Is my tank cycled?

[kjordan]

Set up my tank last Thursday with cured LR and 20 lb LS.
Salinity is 1.023-1.024
Ammonia: 0
Nitrite :0
Nitrate :0
PH :8-0 -8.2
Temp: 76
Can I start adding fish, mushrooms, etc?

 

[schnell76]

Last thursday as in the 25th? If so, then probably not cycled yet. My nano 12 cycled in about 10 days, but that was pretty fast IMHO. I did see a spike in everything though, have you seen a spike in anything yet?

 

[dendro982]

This was fast. To be safe, start with the small invertebrates, that you are planning to keep, something like snails or hermits - for gradual rising bioload, give them some food. Then some shrimp, if in 4 days no ammonia or nitrites. Then more, then some corals, then fish.
Right now may be no organic matter in the tank for bacteria to process, and adding fish, that produces waste and a food for it - may be too much for a small existing population of bacteria to handle. Could be OK, especially adding in the same time some bacterial culture, like Stability. But - it could be boring for the fish to be in the lifeless tank.

 

[montanabay]

Get some nassarius snails, for a 12gal I'd say 6-8 would be good. Feed them a frozen cube of brine or mysis shrimp every day for the next 5-7 days. This will do two things, one the extra food will be decomposed by beneficial organism that you will need in your sand bed and live rock, the nass snails will also release N in waste back into your system quickly increasing you nitrophilic organisms population in your tank, and finally since they are sand dwellers they will be turning over the sand and steadily populating your SB with N and bacteria.

then run your water parameter test, write it all down, wait a day with no feeding and test again, write it all down, then on the third day if you have the same numbers (stabilized) do a water change to get them down to the safe zone and add 1 extra bio-loader a week.

Cheers,

Josh