little help

[harrisagogetter]

Last night everything ok!

This morning Bam!!!

The live rock that was looking great in my system turned from basically light sandy color to brown in a short period of time.

My readings are

sg 1.021
ph 8.2
temp 80
amon .25
trate/trite 0/0

I think that this is part of the cycle. I have been doing it since 2/27. Is this normal?

I do have a protien skimmer and cleaned about a small cup-full of slug out of it. (That is soooooo gross) But I guess that it's part of life so just go with the flow.

Any suggestions?

Thanks
Aaron

 

[snookfish]

Thats pretty normal for the cycle. 3 things!! how big is the tank(24 hex?), how much live rock do you have in it and you should try to get your sg up to 1.025 ideally,. your's isn't bad now because your cycling and hopefully nothing else is in there. but before you add anything, get the sg up a little bit. I cycled my tank without a skimmer because I didn't want anything skimmed to lessen the ammonia spike. My opinion is that at first with nothing but live rock, let the ammonia/nitrite spike because it isn't hurting anything. plus it will help grow more good bacteria so that when you add livestock AND the skimmer you have an ample colony started to keep up with the livestock. Just my opinion, and though I am a scientist, I'm no icthyologst.

The brown sounds like diatoms, which is very normal. And believe me it gets worse than light brown. My newer tank (3 months old) still has diatoms that the turbos haven't fully eaten yet.

Remember to hang in there, slow and steady keeps things stable, and when you ge that first fish/coral, it makes you wonder "why did I ever start off with freshwater!"

 

[harrisagogetter]

There is about 30lbs of live rock in there that I got ripped off on.)oh well just chalk it up to experiences learned.

I will add more salt, but the question is, Do I pull water out and then put both the water and the salt in a container then put it in or just add the salt?

I believe the correct way is the first one.

Also on the ammonia I have a test kit that I use here @ the house. Went to the lfs and the ammonia reading was much higher than my test kit. Is there any difference or coul dit be just the time of day that the samples were taken?

 

[Agu]

Sounds like diatoms and it's normal.

I prefer to run the skimmer and minimze any ammonia spike. we pay good money for the life on the rock and I prefer to save as much of that life as possible.

To raise salinity mix up some fresh saltwater and use it to topoff evaporation until you get to the level you want. Then go back to using freshwater for topoffs.

Trust the LFS test kit. They do a lot more testing than you so the regeants (chemicals) are probably fresher than yours. Time of day shouldn't affect ammonia but if the sample sat in your car a few hours that could affect the results.

 

[harrisagogetter]

Will the rock dark a darker brown than this?

It's gotten progressivly worse over the past 2 days....
I did go the LFS this afternoon, they checked out everything
here was the readings

sg 1.025
temp81
am .25
nitrites 10
trates trace
ph 8.2

All in all I think that everything is as well as to be expected. There really doesn't seem to be that much muck coming from the protein skimmer but I do believe that it will happen soon enough.

Thanks for all the help guys and gals

Aaron

 

[harrisagogetter]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=6918703#post6918703 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by harrisagogetter
Will the rock dark a darker brown than this?

this is supposed to say

Will the rock get and darker than this?


DUH