New tank running for 3 days now here are Test results

[FreshSaltyGuy]

So how would you all read this crappy API test for Ammonia?

 

[ReefGeezer]

3 day cycle really? Lol is it because of my Australian live rock? I plan on keeping some micro algae mainly the sea lettuce and one other branch looking one in the tank. The rest on the sump/refugium area....is that ok to do?
Also, as I mentioned earlier should I still buy Dr. Tim's bacteria or no need if cycling is done?
Also, does this mean I can start adding CUC?

There really was no "cycle" as you are thinking about it. The live rock already had enough bacteria to handle the slight ammonia spike it produced and of the two fish in the tank. The macroalgae also used some of the ammonia. BUT... I would not keep macroalgae in the display tank. It tends to take over. It will run its roots where you don't want them, including through and around corals. You don't need to buy any bacteria in a bottle, including Dr. Tim's. I think you can start adding CUC if you like, maybe after a water change.

 

[ReefGeezer]

So how would you all read this crappy API test for Ammonia?

Zero-ish

 

[FreshSaltyGuy]

Zero-ish

Ok cool! Thanks

 

[FreshSaltyGuy]

There really was no "cycle" as you are thinking about it. The live rock already had enough bacteria to handle the slight ammonia spike it produced and of the two fish in the tank. The macroalgae also used some of the ammonia. BUT... I would not keep macroalgae in the display tank. It tends to take over. It will run its roots where you don't want them, including through and around corals. You don't need to buy any bacteria in a bottle, including Dr. Tim's. I think you can start adding CUC if you like, maybe after a water change.

Does this include Sea Lettuce?

 

[FreshSaltyGuy]

Also, if my tank is "cycled" how much water should I change out to lower Nitrates? It is a 40 gallon Tall tank? Does 10% work?

 

[ReefGeezer]

Does this include Sea Lettuce?

I think so. You will find there are better ways of spending your time than constantly pruning fast growing algae/plants.

Also, if my tank is "cycled" how much water should I change out to lower Nitrates? It is a 40 gallon Tall tank? Does 10% work?

The old school cycle protocol calls for a 30% water change at the end of the cycle. The goal is to reduce the nitrate that built up during the cycle. If you are reading 50ppm, a 30% water change will drop that to a more reasonable 35. Personally, I'd do 50%. You can monitor nitrate from there to see if the rock and macroalgae are reducing it, or at least keeping it steady as you add life to the tank.

 

[FreshSaltyGuy]

I think so. You will find there are better ways of spending your time than constantly pruning fast growing algae/plants.

The old school cycle protocol calls for a 30% water change at the end of the cycle. The goal is to reduce the nitrate that built up during the cycle. If you are reading 50ppm, a 30% water change will drop that to a more reasonable 35. Personally, I'd do 50%. You can monitor nitrate from there to see if the rock and macroalgae are reducing it, or at least keeping it steady as you add life to the tank.

Your awesome! Thank you very much for the help and responding so quickly. I'll test everything this morning before I do a water change.
Is there a calculation used like you mentioned to know how much water needs to be changed to lower nitrates *i.e. changing 10 gallons lowers Nitrates 15ppm? etc...

 

[ReefGeezer]

Your awesome! Thank you very much for the help and responding so quickly. I'll test everything this morning before I do a water change.
Is there a calculation used like you mentioned to know how much water needs to be changed to lower nitrates *i.e. changing 10 gallons lowers Nitrates 15ppm? etc...

it's simple math. If you replace X percent of water that has zero nitrite, you reduce the nitrite in the tank by the same percentage. Same goes for phosphate and dissolved organic carbon. Be advised that your 50 ppm reading may mean the range is somewhere between 50 and 100. If that is the case, you may not see as much of a nitrate drop as you calculated from your initial water change. Don't be afraid to do a couple big water changes if needed. I'd try to get nitrates to around 20 ppm. Think of it as establishing a good starting position. That's one of the benefits of a smaller tank... big water changes are easy to do and relatively inexpensive.

 

[brandon429]

ReefG has this correct

this was a skip cycle

we as hobbyists need to quit telling people that fish swimming normally are harmed, burned, injured when we can see plain as day they're not

our hobby can't fathom that cycling sped up legit just like dialup is now the slowest internet but internet given to us via broadband is still the same ends, it's internet with less wait time that's all. it's less wait to get what you want with each passing year across all human experience

reef cycling is this way too, allow for that / cycle umps

there are fiber-speed ways of cycling and it's the same internet just like dialup, only faster there's nothing negative folks can say about speed cycles other than made up info. The key issue is adding fish without a disease plan in place, new cycling rules tell you to mind that portion of your build.

your chances of having added in uronema are likely, not just possible. no bottle bac can fix that

**see how old cycling science kills fish by excluding the real loss risk***

they have us fear over ammonia that is just fine, and nitrite that doesn't matter. disease/never mentioned

however much water you change won't matter, you're not cycling you're reefing since day 1. your fish were never harmed. that's why they didn't look harmed.


