Whoops… Nitrate all disappeared during cycle

[Roachant]

Hi,
I’ve been cycling my tank with live rock and dry rock for the past month give or take a week.
Ive been adding frozen mysis to create some ammonia for the bacteria to grow which has promptly disappeared quickly from the tank after a day.
Nitrates were rising a little, so I thought I’d toss in some chaetomorpha to control it.

Well the last few weeks the chaeto has been growing immensely and my nitrates are 0!

Did I screw up my cycle? I was starting to grow some algae in the tank but that went away and what’s left is being nibbled by copepods.

Im planning on adding my first fish this week and would like to add a piece of coral but with no nitrates it might not do so well. Should I try to get my nitrates up a little or leave as is?
Thanks!

 

[brandon429]

your cycle is done, vs messed up

nitrite and nitrate no longer factor in cycling for reasons you can see

only ammonia control matters, and your blended approach commuted all the requisite bac to surfaces. begin reefing, select a fish disease protocol. cycles in water do not stall, old cycling science painted this fear and the result was we bought lots more bottle bac-as wasted unneeded expenditures.

even if you used no live rock component, being fed + 1 month wait = 100% cycled even if cheap non digital ammonia test kits didn't agree. expensive digital ones would

there must be five hundred tanks on this board fully cycled who report zero nitrates, its one of the prime reasons updated cycling science no longer factors nitrate measure in cycle completion. nitrite isn't factored because of what Randy wrote about nitrite in a display tank back in 2006

the reason you'd do a large water change is to start with clean, low algae feed water. then begin reefing

 

[NanoSteam]

As brandon stated your cycle is done but only advice I can give is to not run chaeto quite yet. Stick to basic filtration for now and your regular water changes. Only start using other nutrient control once you see you actually need it. You'll run into more problems then good by over filtering on a brand new tank. You don't want to end up with 0/0 nitrates & phosphates.

 

[Roachant]

As brandon stated your cycle is done but only advice I can give is to not run chaeto quite yet. Stick to basic filtration for now and your regular water changes. Only start using other nutrient control once you see you actually need it. You'll run into more problems then good by over filtering on a brand new tank. You don't want to end up with 0/0 nitrates & phosphates.

I’ll remove it when I get home then.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

I'd suggest being wary of interpreting nitrate readings during cycling because with most kits, a little nitrite can read as a lot of nitrate. Sometimes 100:1. So the nitrate values may actually reflect small changes in nitrite, not so much in nitrate.

 

[LRT]

Hi,
I’ve been cycling my tank with live rock and dry rock for the past month give or take a week.
Ive been adding frozen mysis to create some ammonia for the bacteria to grow which has promptly disappeared quickly from the tank after a day.
Nitrates were rising a little, so I thought I’d toss in some chaetomorpha to control it.

Well the last few weeks the chaeto has been growing immensely and my nitrates are 0!

Did I screw up my cycle? I was starting to grow some algae in the tank but that went away and what’s left is being nibbled by copepods.

Im planning on adding my first fish this week and would like to add a piece of coral but with no nitrates it might not do so well. Should I try to get my nitrates up a little or leave as is?
Thanks!

As said already your cycled and ready for livestock.
What size tank?
What kind of fish do you plan on adding?
I like this new tank already. Id reccomend adding a small fish with basic clean up crew. Maybe a cpl hermits and snails. Feed your fish enough to keep a nice fat belly and let clean up crew clean up what falls to them its plenty sufficient. Cpl weeks of that and allowing nutrients to build a little you should be ready for that coral or 2. Main things is not overburden system for first few weeks and let tank do its thing.

 

[Roachant]

As said already your cycled and ready for livestock.
What size tank?
What kind of fish do you plan on adding?

It’s a 40 gallon breeder with a 25 gallon sump filled roughly 3/4. I’m planning on getting some clownfish to start and eventually getting some bangaii cardinals and a blenny.
I added some hermit crabs in there two days ago that I had from my old tank that I tore down years ago (they are 4 years old and still going strong!).

 

[LRT]

It’s a 40 gallon breeder with a 25 gallon sump filled roughly 3/4. I’m planning on getting some clownfish to start and eventually getting some bangaii cardinals and a blenny.
I added some hermit crabs in there two days ago that I had from my old tank that I tore down years ago (they are 4 years old and still going strong!).

Awesome. A cpl days of feeding a cpl hermits in that size tank is plenty sufficient to carry on whats needed to help carry a cpl small clowns along
Should start a journal id like to watch how this one plays out!

 

[damsels are not mean]

Sounds like the live rock was live indeed and the tank was cycled the moment you added it. That's good. I'm not sure you need to pull the chaeto, though. One of the advantages of maco algae is that in their nutrient export they never completely deplete the nutrients which can be a risk with many chemical solutions.