Am I cycling correctly?

[manners0485]

Hi, I’m a noob to the forum so go easy. Just wondering if someone could help me? I’ve had my tank for exactly a month now, started with dry ocean rock and have been phantom feeding with frozen mysis shrimp every 2 days. I have been testing regularly and have only had a slight spike in ammonia but never had any nitrites or nitrates. The past couple of days I had a lot of brown algae appear. Am I doing this correctly as I was expecting to see a rise in nitrites and nitrates by now. I have been using evolution aqua aqua reef every 5 days. Any advice would be great.

 

[Shirak]

Sounds like you have lights on if you are getting some sort of algae? If you do I would turn them off and keep them off. Assuming you have no livestock that needs light..
The other thing your adding is live bacteria? Probably don't need to keep doing that after a month. But could also be why you are not seeing any nitrites if it's converting it already. Mysis every 2 days for a tank full of just rock is probably way overkill. Should only need just a cube or two for the cycle to get going. The brown algae you are seeing is probably sucking up the nitrates to the point you are not seeing it while testing. And with a cube of mysis every couple days you are feeding the brown algae alot.

What are you using for testing?

 

[Reef.]

Do yourself a favour and buy a bottle of Dr Tim’s ammonia for less than $10, takes all the guess work out of a cycle...atm you do not know where you are, what ammonia the mysis has produced in the tank and the food has also left unwanted algae which just a month into a cycle you shouldn’t really be getting.

As above turn light off it’s not helping the cycle.