What's your tank supposed to look like while it is cycling?

[meemmoo]

I know we have talked about the specific water tests we should do to see if our tank is cycling, but what does a cycling tank look like. I ask this cause mine looks gross. I am getting these white spots on my LR, and the purple algae is not looking as good as it did on day 1. Not to mention the green algae. I am almost a week into my cycle, but my numbers have not moved. SG 1.023 Ammonia= 0 Nitrates=5 and Nitrites= 0. Here is a picture of my LR.

 

[sato]

How large is your tank?
How much LR did you put in it?
Was the Live rock already cured?
It looks like there is a good amount of liverock in your tank, so if it was cured rock you may not even have had a cycle at all.

 

[meemmoo]

It's a 55g, 50lbs of LR 45lbs of Aragonite and 5lbs of LS, and I was told by the LFS the rock was fully cured. I put a raw shrimp in to kick off the cycle 2 days ago cause that's was I thought I was suppossed to do.:notsure:

 

[sato]

Heres my guess.
With all that rock put in right away your cycle probably happened on the first day. All that rock and sand basically gave you an established Biological filter right off the bat.
As for the crappy look, was the Aragonite the regular dried stuff? If it was it was just really dusty and it takes awhile to to settle and its settling on your rocks. I would assume that you arent going to be having a cycle as usual and pretty much give it a few more days to clear up and it will become very cloudy for awhile as all that 'dust' is still just resting in the tank and will probably flare out everytime something moves.

 

[acekjd83]

:yes: yep, you're doing it right. the shrimp just takes a couple days to really start giving off ammonia. if your rock and sand are mature, then they will have lots of bacteria that will completely devour small amounts of ammonia quickly, so you might not even see a spike under these circumstances. your tank sounds like your cycle will be quick, but keep it monitored and as soon as the ammonia and nitrites are gone then you're done "cycling" :happy: