Insta-cycle?
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 I went and bought the Red Sea Marine Test Kit, in case the Sera test kit I had was out of date and the values I'm seeing are below.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?
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 I went and bought the Red Sea Marine Test Kit, in case the Sera test kit I had was out of date and the values I'm seeing are below.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?