Help identifying a Hitcher please and questions on my Cycling

S

salty in training

Guest
I think my name says it all. I am in training.
I am setting up a Oceanic 175BF RR with an Oceanic RR sump. I put about 150lBS of live rock and 100lbs of live sand. Aquaclear 250 Protein Skimmer with Mag 1800 for the whole system. 2 x powerhead 802. I painted the back black and it looks great. Today 220 watts of PC daylight and will be adding actinic soon.
I purchased about 150lbs cured live rock. The rock had barely a smell when I received it. It was air freighted in from Tampa and went straight into my tank that day. I will include pictures of my live rock and hitcher if I can figure out how to attach.
The live sand was in for approximately three days before the rock went in.
It has now been 7 days since I added the rock and I have been testing every day.
I noticed about .2 mg/l ammonia a few days ago but that was as high as it has gone. I am using a fasTesT master kit from instant ocean.
Should I by seeing higher numbers? This is my first tank and I was expecting all hell to break loose. I am concerned that it has been 7 days and today all water parameters are as follows.
ammonia=0, nitrite=0, and nitrates=0, PH=8.2, gravity=1.023, Temp=77
I will attach a picture of the rock and a hitchiker. The hitcher is small and looks like a feather duster but it's tenticles aren't feathery. They look more like an anemone. There are two in my tank.
Please, what is your opinions as to the status of my tank with the water parameters? and where should I go from here?
 
If live rock was VERY fresh and little die-off occured there would be nothing to "process" or decompose into ammonia. If live sand is completely "live" the bacteria in this sand bed should be more than sufficient to handle that load. With no input to biological cycle chemical levels, in theory, should not change. Some die-off is expected but w/ 100 lms live sand, you have a biological filter in place already capable of handling a sizeable bio-load.
 

lerch

Member
About your hitchiker, does it quickly retract into your rock when you touch it. If it does then I would say it is a feather duster. I have a peice of rock that has nearly 40 feather dusters on it and let me tell you they all look different. Several of them seem to have long straight arms with no apparent feathers on them. About your cycling, my tank cycled very quickly also. One wya I have heared to see if it is ready to add fish is to through in some fish food and let it all settle on the bottom. Wait about a day and then test for ammonia and nitrites. You should see a small spike and then it should quickly go down, this should be a very small spike. This will only work if you don't have any fish or hermits yet since obviously they would eat the food. If you are going to try this I would wait and see if any other members disagree with me since I have only heard of people doing this and I have never tried this.
 
2

25gator

Guest
does it look like mr saltys post pic. its probably a rock enemone like his :D
 

ren

Member
ok to start the cycle - since as stated you already have a large supply of bacteria - throw in 7-8 raw shrimp fron the grocery store and let them sit there for about a week. Not joking here - it'll spike the ammonia tremendous and get things going. The hitch-hiker now is it small like around a dime? if it looks like an anemonie (spelling) then I'd say it is an aiptasia - bad guy - I had 1 and ridded it with squirting boiling water onto it.
 
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