Cycle done, now what?

[OneFish]

Hello all,

First I will give a bit of a background.
I have been in and out of the reef keeping hobby for about 5 years now (moving from apt to apt during college made it kinda difficult), but now I am in a good spot to get another one going. All of my previous tanks have started with saltwater from a store, lr, and live sand, so the cycling process was not that big of a deal. I waited a few weeks and let everything settle and started slowly adding critters. This is the first time I have started from scratch with making my own water, using dry rock, and using well rinsed aragonite sand.

Anyways here is my build so far (questions to follow):
25 IM lagoon w/ custom stand
2x Kessil a160we's w/ controller
tunze nano ato
jebao pp-4
50 gpd mighty mite rodi w/ brand new filters

1"-1.5" sand bed
~15 lbs rock that was taken out of previous owners aquarium about a year ago (I rinsed thoroughly and soaked in RODI for a few days)
red sea coral pro reef salt

I also have 2 filter socks and a media basket with a few mechanical sponges, carbon sponges, and phosphate sponges that I have not put in yet.

I just started up my light cycle yesterday with them ramping up to 70% white at 40% intensity from 11am-4pm, staying at that 40% intensity till 7pm, then ramping down to zero from 7pm-10pm.

Planning on a mixed reef with 3-5 small fish and some inverts. Water changes will be done on a weekly or bi-weekly basis depending on what it calls for and a protein skimmer will be added in the near future.

Just got done testing the water conditions (for the tests I have) and they are as follows:
Calcium - 440ppm
Carbonate hardness - 11dKH
Phosphate - < .25 ppm
Nitrate - 5.0 ppm
Ammonia - 0.0 ppm
Nitrate - 0.0 ppm
Salinity - 1.025
Temp. - 79 degrees F

A few questions I have for you guys -
1. When should I start adding the filters that I have (etc. carbon, phosphate, mechanical).
2. I am ready to put in a CUC and a fish, but I am worried about not having enough algae yet as my tank never received a diatom bloom. Should I be worried or should I just make sure to feed daily so that the CUC has something to munch on till there is a larger bioload/more algae growing?
3. Recommendations on a good CUC?
4. When should I start my water change schedule? I figured that it is pretty clean right now (besides phosphate which I think will be at 0 ppm when I add the sponge) so I shouldn't worry about it until after I have added some bioload.

I am sure more questions will follow as conversations go on and I think of more but that is it for now! Thanks everyone!

 

[redfishbluefish]

Are you sure your cycle is done? Did you see the presence of ammonia and nitrite. With you using "dead" rock, you will see nitrate climbing while the rock cures, leaching the death from within. Don't be fooled by the presence of nitrate that your cycle is done....it's most likely from the cure.

If you didn't see ammonia/nitrite, I'd spike the tank with ammonia and watch it "dissappear" to nitrite / nitrate to make sure you have the bacteria to support livestock.

 

[OneFish]

Are you sure your cycle is done? Did you see the presence of ammonia and nitrite. With you using "dead" rock, you will see nitrate climbing while the rock cures, leaching the death from within. Don't be fooled by the presence of nitrate that your cycle is done....it's most likely from the cure.

If you didn't see ammonia/nitrite, I'd spike the tank with ammonia and watch it "dissappear" to nitrite / nitrate to make sure you have the bacteria to support livestock.

Oh yep, forgot to mention that I threw in a shrimp from the grocery store a few weeks ago and got a large ammonia spike. I did not have a nitrite test until this week, but I can assume that it also spiked since my initial test for nitrate was 0ppm then eventually went up to 20 ppm and now it is back down to 5 ppm.

 

[redfishbluefish]

How did it go from 20 to 5.....did you do a massive water change?

Realize you are doing a cure and a cycle at the same time....not a problem...but realize the better part of nitrate most likely will come from the decay of the death within the rock. It's best to handle this nitrate spike with water changes.

 

[Mikey Mane The Flare]

Fish. Get a fish lol. I put fish in 3 days into it. Doing great

 

[OneFish]

How did it go from 20 to 5.....did you do a massive water change?

