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Cultivated Reef

Coralline bleaching...


dandelion

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Hi all,

 

I'm new to the hobby. I've had my 29 G tank set up for about a month now. I'm still doing a fish less cycle and I dose ammonia to about 3ppm when ammonia and nitrite goes below 0.25. Right now it takes about 48 hours for both to be all converted to nitrate, so I hope I am pretty close to being done.

 

I noticed the coralline algae on my seed rock is fading. It's bleaching slowly but surely. I took a picture last week, and today when I look at the seed rock it has certainly bleached more. Should I do anything to try to save the coralline? Some people on other forums says to worry about the coralline later because it'll come back slowly after the cycle is finished. I'm just wondering if I should cut short my fish less cycle and do a water change? After all 48 hours to get 3ppm of ammonia (and subsequently nitrite) to 0 shouldn't be all that bad?

 

Or should I pull the seed rock and put it in a bucket?

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all algae needs light and nutrients to grow.at this point you probably have low to no nutrients in your tank,when you add a fish and start feeding it im sure the color will come back

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I try to run it during the day and off for about 8 hours when I go to bed though I haven't been too careful about it since I'm still cycling with nothing but that rock alive in my tank.

My nitrates hover around 20-40 depending on how long ago I dosed ammonia. I thought that should be enough nutrients? I don't have a test kit for Calcium though

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Ideally, you'd prep your dry rock (with bacteria and dosing ammonia) separately. Then, when it's ready, you could add your live rock (to help seed more life). That way you wouldn't be exposing the beneficial life on your live rock to ammonia (which could kill some of it).

 

However, I agree with GaHillbilly. It is processing the ammonia, so you could stop dosing additional ammonia, start doing water changes, and (when ammonia is completely undetectable) slowly start adding livestock.

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Thanks for the replies. Ammonia was near 0 last night so I'm sure it'll be 0 now. I'll do a water change tonight and then get some peppermint shrimps from my LFS. They're on sale.

 

I have a quarantine tank set up so once it's biological filter is mature I will put new fish in there. Figured I should start off doing it right and save the headaches and heartbreaks.

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I'm surprised I do not have algae or diatom bloom in my tank. Maybe I added chaeto in my hob fuge in time. So whatever cuc I put in I probably have to feed them.

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