1. test it out with a little fishfood. If it spikes ammonia, you're not cycled.
2. test the water for not only nitrate and ammonia, test it for alkalinity. Get that to 7.9 to 8.3. You will continue to do that test as part of the routine test sequence...forever.
3. test it by adding one snail or micro hermit crab. If they thrive and start eating, great. Add more. Test the water every 7 days as you a) start ONE fish in quarantine, with TTM.
4. you now have a fully functioning tank and cuc, whose job is NOT to eat all the algae---what they clean up is dead stuff, if a fish should die, etc; and waste food. So if you don't have a fish in there supplying poo and wasting food, you may have to feed the cuc a little.
5. fish completely vetted and ok? NOW you can add that fish to the tank and start qt'ing another. You can also add a coral of the hardier varieties, if you have the light for it. Same protocol: make sure it thrives before adding others.
What you've done here: that cuc has been eating and poo'ing into the sandbed, which has been continuing to grow in strength, as bacteria also spread deep into the rocks, and as the sandbed is increasingly capable of handling the tank chemistry. Don't go crazy feeding. If the cuc is handling fallen food, that's fine. If not--you're overfeeding and exceeding the tank's capacity. The cure is not necessarily 'another fish.' It's more likely 'less food.'
You may go through several algae varieties as the tank matures. Resist the temptation to run in circles and panic. This is how the tank processes what's soaking out of rock and sand, and when it has finally gone through all of it, you will see it go away for good. There are a few proactive things you can do about it: get a GFO reactor to remove the excess phosphate that drives hair algae; get a decent skimmer and turn out the lights on the tank (do not black out its walls) 3 days a month, repeating until cyanobacteria gives up; and if you spot any rooted macroalgae, get that rock out and ask in this forum how to kill the growth. Rooted macro can be a tank-killer, so do not let it spread.
Hope that helps a bit.
2. test the water for not only nitrate and ammonia, test it for alkalinity. Get that to 7.9 to 8.3. You will continue to do that test as part of the routine test sequence...forever.
3. test it by adding one snail or micro hermit crab. If they thrive and start eating, great. Add more. Test the water every 7 days as you a) start ONE fish in quarantine, with TTM.
4. you now have a fully functioning tank and cuc, whose job is NOT to eat all the algae---what they clean up is dead stuff, if a fish should die, etc; and waste food. So if you don't have a fish in there supplying poo and wasting food, you may have to feed the cuc a little.
5. fish completely vetted and ok? NOW you can add that fish to the tank and start qt'ing another. You can also add a coral of the hardier varieties, if you have the light for it. Same protocol: make sure it thrives before adding others.
What you've done here: that cuc has been eating and poo'ing into the sandbed, which has been continuing to grow in strength, as bacteria also spread deep into the rocks, and as the sandbed is increasingly capable of handling the tank chemistry. Don't go crazy feeding. If the cuc is handling fallen food, that's fine. If not--you're overfeeding and exceeding the tank's capacity. The cure is not necessarily 'another fish.' It's more likely 'less food.'
You may go through several algae varieties as the tank matures. Resist the temptation to run in circles and panic. This is how the tank processes what's soaking out of rock and sand, and when it has finally gone through all of it, you will see it go away for good. There are a few proactive things you can do about it: get a GFO reactor to remove the excess phosphate that drives hair algae; get a decent skimmer and turn out the lights on the tank (do not black out its walls) 3 days a month, repeating until cyanobacteria gives up; and if you spot any rooted macroalgae, get that rock out and ask in this forum how to kill the growth. Rooted macro can be a tank-killer, so do not let it spread.
Hope that helps a bit.