Realize you are doing a cure and a cycle at the same time....not a problem...but realize the better part of nitrate most likely will come from the decay of the death within the rock. It's best to handle this nitrate spike with water changes.

I mean, it didn't go from 20 to 5 in a day. It gradually went down. I figured that was just the nitrogen cycle leveling out. I thought I read that ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate all spike in order, and then all level out, ammonia being at 0, nitrite also at 0, and nitrate below 10 ppm. I could definitely be wrong, but that is what I recall.

 

[redfishbluefish]

Nitrate doesn't go down unless you have a means to "export" it. This is typically done with water changes, refugiums, carbon dosing, biopellets, skimmers, algae scrubbers, etc.

 

[OneFish]

Hmm weird. Maybe I messed one of my tests up. I'll retest tomorrow.

Any advice on the other questions I had?

 

[Syoung]

Because your rock is 'dead' live rock, and likely has organic matter that is or will be breaking down, it should be curing and giving off nutrients. Since you're likely curing and cycling at the same time, I'd be approaching it cautiously. Try raising ammonia to 2ppm (with pure ammonia), and over the next few days keep track of ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate. With curing also keep track of phosphates.

One thing I find interesting, and redfishbluefish maybe you could chime in on this, but you're essentially curing rock (which leaks nutrients), and haven't had a diatom or other bloom yet.

 

[OneFish]

So what should I be waiting/looking for to know everything is good to go?

 

[Syoung]

If the aquarium is able to go from 2ppm ammonia to 0ppm within 24 hours, converting that to nitrites, then nitrates, that's a general marking that there is enough bacteria to support fish ("cycled").

With the rock curing, keep an eye on phosphate levels. If they get too high you could always run a reducing method, like gfo.

 

[OneFish]

If the aquarium is able to go from 2ppm ammonia to 0ppm within 24 hours, converting that to nitrites, then nitrates, that's a general marking that there is enough bacteria to support fish ("cycled").

With the rock curing, keep an eye on phosphate levels. If they get too high you could always run a reducing method, like gfo.

I have that phosphate sponge? Should I start using that as a preventative?

 

[Syoung]

Check out this thread: https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/how-much-phosphate-is-too-much.139738/

Advice differs, But it seems most people want to keep their phosphate below 0.1ppm. You mentioned yours was <.25, is that close to .25 or much less? Are you using rodi or tap water?

You could add the sponge to lower it, but since you don't have any livestock, I'd test it daily for a little while longer and see if it's stable or increasing

 

[OneFish]

I am using rodi. It's close to .25 so maybe I'll throw that in genre and see if it goes down.

 

[OneFish]

There*

 

[Whipples]

What I do after my tank cycles is the biggest water change my totes will allow me to do. If you can do a water change of >50% of your tank volume you will really wipe out those excess nitrates and phosphates off the bat as well as anything else that may have snuck into the water column but doesn't show up on a test kit. If you take @redfishbluefish 's advice and dose the tank to 2ppm ammonia ( https://www.hamzasreef.com/Contents/Calculators/AmmoniaCycling.php ) and it can clear ammonia and nitrites in 24 hours you are safe to add a fish one at a time, and space it out over a few weeks to allow that bacteria to grow. I usually wait 2-3 days from when my tank clears the first round of ammonia to re-dose to allow all of the bacteria (ammonia -> nitrite, nitrite -> nitrate) to balance out a bit.

You should have film algae growing on the rocks and aquarium surfaces if you are cycled, even if not visible, but I would recommend going very slow on adding invert clean-up crew and start with a cerinth snail and maybe a trochus and wait a few weeks to see how well they do. Some folks add way too many off the bat, they die, and it fouls the water quality. Not good!

Do you have a quarantine tank set up for your new fish? Or plan to? There are a few guides on this forum that can make it very easy to set up and key equipment needed.

A protein skimmer will help keep nutrients low, otherwise you will have to be up on your water change game. You can run a little bit of carbon right now to pull any funk out of the water, assuming you are cycled .