A few questions about my cycling journey from a newbie (pics included)

[seaofbytes]

Hey Reef, hope you're doing great!

So about 2 weeks ago, I have started my cycle. I'm using about 20-25 pounds of dry rock in a plastic bin, and I have a few questions now that some time has passed.

I added two start up bacteria/cycling products over the course of 10 days, and there is a piece of live rock in the bin to hopefully help out with the cycling process. Using fish food as a ammonia source, ghost feeding a pinch every day or two, depends. I was using salifert to test nh3+nh4 but was under the impression that I got a bad test kit, since it never actually read high ammonia.

I left everything for a week (only ghost feeding, pretty heavily) and today I bought another ammonia test to compare with Salifert, and when tested, my ammonia reading was pretty low (0-0.25 mg/l) on the Colombo test, while Salifert still gives me white cloudy water color.


My nitrites seem to be at 0 now, and my nitrates skyrocketed to 15-25. Using salifert to check no2/no3. I also noticed some brown gunk forming on the side of the plastic bin yesterday, and was wondering what that was? It has a dark brown/redish color when scraped.

So I got three questions:
1. Where am I in the cycle? To me everything looks ok, but I want a confirmation from someone with more experience.
2. What is the brown stuff on the side of my bin?
3. I'm going on a vacation in 10 days and was wondering if it's safe to leave the tank alone for 10 days without feeding it, or should I have someone come overand ghost feed/top off a few times while on vacation?


Thanks a lot for taking the time to read this!

Cheers

 

[Agrass1992]

Hard to say but the brown stuff is probably either diatoms or cyano, both need a light source though so, again, hard to confirm. Your ammonia look to be a touch high, the green test kit, but based on your nitrite and nitrate numbers I'd say your rock has the necessary bacteria to sustain some form of life. The trick is to not overdue it. When you're ready add a few fish and overserve. Give it a week or two and add a few more. If you do a 2 week quarentine on all fish you can constantly be adding fish every 2 weeks as you move them through the quarentine process. As far as the 10 days being gone, I'd get an auto feeder and set it fkr every 3rd day or so.

 

[seaofbytes]

Hard to say but the brown stuff is probably either diatoms or cyano, both need a light source though so, again, hard to confirm. Your ammonia look to be a touch high, the green test kit, but based on your nitrite and nitrate numbers I'd say your rock has the necessary bacteria to sustain some form of life. The trick is to not overdue it. When you're ready add a few fish and overserve. Give it a week or two and add a few more. If you do a 2 week quarentine on all fish you can constantly be adding fish every 2 weeks as you move them through the quarentine process. As far as the 10 days being gone, I'd get an auto feeder and set it fkr every 3rd day or so.

Thanks for the reply! My cycling bin was in complete darkness, except for the last 2 days. Should I just leave the mystery brown stuff be? Clean it off? Do a wc?

Also, on further inspection now, I just noticed life in the cycling bin. A lot of "white specks" moving all over the place, I have no idea what those could be.

I tried to take a picture/video, but they are so small. In the video you can see a white spec moving. (the pumps are off)

Any idea on what that is? I'm thinking it came with the live rock?

 

[Agrass1992]

Those are probably copepods, an essential part of the cleanup crew and free fish food. Definitely good guys. I wouldn't stress the parameters too much in that temp tank. Just don't let your nitrates get stupid high. Like over 75 I'd say. More so because you won't want them leaching out into your display tank.

 

[REEFER-RICK]

yes cycle dry rock is a ***** had mine go for 4 months before it came around no lights no skimmer but still had an algae bloom when lights came on

 

[Idech]

I’m wondering why you chose to cycle in a bin instead of directly in your tank ? What are the advantages ? I tend to see mostly inconvenients.

 

[REEFER-RICK]

well I cycled mine 2 months in a bin didnt help one bit should of do it in the tank , never again waste of time I think do it all together

 

[Billabong]

I'm assuming you're just going to stack some piles up?
I super glue, epoxied,, super glued with rock dust dry before I put in new tank to cycle. I used the Brightwell Dry Rock kit. I started at 80°, and sg was .018 to boost bacteria. Within a week I slowly raised sg, and temp. I read 0 Ammonia(I started with 2ppm), nitrite was 5ppm at two weeks and started with 5 Chromis. 3 days later amo 0, nitrite 0, nitrate 5ppm.

Best wishes with your cycle and aquatic life

 

[seaofbytes]

I’m wondering why you chose to cycle in a bin instead of directly in your tank ? What are the advantages ? I tend to see mostly inconvenients.

The reason I'm doing this in a bin is because I'm still waiting on my custom order tank, so I just started in a bin. Should be here in a day or two!

I'm assuming you're just going to stack some piles up?
I super glue, epoxied,, super glued with rock dust dry before I put in new tank to cycle. I used the Brightwell Dry Rock kit. I started at 80°, and sg was .018 to boost bacteria. Within a week I slowly raised sg, and temp. I read 0 Ammonia(I started with 2ppm), nitrite was 5ppm at two weeks and started with 5 Chromis. 3 days later amo 0, nitrite 0, nitrate 5ppm.

Best wishes with your cycle and aquatic life

I already shaped my rocks the way I want it, I drilled holes in them and will use small acrylic rods to keep everything together once in the tank!

 

[seaofbytes]

Those are probably copepods, an essential part of the cleanup crew and free fish food. Definitely good guys. I wouldn't stress the parameters too much in that temp tank. Just don't let your nitrates get stupid high. Like over 75 I'd say. More so because you won't want them leaching out into your display tank.

Based on my salifert test kit, they might be a bit high. Should I do a water change to get it down?

I'll also be doing a 100% wc when I put the rocks in the DT.