starting tank again help
- Thread starter shifty
- Start date
bdhough
Active Member
Yes, yes, and yes....
Thats plenty. No you may not have an ammonia spike. I would wait at least a week and if nothing shows up then you can try and add some hermits to start cleaning the rock. Even a damsel or two won't hurt anything if nothing shows up after a week. Keep in mind you may never show signs of anything. I've set up two tanks and they never showed signs of a cycle. Just make sure you don't buy 10 fish in 2 weeks and youll be ok. And im sure you know to be patient. One fish a week if not two weeks....
Thats plenty. No you may not have an ammonia spike. I would wait at least a week and if nothing shows up then you can try and add some hermits to start cleaning the rock. Even a damsel or two won't hurt anything if nothing shows up after a week. Keep in mind you may never show signs of anything. I've set up two tanks and they never showed signs of a cycle. Just make sure you don't buy 10 fish in 2 weeks and youll be ok. And im sure you know to be patient. One fish a week if not two weeks....
shifty
Member
i was thinking 2or3 weeks for cycle and then add more lr then fish if you dont read anything on your cycle how would you know its safe am i supposed to have air of some sort im not sure this might be a dumb ? but im a rookie should i clean my lr when it gets here it took 2 days to get here im sure some stuff is going to die of or do i just throw it in the tank as is there is nothing in there right now is the temp supposed to be set at a certain level what should the salinity read exactly i know lot of ? but im just not sure thanks for all the advice
bdhough
Active Member
Since you are initially setting up the tank no don't clean the rock off. You may inadvertantly destroy something that you want.... and there won't be anything in your tank for the "unclean" parts to hurt. In the future though you need to make sure the rock you add won't pollute your water. To do that just smell it. If it reeks then don't buy it and don't add more than 5 or 6 lbs at a time in a week in the future. I would buy as much rock as possible now before adding things to your tank. Like i said if after a week of adding the rock you don't see ammonia or nitrites at all then you more than likely won't see them at all. SOOOOO you could slowly add A fish or two. Start with something easy that you like and are willing to keep and go from there. For the bigger fish you're going to get wait a couple months before they go in so the rock has time to grow some things forthem to eat.
birdy
Active Member
If you are having 100lbs of LR shipped 2 day, then I would be completely shocked if you do not have a pretty large spike when you add it to your tank, Just start testing the water on day two or three and test it every three days or so you should see the spike in Ammonia and Nitrite, then the lowering of Ammonia and Nitrite and the rise of nitrate, When Ammonia and Nitrite are 0 and nitrate is below 40 and the levels stay that way for at least a week, you are done cycling. Then you will want to do a 25% water change to get levels back in order then you can start slowly stocking your tank.