Should I keep waiting?

Delr3

New member
I started a 125 g tank a couple of weeks ago. Here is what I have in my tank:
Bought locally:
-125 lbs of LR
-20 lbs of Ls
-200 lbs of Ls is bags
I have a Octopus 200 nw skimmer
3 K 4s
1 Maxi jet with the sure flow mod (1200gph
55 g sump

Been checking my water parameter each day, and they are 0's
and some food to start a ammonia spike and that went down after a couple of days and went back down to zero. So I was wondernig if I should keep waiting or can I introduce a fish. I have read you need to wait by most people. I have also read lately that if you use LR and LS locally so there is no to little die off you will not have a big cycle and you can start to put fish in sooner. So what do you think? Thanks for your help,

Del
 
you should be testing for 3 things at this point.
ammonia, nitrite and nitrate.
part one of your cycle is having an ammonia reading. part two is seeing that go down and nitrite go up. part three is seeing nitrite go down and nitrate go up.

my advice would be to get test kits for all three of those parameters if you don't already have them and monitor all 3 until you see the cycles rise and fall. once that happens you'll want to start working on lowering nitrate. once that's done you can start adding your inverts, a few at a time, and progress from there.
 
I have been checking all three each day. The N2 and N3 were up a little and went down but there were not as high as I have read that some peoples get. For the most part all 3 of my levels have been close to zero or have gone back down to zero.
 
My NO2 is zero, my No3 is like a little above zero, and my NH3 is zero. Those are the reading I took yesterday, haven't taken them today. I usually do my reading around 4 pm.
 
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