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The cycle begins

post #1 of 7
12/27/11 at 7:58pm
Thread Starter 

So yesterday I got all of the stuff I needed to start up the aquarium, I picked up 26 pounds of beautiful deep purple colored live rock from an established aquarium, I also picked up a 20lb bag of live sand. I did my first water test this morning, I tested amonia, nitrate, nitrite, KH, and pH. Here are my results: pH- 7.5. Nitrite- 0.1mg/L. Amonia- between 0.1.2mg/L. Nitrate- below 5mg/L. KH- 4dH. I read the KH should be up towards 8-10 degrees dH so I added some buffer to slowly bring it up. My question is this, should I be seeing a huge spike in ammonia right away or will it stay low due to the cured live rock and live sand.

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post #2 of 7
12/27/11 at 8:35pm

did you also use old water from a tank or new water if so what type? how long has it been up and running...what type of filtration, what size tank, all that other good stuff....

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post #3 of 7
12/27/11 at 8:46pm
Thread Starter 

I used pre mixed salt water from the same store, they use RO/DI water for everything, it has been running since last night around 7:30. I have the water filtering through a protein skimmer and a biological and mechanical filter located at the back of the tank using a built in overflow. 24 gallon tank, and eventually I want to have a reef tank.

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post #4 of 7
12/27/11 at 8:54pm

if you want to speed up the cycle process get a small piece of raw shrimp and put it in there...then test for your spikes...imo you dont need to run the protein skimmer until you have a bio load...ill put money on it that you're going to upgrade to a bigger tank so make sure what you want to do before you dump a bunch of money on the tank you have now that way you dont have to re invest in bigger equipment later but that's my 2 cents b/c that's what happend to me...also imo you need more rock and more ls...but that's just me

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post #5 of 7
12/28/11 at 12:13pm

ph 7.5 ? you might want to retest that

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post #6 of 7
12/28/11 at 6:02pm
Thread Starter 

I did retest it and it came out the same, so I bought some pH buffer and I haven't tested since.

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post #7 of 7
12/29/11 at 1:25am

Good work i like the experiment but do you test the fresh water or mud water i am sure you will got different results of both water ...

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