Cycle happening in established tank!

[ocikitty]

I have a 90 gallon FOWLR tank that is well established. I have had the tank for 4 years and a year ago I switched from a larger cc to aragonite and also went from a canister filter to a 20 gallon sump.
I have a turbofloater protein skimmer
about 100 pounds of live rock
3 green ghromis
1yellow tang
1 regal tang
1 engineer goby
1 psuedo chromis
snails and crabs
I hate to say this but I neglected my tank for a while and let a lot of algae accumulate. A couple of weeks ago I cleaned the tank and got all of the algae scraped off and cleaned up. Did a 15 gallon water change. I tested my ph (this was the only test I had left) and it was high. Ordered a new testing kit (Red Sea Marine Lab). When it got here a couple of days later I tested ph/alk, ammonia, nitrites and nitrates. Ph was 8.3 and alk was normal. Nitrates were very high (dark red) 50-250p.p.m. Nitrites were 0 and ammonia was 0. Tested again the next day and nitrates were still high but now ammonia was .25 and nitrites were 0.05. Did another 15 gallon water change and no change in parameters. Did another 15 gallon water change last night and still no change.
Why is my going through a cycle? Did all that algae screw something up? One thought I have is that at the moment I have NO lighting. I have noticed that alot of my live rock has some white areas on it like maybe there is some die off of my live rock. I have noticed this though for several months. I am going to be upgrading very soon to MH.
Any thoughts? Should I just continue to do water changes. I did put in some Black Diamond carbon to clear the water and I run floss between the baffles in my sump. My fish seem to be fine, no one has died or look sick or stressed.

 

[dea_mt]

explain your cleanup crew a little more

 

[ocikitty]

I have hermits, 3 large turbo snails, some smaller snails, a couple of nassarrius snails (sp). Some type of snail is breeding like crazy and I have a lot of small, baby snails.

 

[pallan]

With no lighting i would guess you are getting die off which is causing the spike.
But doing a 15 gallon water change should make some dent in the ammonia detectable by test kit even if only to shortly return to the high level.
recommend get some lights
take water to LFS to back up tests or try another test kit
i had one that started showing ammonia in my established tank. it was caused by my placing phosban in the canister filter unrinsed the Brown dust that resulted created a false positive with hagen test kit. many large water changes never dented the level it always remained constant. probably a fluke and not your case but i like telling that story. good luck

 

[oceanists]

The die off on the rock could have something to do with lighting ........ it could be not enough water flow and low calcium also , your PH seems to be right on ...... When you scraped the algea off of everything were you syphoning it out ... other wise that could be the reason your nitrates got out of hand , and when they got to high it spiked your nitrites , and then in turn spiked your ammonia .... generally White on your rocks doesnt really mean "Die Off" its more like you dont have a sufficient source of elements for Coraline to stay healthy which really wouldnt mess with your water at all , other than what ever the cause off the coraline not spreading and maintaining is. .................... Im guessing it was your algea maintence that did it , run carbon , run a nitrate sponge if you can and do minor frequeent water changes

 

[ocikitty]

I used a net to get as much algae out as possible. Then I siphoned out what fell to the bottom. I will run a nitrate sponge and will continue to do water changes every couple of days. Thanks for the input. My opinion also is the algae, that is really the only think that has changed in close to a year.

 

[uberlink]

Originally Posted by Oceanists
...other wise that could be the reason your nitrates got out of hand , and when they got to high it spiked your nitrites , and then in turn spiked your ammonia ....
Some kind of reverse cycle? Can that happen?