jkuja913
New Member
Hey!
While I’m not 100% “new” to the hobby, I’ve been tankless for about 6 years or so and finally decided to jump back in with a new tank. Previously, I had a couple different mixed LPS/Softie mixed reefs.
I decided to go with a Marine X 110.4 which just showed up 4 days ago and is up and running. Went with the basic “core” package from Marine X as I already had some other equipment still laying around and the AI Prime lights should work fine for quite a while with planning to run just LPS and softies again for at least a couple years.
Prior to setting the tank up, I had taken the majority of my old dried out and long dead live rock from my previous tanks along with about 40 lbs of new dry Marco rock and had it curing/cycling in a big bin for about a month. It was quite a long cycle that took foreeeevvvver to start dropping nitrite levels. Ammonia cleared up in about 2 weeks with the addition of Dr. Tims, but I’m assuming as the old dead rock was still full of organic that were breaking down, the old rocks were probably leaching out ammonia about as fast as the bacteria could convert it and kept nitrite pegged for quite a while before starting to convert to nitrates.
When I got the new tank set up and running, I did most of my aquascaping wet or at least partially wet to try and maintain as much of the bacteria in the rocks as possible, but I’m running another batch of Dr. Tims just to be safe. So far, it seems like things are mostly in tact as after dosing the tank to 2ppm ammonia on Friday afternoon, I’m already back to nearly 0 ammonia and just a slight haze of nitrite on the test.
I’ve got an order of a couple clowns, light clean up crew and copepods+phyto cued up for next week once I can confirm my cycle is in tact.
Super excited to be getting back into the hobby and can’t wait to start seeing some life in the tank.
Hope to share some photos of the journey and re-learn everything I’ve forgotten since my last venture into the hobby.
While I’m not 100% “new” to the hobby, I’ve been tankless for about 6 years or so and finally decided to jump back in with a new tank. Previously, I had a couple different mixed LPS/Softie mixed reefs.
I decided to go with a Marine X 110.4 which just showed up 4 days ago and is up and running. Went with the basic “core” package from Marine X as I already had some other equipment still laying around and the AI Prime lights should work fine for quite a while with planning to run just LPS and softies again for at least a couple years.
Prior to setting the tank up, I had taken the majority of my old dried out and long dead live rock from my previous tanks along with about 40 lbs of new dry Marco rock and had it curing/cycling in a big bin for about a month. It was quite a long cycle that took foreeeevvvver to start dropping nitrite levels. Ammonia cleared up in about 2 weeks with the addition of Dr. Tims, but I’m assuming as the old dead rock was still full of organic that were breaking down, the old rocks were probably leaching out ammonia about as fast as the bacteria could convert it and kept nitrite pegged for quite a while before starting to convert to nitrates.
When I got the new tank set up and running, I did most of my aquascaping wet or at least partially wet to try and maintain as much of the bacteria in the rocks as possible, but I’m running another batch of Dr. Tims just to be safe. So far, it seems like things are mostly in tact as after dosing the tank to 2ppm ammonia on Friday afternoon, I’m already back to nearly 0 ammonia and just a slight haze of nitrite on the test.
I’ve got an order of a couple clowns, light clean up crew and copepods+phyto cued up for next week once I can confirm my cycle is in tact.
Super excited to be getting back into the hobby and can’t wait to start seeing some life in the tank.
Hope to share some photos of the journey and re-learn everything I’ve forgotten since my last venture into the hobby.