FrshSG

please post a big clear picture of your aquarium so I can do a neat trick with that picture

 

[brandon429]

FSG

I would like to introduce you to the world of skip cycling like they do at every reef convention where 200 display reefs line up ready all by Friday with no fails, stalls, or inability to carry fish for 30 years straight.

Instant Tank Cycle

Set up my tank Friday. Placed a sizeable chunk of frozen brine shrimp into the filter sock to stop it messing up the tank. Saturday PM Ammonia is 0 Saturday PM added another chunk of frozen brine shrimp different area of sump. Added seeded live rock from other tanks also. Sunday PM Ammonia...

www.reef2reef.com

you just did that, your tank belongs there as a group example. your first sentence here was the tell: real aussie lr.

 

[brandon429]

Dom was correct here:

- I feel the OP is being scolded unfairly. It isn't as if they set out to be torture fish. They didn't say "hey... I'm gonna go get some fish and put them in an uncycled tank and let them suffer from gill burn... it sounds like fun-


The scolding was 100% incorrect, they weren't going to mention the disease aspect until redirected. There wasn't any fish burn in any of the examples provided/all very happy fish.

live rock carries fish

bottle bac and no live rock carries fish per here:

Bio-spira works great

I just started a new tank a little over a week ago. I started with all dry rock and new sand. I added a bottle of Bio-Spira and put fish and coral the same day. Never saw any ammonia and fish and coral seem healthy.

www.reef2reef.com

nobody's fish are burning, that's been fully made up for 25 years due to folks not understanding nh4/vs nh3 and neither did I until Dan explained it in chat to me fifty times.


*its neat to see updated cycling science being applied by others in the hobby, where we can call cycles unique to the way they were arranged vs a 1995 guesstimate method that has no actual relevant work threads like skip cycling does above.

 

[brandon429]

Where’s my full tank picture pls

 

[Cell]

10 lbs of live rock in a 40G tank will support several fish right off the bat. I would ignore a lot of these previous comments about being cruel to the fish. Perhaps these people missed the live rock component.

 

[brandon429]

I dont fault any web commenters on relaying what was told to them from cycling articles over the years. eventually a break from any ruleset occurs, cycling is changing just the same.

I sure may be wrong in assessment, attribution of outcomes etc but in the end we know how to keep attaining these outcomes reefers show in their posts for cycling: keep doing what they do, it's working tremendously well.

food only + wait time cycling, I find no fails to carry fish

dry rock starts plus bottle bac any brand: I can't find any dead fish in cycles after copious searching. the one I did find was doing two hour drip acclimation of shipped fish in an opened bag, of course it died from ammonia. from the bag

live rock transfer skip cycles, using any poundage of live rock: for sure won't fail, re: any reef convention's m.o.

 

[FreshSaltyGuy]

10 lbs of live rock in a 40G tank will support several fish right off the bat. I would ignore a lot of these previous comments about being cruel to the fish. Perhaps these people missed the live rock component.

Thank you that makes me feel much better. It honestly made me feel like crap. I have a total of 40 lbs. With 10 lbs being Australian live rock and 30 lbs being live Fiji rock that I hand plucked out of another hobbyists tank myself.

 

[FreshSaltyGuy]

Dom was correct here:

- I feel the OP is being scolded unfairly. It isn't as if they set out to be torture fish. They didn't say "hey... I'm gonna go get some fish and put them in an uncycled tank and let them suffer from gill burn... it sounds like fun-


The scolding was 100% incorrect, they weren't going to mention the disease aspect until redirected. There wasn't any fish burn in any of the examples provided/all very happy fish.

live rock carries fish

bottle bac and no live rock carries fish per here:

Bio-spira works great

I just started a new tank a little over a week ago. I started with all dry rock and new sand. I added a bottle of Bio-Spira and put fish and coral the same day. Never saw any ammonia and fish and coral seem healthy.

www.reef2reef.com

nobody's fish are burning, that's been fully made up for 25 years due to folks not understanding nh4/vs nh3 and neither did I until Dan explained it in chat to me fifty times.


*its neat to see updated cycling science being applied by others in the hobby, where we can call cycles unique to the way they were arranged vs a 1995 guesstimate method that has no actual relevant work threads like skip cycling does above.

Ya so I agree had planted freshwater tanks for 20 years with driftwood and all. Cycles many many of those tanks, but same concept whenever I used driftwood and dirt from an existing tank to build a new tank and then some of the water it's like the new tank never skipped a beat.

 

[FreshSaltyGuy]

Where’s my full tank picture pls

Introducing my 40 gallon tall tank. Thank you all for the help so far to get me where I am. There is still a lot more to learn as I continue on this journey.

 

[brandon429]

on pic #4 I can easily see foraminifera / living tiny gray projections on the rocks/some can be red or any other color and I can see a sprig of macroalgae growing up through a crevice in the rock and it doesn't look like you planted it there because its tiny and it's holdfasts are anchored up under the rock and its curving up towards the light out from under the ledge.

