Starting to lose hope!

toughguy80

toughguy80

Member
Hi all,
My 110G has been cycling for a little under 2 months! My ammonia took about a week to spike and then begin dropping. Since then my nitrite and nitrate readings have been off the chart. I used LR and a shrimp (which was removed) to start the cycle. Nothing else has been done to my tank. For the 1st month I left everything off except a canister filter. For the past couple of weeks I've had my PH's and skimmer on during the day, off at night. For the past 2 weeks I've added in a little lighting with it, only about 4 hours max per day. I have brown algea everywhere. It's even starting to look like brown hair algea! I had a diatom <sp> bloom about 3 weeks ago. Any advice on my situation? I know pateince and I have been but I'm starting to wonder if somethings wrong?:notsure: Should I leave everything running like I've been or keep everything off? Should I start over and refill the tank? Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated :help:
 
usinkit

usinkit

Member
Have you tried a different test kit? Maybe false readings. When I cycled my 90 with 165# of rock it took 2 weeks for the ammonia and nitrites to spike and come back down. There was so much die off it spiked immediately. The nitrates at the end of the cycle was well above 100ppm so I did a 80 gallon water change and I mantain 5ppm now. Two months seems like alot of time for the nitrites to not come back to 0. I would test it with a different test kit or bring a water sample to LFS.
 
toughguy80

toughguy80

Member
Sorry, meant to include I tested the results against my 1 year established 29G. That tested at 0 Nitrites? I think I might do a 50%+ water change. Do you think that would help? No fish in there yet, I was gonna buy some shaving brush when I bought my clean up crew from here but since tank won't cycle that's kinda stoppin the process. Thanks all for the replies :)
 
usinkit

usinkit

Member
Are you saying your nitrites are at 0 (or is that your 30gl )and your nitrates are off the charts? If your ntrites came back to 0 than the cycle is complete and you can do a large waterchange.
 
dburr

dburr

Active Member
I say wait, sometimes it just takes alittle longer. Prolly depends on the rock and amount of shrimp and stuff. Do you see any little critters running around?
 
ashbow13

ashbow13

Member
I had the same exact problem with my 75 gal. tank. I waited about a month in a half to see nitrates and nitrites would come down and they never did. All the LFS said it just takes time. But a friend of mine who's really experienced told me to do a 20-25 gal. water change do I did and within a few days my nitrites and nitrates would and 0.0. I would say do a 30-40% water change and that just might do the trick for you like it did me! Good luck. I know its frusturating!
 
scotts

scotts

Active Member
What do you have in there. Specifically;
Did you start with live sand or southdown or Crushed Coral?
Was you LR cured or uncured when you put it in?
How much LR?
How much substrate?
Scott
 
toughguy80

toughguy80

Member
I used southdown, I have about a 4" bed or about 150lbs of it. I have 110 of LR in it at the moment. It was cured but as always there was some die off. I did this exact setup with my 29G and it was done within 3 weeks?
 
scotts

scotts

Active Member
This would just be my stupid opinion. But I would guess with all of that, basically, uncured stuff in your tank your cycle would take awhile. I would think if you wanted to speed along your cycle get a bag of 25 pounds of live sand from your lfs. This might help your cycle and also introduce some good bugs into your tank.
Or else on the cheaper side your might want to take some of the LS from your 29 gal. and put into your big tank. Again with the thought of adding some good bugs to your big tank.
Scott
 
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