicals got delivered i took my water down to the LFS to see where my water was at, he said my Alk was low and i had a little nitrates but nothing dangerous, i bought some chemical to raise alk and avoided purchasing any livestock. Today my nitrates were sky high (so i think i cant really tell yellow from orange from red) so it was dark so im pretty sure it was red around 60. again cant really tell because the color chart all kind of blends together after yellow but i did a %50 water change and the color lightened to what i believe to be orange somewhere around 10-20, However the tank shouldnt have really cycled since almost all of the Rock is the same and the sand was new. In the back he took out the bioballs and replaced it with LR rubble, thats is all i have, no chemical filtration. Would adding some purigen solve my problem? The tank has Zero livestock and i have not put any organic matter into the tank. All of my other stats were where the should have been PH was about 8.
