Bleigh
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My Tank Thread
So I’ve just converted a fresh water tank to a salt water tank.
On the 12th (4 days ago) we added live sand, live rock, salt water from the Lfs, and a bottle of bacteria. The store owner told us to come back the next day to test the water and for us to add fish. I was SUPER skeptical, but the store is beautiful and any opportunity to go look at his set ups, I’ll take. He kept insisting with all the live components that our cycle would basically be complete. We came back and he said all the measurements were perfect. We added two clown fish, much to my trepidation. (Side note: They fought for about 5 minutes, but now seem very happy.)
I’ve been testing ammonia every day and have had a reading of 0 everyday. I decided to test nitrite and nitrate today, simply to have a start number for my graph. To my surprise... I got a reading. My nitrite was .2, the nitrate was 8 and ammonia was still 0. We did a 10% water change.
I’m totally baffled by this. I’m assuming there must be a least a little die off in the rock during transportation, which would have resulted in some ammonia. I had been expecting an ammonia spike and definitely did not think I could have nitrites or nitrates yet. This is my first experience with salt water set up and thus live rock as well. Could I be so lucky to have the cycle nearly complete or is there something I’m not taking into account?
Thanks for any insight!
On the 12th (4 days ago) we added live sand, live rock, salt water from the Lfs, and a bottle of bacteria. The store owner told us to come back the next day to test the water and for us to add fish. I was SUPER skeptical, but the store is beautiful and any opportunity to go look at his set ups, I’ll take. He kept insisting with all the live components that our cycle would basically be complete. We came back and he said all the measurements were perfect. We added two clown fish, much to my trepidation. (Side note: They fought for about 5 minutes, but now seem very happy.)
I’ve been testing ammonia every day and have had a reading of 0 everyday. I decided to test nitrite and nitrate today, simply to have a start number for my graph. To my surprise... I got a reading. My nitrite was .2, the nitrate was 8 and ammonia was still 0. We did a 10% water change.
I’m totally baffled by this. I’m assuming there must be a least a little die off in the rock during transportation, which would have resulted in some ammonia. I had been expecting an ammonia spike and definitely did not think I could have nitrites or nitrates yet. This is my first experience with salt water set up and thus live rock as well. Could I be so lucky to have the cycle nearly complete or is there something I’m not taking into account?
Thanks for any insight!
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