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- Jul 12, 2018
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I built ny display tank using mostly aquacultured live rock, with a few chunks of the fake "Real Reef Rock" (same rock they used in the BRS 52 Weeks of Reefing tank) to round things out. That tank cycled normally and the biofilter aopears to be working fine.
I set my fish QT up by moving a coiple pieces of the "Real Reef Rock" that had cycled with the main tank into a new 10g with a hang-on filter. This tank, using only the artificial rock, just doesn't want to establish any sort of biofiltration despite the rock pieces having cycled in the DT. It's been about two weeks, dosing with Stability, and nitrite finally dropped, so I dosed to 2ppm with ammonium chloride and 24 hours later ammonia is still reading 2ppm. The only thing I can think of is that this artificial rock just doesn't have enough surface area to support the bacteria I need. Has anybody successfully started a tank using this stuff? Am I just being too impatient? I'd been told that I could skip the cycle in the QT by using rock cycled in the DT, but that doesn't seem to have worked out.
I set my fish QT up by moving a coiple pieces of the "Real Reef Rock" that had cycled with the main tank into a new 10g with a hang-on filter. This tank, using only the artificial rock, just doesn't want to establish any sort of biofiltration despite the rock pieces having cycled in the DT. It's been about two weeks, dosing with Stability, and nitrite finally dropped, so I dosed to 2ppm with ammonium chloride and 24 hours later ammonia is still reading 2ppm. The only thing I can think of is that this artificial rock just doesn't have enough surface area to support the bacteria I need. Has anybody successfully started a tank using this stuff? Am I just being too impatient? I'd been told that I could skip the cycle in the QT by using rock cycled in the DT, but that doesn't seem to have worked out.
