Tank Cycled?

pmob7714

pmob7714

Member
Hello, I have had my 55 gal tank setup for about a month now. For the first couple weeks I had just the water with bacteria culture added. At the begining of the third week I added a mix of 40 lbs live sand, 40 lbs dead sand, and 20 lbs of live crushed coral along with 20 lbs of base rock. Not long after I dropped a piece of jumbo shrimp in there and started adding live rock. My ammonia spiked to 1ppm, but now is at 0.25ppm. My nitrites never went over 0ppm. My nitrates are now at around 10ppm. Brown algae is now starting to grow on and around the shrimp. I am going to take the shrimp out. I was just wondering if it is a good time to do a water change and maybe add a few small clownfish?
 
mopar9012

mopar9012

Active Member
sounds like you need to cure the live rock first if you had an ammonia spike after adding the rock. so you dont want to add any fish, most likely it will die plus it would be cruel to add a fish in a tank that is cycling live rock. also it sounds like you have a lot of sand and crushed coral at the bottom of your tank, if i caculated right you have 100 pounds altogether, that just seems like a lot for a 55 gal and the crushed coral isnt so good, if you plan on keep corals later you might wonna take it out because it makes it harder to keep nitrites and nitrates zero is im correct. BTW since you added live rock ( and this is only if the rock needs to be cured) then you would b cycling your tank again witch can take many weeks....
 
granny

granny

Member
When you are cycling with live rock-and you stillh have ammonia in a new tank-you do NOT want to add livestock. Your tank will continue to cycle-the next step will be more nitrites which are deadly-most shrimp need excellent water quality.
This is the most diffcult part of a new tank-the waiting.
Did you put cleaned live rock in your tank or uncured live rock?
 
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