Tank Journal Archive

[mcclown]

So everything is going well but I'm starting to think I managed to get an insta-cycle. We have a lot of invertebrates, in the tank, and they're still doing well...spotted about 6 brittle stars, 4 sea urchin, 2 decent sized trochus snails, a few tiny snails, a small crab, an even smaller clawed shrimp, a few polyps (I think they're zoas) and one, flat, dark brown anemone. Everything seems to be doing well, although the lighting probably isn't quite good enough to keep the zoas and the anemone going (until I upgrade the lighting). We got gained a few brown patches on the sand, over the weekend but other than that the tank looks good.

I live about 10 mins from Aquaristics, so when I was filling the tank, the live rock was probably only out of water for about 2 hours...so we may not have gotten a lot of die off. I've tested with some Sera and API tests, for ammonia/nitrate/pH, that I got with one of the other tanks, I used to set this up. The Sera kits weren't dated and I can't be sure how good a condition any of them were in, so I wasn't trusting the results (which were all looking quite good). I went and bought the Red Sea Marine Test Kit, in case the Sera test kit I had was out of date and the values I'm seeing are below.

Anybody have an thoughts? Could I really have managed to stand up the tank this easily? I never saw any ammonia or nitrite spikes. Is there something else I should do, at this stage?

Red Sea Tests:

Ammonia 0
Nitrite 0
Nitrate 1
pH 8.1
KH 8

As a last note, I've been aiming to keep my tank running at 26 degrees, it's currently fluctuating from about 26.0 up to 26.7 (measured with a DS18B20 temperature probe). How does that sounds?

Here's some photos, just to add a bit of colour.

Our, very active, trochus snail

A bit of a crap photo...but here's the anemone. Do I need to worry about this one?

 

[Ben Daley]

I don't think you have an instant cycle.

Ideally, you'll see a measurable amount of ammonia with a hobby test kit and then see the ammonia drop to 0 within 24hrs. Nitrite and then nitrate should rise, and finally the nitrate should drop back to 0.

You might need an ammonia source such as decaying organic matter or ammonium chloride to kick it off - I've used "doctor tims ammonium chloride" and it works very well... some folks just add a prawn tail and let that decay. Regardless of how you get it, there should be a small source of pollution to basically simulate the waste from a fish.

Sorry but I can't make out the anemone from the picture. It's probably a very common pest called aiptasia and should be removed before it spreads.

I like your rock, looks like it has a lot of life on it :)

 

[mcclown]

I don't think you have an instant cycle.

Ideally, you'll see a measurable amount of ammonia with a hobby test kit and then see the ammonia drop to 0 within 24hrs. Nitrite and then nitrate should rise, and finally the nitrate should drop back to 0.

You might need an ammonia source such as decaying organic matter or ammonium chloride to kick it off - I've used "doctor tims ammonium chloride" and it works very well... some folks just add a prawn tail and let that decay. Regardless of how you get it, there should be a small source of pollution to basically simulate the waste from a fish.

Sorry but I can't make out the anemone from the picture. It's probably a very common pest called aiptasia and should be removed before it spreads.

I like your rock, looks like it has a lot of life on it :)

Yeah, lot's of life on the rock, I've been pretty lucky. I asked about the live rock in Aquaristics and they'd had it for a few weeks, so they said it should have been very well cured... which may be why I haven't seen much die off.

I think the crab I have is a gorilla crab, so I'm going to build a trap to try to catch him and I'll use some bait to do that, so maybe that will add some ammonia load to the tank *fingers crossed* I didn't test until 5 days after the tank was filled, so if there was any spike at that stage, I would have missed it.

I don't think my anemone is aiptasia but it may be a majano...I'll keep an eye on it.