*I can't tell if that's a coral/ attached item/ very neat looking mass in pic #4 on the right but if you did not plant that there and it came attached that's solid benthic proof of being cycled.

Here's my mini rant just so this post lines up with the skip cycle threads we collect with similar examples:

though your description was quite clear/ I knew by sentence one it was a skip cycle setup/ some folks get that part wrong and they call even painted dry rock/ live rock as a catch-all phrase. if we tell those folks dry rock is skip cycle just because it's painted purple, they could begin with a dead cycle and not be ready for life/the tank would crash

so over time we learned to look for benthic /bottom-dwelling attached organisms as proof of submersion and in that analysis we can also verify a cycle, because what you have is 100% real coralline and living foraminiferan animals that can reproduce elsewhere, bend in the currents to catch food etc. painted live rock does not come with threadlike fake forams lol, it's just painted.

the reason I was detailing the pics for things that came in on the rock, that you didn't add, is because we can verify if a reef tank is cycled at least regarding live rock skip cycling off a tank pic that reveals these details.


you have a pure skip cycle tank and apparently Aussie live rock is the best there is on the planet.

here in the states we all can get quite good ocean shipped rock but it comes with so many attachments unsuited to reefs, the curing period can be quite varying


but not for you, I had to struggle to find benthics since that much coralline could easily be painted, but its not

your real coralline is the single most telling aspect of that entire tank, its a skip cycle ready on minute one when you set the rocks in the water.

API has read all kinds of things in tanks just like yours, and the test was varying the whole time it was not the cycle. any animals you add stay alive, because that's a day one reef, and anything a nondigital test says can't be believed always but you sure have a clean test above/that's zero on api standards.

if this was light green, everyone would hate my summary lol but it would still be the same. we only got lucky your test kit is so yellow, if it was slightly green everyone but cell would be up in arms about it stalled/dying off.

 

[FreshSaltyGuy]

on pic #4 I can easily see foraminifera / living tiny gray projections on the rocks/some can be red or any other color and I can see a sprig of macroalgae growing up through a crevice in the rock and it doesn't look like you planted it there because its tiny and it's holdfasts are anchored up under the rock and its curving up towards the light out from under the ledge.

*I can't tell if that's a coral/ attached item/ very neat looking mass in pic #4 on the right but if you did not plant that there and it came attached that's solid benthic proof of being cycled.

Here's my mini rant just so this post lines up with the skip cycle threads we collect with similar examples:

though your description was quite clear/ I knew by sentence one it was a skip cycle setup/ some folks get that part wrong and they call even painted dry rock/ live rock as a catch-all phrase. if we tell those folks dry rock is skip cycle just because it's painted purple, they could begin with a dead cycle and not be ready for life/the tank would crash

so over time we learned to look for benthic /bottom-dwelling attached organisms as proof of submersion and in that analysis we can also very a cycle, because what you have is 100% real coralline and living foraminiferan animals that can reproduce elsewhere, bend in the currents to catch food etc. painted live rock does not come with threadlike fake forams lol, it's just painted.

the reason I was detailing the pics for things that came in on the rock, that you didn't add, is because we can verify if a reef tank is cycled at least regarding live rock skip cycling off a tank pic that reveals these details.


you have a pure skip cycle tank and apparently Aussie live rock is the best there is on the planet.

here in the states we all can get quite good ocean shipped rock but it comes with so many attachments unsuited to reefs, the curing period can be quite varying


but not for you, I had to struggle to find benthics since that much coralline could easily be painted, but its not

your real coralline is the single most telling aspect of that entire tank, its a skip cycle ready on minute one when you set the rocks in the water.

Wow very awesome information and I truly appreciate you taking the time to explain it better than I ever could lol. I haven't planted ANYTHING on the rock yet so what you see is what the rock came with and I'm totally happy! My fish are healthy and happy and very hungry when I feed them which is usually once a day and I ensure not to overfeed. I do have "some" bristleworms" (yes for some it's controversial), not very many as I believe I did a great job clearing the Fiji rock of them, but hey that's how nature works and I'm not going to mess it up. I'm trying to get this tank to a place that it is self sustaining other than feeding. I KNOW I will get there because all the research I do tells me I can get there, it will just take time. Once I'm comfortable and have water parameters dialed in and very stable I'll look to add some softies maybe in a couple months, maybe sooner. I did see a rock with about 30 Zoas on it at my local Petco and it looked very healthy and it was only $24.99 I ALMOST bought it, but held back until this tank is truly ready.
Also, here is a pic I posted the other day of another hitchhiker on my Australian live rock.
ONE question I do have is this. I have the Noo-psyche K7 Pro II light and loving it, but how long should I run it daily and at what %? I'm currently using the built in LPS/SPS setting, but my Coraline looks to be turning white in some areas of the rock? Do you see that? Is it because I have the lighting to bright or on to long?

Thank you so very much again and glad I found this place!