Week 4 Cycling with Red Sea Maturepro, no phosphate, slow progress

[reeferdugong]

Hi guys,

i’m on my 4th week of cycling my Reefer 170 (43g) and I’m using Red Sea Mature pro reef kit to cycle. The kit recommends to use life rocks but i have dry rock in my system. I do have Caribsea live sand though (which i rinsed).

The kit promises a complete cycle within 3 weeks if you’re using life rock but will take longer with dry rock and I’m okay with that. Since week 2 i have almost no change in Ammonia, Nitrite and Nitrate.

From day 14 to day 25 Ammonia stayed at 0.1ppm, Nitrite 0.1ppm and Nitrate somewhere around 35-50ppm (it’s hard to tell sometimes).

i do 5% water change weekly as recommended by the program. After water change today,
I tested my water again and Ammonia is somewhere between 0 and 0.1ppm, Nitrite 0.2 ppm and Nitrate 35ppm.

The kit makes you dose Nopox, which i do daily. But my nitrate hasn’t shown any sign of change. I read that the denitrifying bacteria uses both nitrate and phosphate to break down nitrate. I have 0 phosphate in my system. Could that be the reason??

My second concern is that i also read that if you have 0 phosphate, dino will take over, which i really don’t want in my new tank.

I have bacterial bloom which starting to clear up, and i started noticing very small brown patches here and there on the sandbed.

i’m really hoping it’s diatom bloom and not dino.

Would you guys recommend to somehow add phosphate to the system? I have frozen food and maybe i could take the liquid that defrosted from it?

By the way, this is my tank and my sump:



Thanks for all the help!

 

[PeterC99]

Nice setup. Nitrate should be coming down soon from live sand. I did same as you but took about 2 months to complete cycle and nitrates to come down.

I then added Tunze Micro Algae Reactor and 25Watt UV light. Soon had nitrates near zero and no problems dinos or algae blooms. Bought both used for around $200 each. Did add new UV bulb.

 

[brandon429]

I have something helpful here, an entire life arc of a system just like yours dry rock, how we stopped dinos before they came, the hard times pages eight-11 lol and the outcome.

Cycling a new Biocube 32

Hello all! My name is Daniel from Florida and I’m starting to get into the reef hobby. I have been cycling my tank for two weeks now and logging it into an app. I have recently been gifted a live rock with some good amount of coralline on it. I also got some water from and established tank. My...

www.reef2reef.com

you are done cycling by the way. Any condition yielding that much nitrate and given one month in place has cycled the tank, no matter what your test kit reads for the other two. A standard cycling chart doesn’t vary site to site, or book to book, because that’s the max time water bacteria take time to set up shop, especially boosted systems.


everything that happened to Daniels tank including the good parts are coming, today’s update is wonderful and don’t skip to the end it’s a novella. every question involving beginning coral propagation is in place with outcomes


here’s how many params we focused on, to prevent dinos: salinity and temp, that’s it.

reacting to the others early on will bring dinos, feeding and changing water aggressively until Easter makes them not show up. Price of dry rocking vs pure live rock transfer skip cycle, someone else already did the lead up. Dont run nitrate or phosphate tests until the summer time and instead focus on clean protein cycling in/out there its applied for pages. You will drive your rock to become live.

 

[reeferdugong]

@PeterC99 thanks! i love your setup too. The tunze MAR is exactly what i wanted but perhaps in the future. Do you recommend it? Are you doing carbon dosing on top of that?
I’m still abit unsure if i wanted a UV though since that will mean getting a new pump for it, which also means more noise and more electricity.
But i can see that you feed the UV with what comes out of the Tunze? Or how do you do it?

@brandon429 thank you for link to the thread, i’ll surely read up on it!
My plan is to stock up a few fish and inverts, then move on to corals in summer when my system is stabile and when i gained more knowledge about coral keeping.

As of now, i’m just carbon dosing daily and keep my alkalinity above 8.4 using their buffer “Coralline gro” which is recommended by the program. I also do 5% weekly water change. Since there isn’t any lifestock in there, i can’t feed aggresively can’t i? Or should i ghost feed it?
I’m hoping that the denitrifying bacteria grow more to help with the nirate export via carbon dosing.

 

[brandon429]

It won’t matter if you add feed or not a cycle cannot be starved


if we were to open up a long strip of duct tape and affix it to the wall edges curved in to stick, holding the adhesive side out along the wall, in 4 weeks time the entire sticky surface is covered in items wafted. Dotted up and down the whole strip, hundreds of incoming nutrients


in my house six gnats would be stuck, this is why cycles cannot undo.

 

[PeterC99]

Look closely at my plumbing. Use Tunze Micro Algae Reactor pump first through UV then through Tunze MAR! One pump for 2 pieces of equipment. Really worth investment.

Noticed that all top private coral sellers in my area ran chaeto! I Seriously overstocked my aquarium with corals and fish and had everything thriving with this setup.

No need for carbon dosing - phosphates and nitrates zero with Tunze MAR.

Absolutely quiet - you cannot hear this.

 

[reeferdugong]

It won’t matter if you add feed or not a cycle cannot be starved


if we were to open up a long strip of duct tape and affix it to the wall edges curved in to stick, holding the adhesive side out along the wall, in 4 weeks time the entire sticky surface is covered in items wafted. Dotted up and down the whole strip, hundreds of incoming nutrients


in my house six gnats would be stuck, this is why cycles cannot undo.

thanks brandon, i guess i’ll stop worrying about it. Since i have the time anyway, and since my fish still need 2 more weeks to finish their quarantine, i’ll just wait another 2 weeks, then do a massive water change, then put the fish in.

Maybe before i put the fish in, i’ll use your advise in other threads and dose 2ppm Ammonia and see if it reduces to 0 in 24 hours just to be safe

 

[reeferdugong]

Look closely at my plumbing. Use Tunze Micro Algae Reactor pump first through UV then through Tunze MAR! One pump for 2 pieces of equipment. Really worth investment.

Noticed that all top private coral sellers in my area ran chaeto! I Seriously overstocked my aquarium with corals and fish and had everything thriving with this setup.

No need for carbon dosing - phosphates and nitrates zero with Tunze MAR.

Absolutely quiet - you cannot hear this.

That‘s genious! I was doing tons of research on how i can get a UV in there and was worrying about pump being loud and how to plumb it. The setup with Tunze MAR is the exact solution to this! Thanks so much for sharing

 

[PeterC99]

1/2 inch surgical tubing comes with Tunze MAR. Use that to connect everything!