Being this is my first experience starting a tank from scratch, I'm a little lost on why I don't have any traces of ammonia after adding my live rock and it's been five days. From what I've read, ammonia normally shows up 2 - 3 days (is this correct?). Wondering if anyone has any ideas. I've also added food and other crud from my other tank in hopes of jumpstarting.

bump

Did you start with a lot of good Coraline covered live rock and live sand?

My test kit didn't really show any ammonia either, but i am sure it was there. Wait it out it hasn't even been a week, the first rule is to be patient. Just test once a week. You will see the nitrite and then nitrate switch at least.

Remember that it does take the food awhile to actually breakdown and start turning into ammonia.

40 lbs of fiji pink live sand. I did a mix of base rock from Reef Cleaners and live rock from LFS and my other tank. Roughly 80/20.

Answers to all your questions are right here:

http://www.nano-reef.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=227515

best-o-luck

Give it time. I did a 50/50 seeder/LR combo, I didn't see anything for about 2 weeks... and then I started to see ammonia. It is obnoxious to have great parameters for 2 weeks... you start to think maybe it is time for a CUC... and then your cycle kicks off.

Thanks for the input !

I removed all the filter media and turned off the skimmer. And I'll give it a few more weeks.

I'm seeing about the same.. so far I've only testing positive on nitrates.. no ammo or ites. So.. who knows. I'm still going to give it some time and see what happens.

Starting to get diatoms and other algae growing.. and theres a HH polyp that seems to be doing alright

I'll be watching this thread to see what you come up with as well

This is why I add a few drops of household ammonia to jump start things rather than waiting for food to decay. Two weeks....bam....done.

Xris the same thing happened to me. I didnt see anything but like 10 ppm nitrates for almost a week and a half. Then I started seeing some algae growth and after about 3 days later that is when I first started noticing ammonia. I would give it time. My dumb a** pulled the water sample for testing then did a 5 gallon water change, went back to read my test and finally saw ammonia. I hope I didnt screw up my cycle. I still have ammonia showing up though.

Patience it will come

Water changes aren't a bad thing, especially if the rock has a lot of hitchhikers. This is called soft cycling.

Good info, thanks.

My diatoms are bubbling like crazy now.. I'll test the params tomorrow

toss in a raw deli shrimp, let it decay

extremely bad idea. Decaying flesh will let disease-causing bacteria to proliferate and likely lead to huge nuisance algae blooms.

Pure ammonia or nothing should be added to the tank. You don't have to have a "normal" cycle to have a healthy tank.

absolutley, I never had any ammonia show up either, that actually can be a good thing (less die off) Give the good bacteria longer to build up by waiting and your first fish will thank you (and not die)

It depends on how you plan to stock.

If LR has been in the tank awhile, and ammo is reading zero showing the tank is stable, then live stock can be *slowly* added to the tank without worrying about ammo. The existing bacteria will ramp up at a pace to absorb the sudden influx of ammonia. All is good.

However, a lot of people get excited and start adding fish / inverts too quickly which *will* cause an ammo spike regardless of how much LR is in the tank or how long it's been in there. The bacteria have to catch up, and they won't do it quickly enough. If you take into account the already stressed fish sold at LFS stores that just got out of a styrofoam cooler from Fiji, then you have the high death rate.

So, I assume worst case scenario and tell people to just toss some pure ammonia in the tank, and then wait for the ammo to vanish which is darn near 100% fool proof.

Waiting for something to decay is the least efficient method because bacteria have to first grow and then convert the protein in the decaying matter to ammonia. It's awkward, slow, and just adds crud to your biology.

imo what i wasnt seeing any ammonia either so i added some hermit crabs which are freakin bullet proof and threw in a couple pieces of raw shrimp and let it set for 3 days now my tank is starting to cycle beautifully but im a n00b as well so i could just have beginners luck

?!? You don't have to have a noticeable cycle to have a healthy tank, especially if your rock was already cured (=cyled). Putting raw shrimp is a very bad idea, which I clearly explained in a post above, and subjecting hermit crabs to an artificial cycle is going to stress them.

Yeah, I've got to agree with lak here.. if you got away without a cycle due to quality rock and sand, then why waste your time and stress your CuC by forcing one upon them?

I was in this thread earlier; STILL never saw ammonia. Have had about half a dozen hermits and a few snails in there for a week now and they're still chuggin along just fine.

Will be testing params again tonight to see how its looking and probably add a fish of some sort in the next day or week or so

theres nothing wrong with using a deli shrimp to start your cycle.
thats what everyone over at Reefsanc do. No problems. Thats the most recommended way to start the cycle.

That may be a good example of group think, but certainly not a preferable way to cycle a tank. Even when I was fishless cycling my freshwater tank I stayed away from dead shrimp and used pure ammonia. The nitrosoma bacteria only needs ammonia, not all the other decaying material a dead shrimp will bring to your tank. I'm definitely with Lak on this: decaying shrimp is a bad idea. Pure ammonia or nothing. And preferably nothing if you are using live rock in your tank. It's just not necessary.

Talk to wombat on this one, who wrote about this in another thread. He get's paid to know accurate reefkeeping methods while working at the Steinhart Aquarium at the California Academy of Sciences. One quote:

The amount of misinformation given out by members of this site is mind boggling.

I agree... raw shrimp is so inaffective - if you want amonia just pee in your tank. That's what I do.

I pee in all my tanks and my friends tanks and even the tanks at the LFS if I can. One day I was at Sea World and well... you get the point.


Seriously - it's just as smart as the raw shrimp - in either case don't do it.

What you're referring to is what I've dubbed TNB... that is, typical noob behavior. This happens on all forums, generally from someone with <50 posts.

They read something somewhere from a member in one thread and spew that small bit of information in as many other threads as possible with complete disregard for whether or not the info is correct.

It's a self propagating issue, as other noobs see the first noob's misinformation then continue to repeat it.

If you're peeing ammonia, I'd suggest you visit a doctor right away.



Thanks, and to clarify on that quote adding ammonia in chemical form is something I suggest doing BEFORE live rock ever goes in the tank. Not during!

If you have livestock (including live rock) in the tank and zero ammonia, fantastic! The last thing you want to do is add an excess of ammonia on purpose! Leave your skimmer on, keep doing water changes, don't pee in your water, don't overfeed, etc....