Cycling - Is it Done? I WANT SNAILS

You don't necessarily need to keep your lights on for that long if you don't have any corals in the tank. If you have blue actinic lighting, however, you can leave those lights on to encourage coralline growth.

I hate to say that all of your damsels may remain bully-ish so keep that in mind if and when you add more fish.

I would keep an eye on your tank parameters for at least another 2-3 weeks. If your nitrates remain that low or drop, then I would consider it fully cycled and ready for snails

 

I will heed your advice and wait another 3 weeks before adding inverts.I wasn't planning on getting any more fish. I'm more interested in the inverts and the corals. I leave the lights going for the fish, too. I figured they would like to have a daylight period as they do in the deep blue sea.

Thank you

 

:thumbs_up

 

rather new to this hobby

HI,
I started my tanks with a few nassirus snails and small feeding of spriallea flakes.
And let it go.
The snails seem pretty tough they add the appropiate bacteria stir the sand alittle and this seem to help,
I also put in alot of that clean base rock and add 2 nice pieces of live rock,
I haven't seen any spikes or major problems,
another trick a local LPS told me is add 5 lbs of live sand once a week this helps seed the rock and the sand.
I did this once aweek for a month.
after about 4 weeks everything was perfect and I added a couple fish, and a sump with a dsb and skimmer,
I ve never had alot of that ammonia or nitrates. so the bio load was very low that first month but enough to cycle the base rock and the sand after the brown bloom turned alittle green I added a lawnmower blemmy he was pretty fat in about a week I guess I was lucky (note: live sand is the sand you borrow from a freind or buy at you LPS it comes out of a mature tank not a plastic bag I don't have much confidience in that packaged live sand ditto for shipped live rock how can it stil be alive after setting in a box for a week ).

doug

 

How long does it normally take for the nitrates to come down? I checked last night and the ammonia/nitrites are at zero; pH is at 8.0; but the nitrates are still at 60. It's been a week since I added the damsels. I don't want to add anything else until the cycling is done.

 

Keep testing (that is part of the fun of starting a new tank). We have all been through this starting up.

Get those nitrates down to 0...then you can start adding critters to tank.

Resist the urge to put allot in at first. Couple of durable fish and corals to begin, then wait a while (couple of weeks) then a couple more.

We have all probably sent much life to "Reef Heaven" because of adding too much, too soon.

It may be months before a tank can support much of a bio-load. --- Biggest reason for those new tank crashes we all read about.

You are doing great! Good Luck!

​

 

I hate to be the opposing person again in this thread. But, Nitrates will not go down in a new system without a refugium or other nitrate absorbing source like Algae. Personally the only way to lower your Nitrates is to perform water changes. Isn't that the number 1 reason we perform them, along with replenishing trace elements.

Anyway Linda sounds like your Damsels haven't cause any ammonia spike and you should be good to go with your snails and crabs. I'd personally do a water change to get the nitrates down. But as you have seen I'm over ruled often

J

 

Thats the point of a forum to have a discussion and share ideas or thoughts. Maybe she had some die off from the rock which kick started the cycle before she added the damsels. I agree that you need a refugium or do water changes to lower nitrates.

 

maye overfeeding the fish and using frozen meats ?? I'd say test the make up water also. And run some carbon and cut the feeding way down.. Most feed their tanks to death any way I think..

 

Jason,

My Ammonia AND Nitrite levels ARE AT ZERO. It's the NITRATES THAT ARE HIGH. Even I know enough not to add fish with either/or the Ammonia/Nitrite levels are high.

I've been trying to get someone to answer me about adding stuff to the tank with HIGH NITRATE. But it seems that everyone jumped to conclusions without reading the entirety of my original e-mail.

L