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Cycling question


KG84

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Hey fellow reefers, I am new to he hobby and have a question about the cycling process. I purchased a 20 gallon innovative nuvo and have been running my tank for 24 days now. I still have not experienced a spike in ammonia, nitrite, or nitrate. I purchased 20 lbs of cured live rock and about 30 lbs of live sand from my LFs. The rock was out of the LFS tanks for about 5 hours max before I placed them into my tank. About a week after the initial tank set up there was still no ammonia spike or readings so I purchased a small clown fish to try and speed up the cycle. Also I have been doing weekly 25% water changes since the set up and have been running my lights for 9 hours a day. I also experienced a brown hair like algae bloom for about a week, after adding the clown fish, but quickly dissipated after adding 3 turbo snails. My question is... Is it possible my tank already possesses the nitrifying bacteria because of the cured live rock or should I continue to wait for spikes?? Every other water parameter(calcium, ph, phosphates, etc) seems to be right on the money. Not sure if it matters but I'm also running chemipure blue in the media basket.. Please help and thanks in advance!!

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An ammonia spike isn't required. If the live rock from the LFS was fully cured (and it looks like it was), then it already had/has established nitrifying bacteria on it. Since there wasn't a spike, there wasn't an excess of dead organics breaking down which could cause an ammonia spike.

 

By adding the clownfish, you've increased the bio-load. And since this didn't cause a spike either, the bio-filter was able to adjust to the new ammonia production without becoming overwhelmed.

 

Now that you have livestock in your tank, you don't want to overload the bio-filter (resulting in an ammonia spike, which would be dangerous to your existing livestock). So just continue to slowly add more livestock over time (giving the bio-filter enough time to adjust to the new bio-loads).

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Awesome, thanks for the response Seabass. I had a feeling my rock had the bacteria but needed confirmation from a way more experienced reefer. Thanks again!

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You might play with your water change schedule a little. Maybe try weekly 10 or 15% water changes for awhile and see how it goes (you can always increase it again if nitrate starts creeping up too high).

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