Water Spikes when Cycling

[kyliefish]

Hi Everyone,

I am so excited to be setting up a marine tank and am looking forward to experiencing the benifit of everyones knowledge.

I have done heaps of reading and feel I have a good understanding od the cycling process and have decided that I am going to do fishless cycling on my tank which has been running for a week.

Alongside Bacteria etc I have added some fish food and a dead prawn. My LFS received an order of premium live rock and I have put some pieces on hold.

My water chemisrty is as follows:

Amonia 0.50
Nitrite 0.00
Nitrite 0.00
PH 8.2
Specific Gravity at 22
Temp 24.5 degrees

Obviously I don't want to add live rock to have it perish. My question is what level of Amonia spike should I expect in my tank before I start seeing an increse in Nitrite and subsuquently Nitrate.



All advise is welcome

 

[kau_cinta_ku]

ammonia can go all the way up to 10 or it could stay at .25 all depends on alot of things. if the LR was shipped to your LFS then it will need to go through a cycle anyway due to die off during shipping, so IMO i would add the rock now.

also great job on not using live animals to cycle the tank.

 

[kyliefish]

Cheers Thanks Sam - I guess I just don't want to overload my new system. Will adding live rock at this stage kill the organisms due to the fact that my amonia is probably going to contunie to rise?????

 

[kau_cinta_ku]

it will kill some but they will comeback. everyone who gets LR (unless you get it from the ocean and leave it in water till your tank even then you will prob. get some die off) will have an ammonia spike due to things dying on it from shipping. it is very normal for ppl to cycle their tank using LR.