A few Questions

[mugsy]

Hello all, Just had a question regarding "Amonia spike" How high of a spike will you get during cycling or does it vary from tank to tank? And can you cause a spike by adding a piece of cured LR? I recently purchased a small piece of rock for my tank and my LFS told me to bring it home and just addd it to my other Rock right away. That night i ran a test and my readings which were good went from amonia 1.0, Nitrate 2.5, Nitrite .1, and PH actualy rose from 8.3 to 8.6 ! Tank has only been set up for about 3 weeks. By adding this rock did i just jump start my cycle a little? Thanks for the help I am New to this
:notsure:

 

[karajay]

I've learned never to trust the LFS when they say their rock is cured. Even if it were cured, it could have died off enough to give an ammonia reading during the trip home from the LFS.
If your tank was already cycling, it won't hurt it. The new ammonia will probably be gone in a day or two. It should stabalize on it's own.
Hopefully there are no fish in there yet.
For future reference, do not add LR to an established tank without curing it and/or testing it yourself in a seperate container first.

 

[mugsy]

Thanks Karajay I am very New to SW but one thing I do not understand is ...Why pay more for Rock the LFS says is cured? If the trip home can cause some die off, Then if they had just recieved a shipment the die off would be huge, right? :notsure: So is there actually any such thing as cured LR unless you do it yourself? To answer your question about the Fish in tank. No there is no fish but I did put 3 hermits, 2 snails and an emerald crab in recently,when i thought tank had cycled.

 

[birdy]

Sounds like thier rock must not have been completely cured to me. A small rock that is completely cured should be fine on the way home from the LFS (unless you live several hours away). Now you have a couple options, 1. is just to let the tank cycle again, shouldn't take too long because the tank was cycled once already, but your cleanup crew may not survive the spike, 2. option, this is what I would probably do, start doing water changes, get your levels back to where they should be, you will have to keep testing and doing water changes until the tank stabilizes again.