Tank cycling

My tank has been cycling for 1 month.During the cycling process, the tank crashed once(a coral died and killed everything including a turbo snail and 2 tube worms).About a week after my tank crashed, I found out that my tapwater's hardness was only 4dH so I added kH plus till my hardness was around 8-9 dH.Then I bought a damsel and a piece of mushroom(cause it was cheap).Being impatient I bought a Bicolour Blennie and a new Turbo Snail(there was a diatom outbreak) a week after I bought the damsel.The morning after I bought the blennie,it died.My nitrates never goes down and it stays at 50-100 according to my test kit.After I do a water change it will drop to 12-25 but jumps back to 50-100 a day after.What should I do?Have I cycled the tank enough?Will the mushroom survive?How do I lower the nirate level?I use 3 kg of live rock in my 4gallon tank.Help...........:*(

your tank was probably still cycling and you shouldn't have added anything other than lr and ls for the first month or so. Stop adding things to the tank, let it fully cycle and then slowly add things to the tank. Small tanks can't handle major changes and, if the cycle isn't finished, you are just making matters worse by adding livestock.

Also, keep an eye on the turbo. I have one in my 7 gallon and the little bastard is a monster. It is constantly knocking into things, knocking them loose and generally wreaking havoc.

Might have to go the escargot in wine and shallots route.

How long more do I have to cycle?There is no livesand in my tank only liverock.But when I started this tank my LFS did give me some of their tank substrate to help me cycle.Do you think the mushroom will survive this turmoil?

I would refrain from ######ting in the tank. Listen to Crakeur. You're moving way too fast. Your tank crashed initially because it was new and you stocked it while it was cycling.

Also using tap water is gonna lead to more problems, so get ready for that too. And 2 fish in an established 4 gallon is pushing it, let alone a new tank. You've got some reading to do. I just hope for your sake, that ESPI doesn't find this thread

I think my tapwater is alright, it has 0 nitrates. Besides that I condition my tapwater with Sera Aqutan.One more question, does the marine salt we add harden the water?My LFS told me that the tapwater in my region is only 4dh and I have to use a water hardener.I followed his advice but do you guys think it's right?

PS- I use red sea salt by some brand called PHram, it's made in Israel

Nitrates aren't the only thing to worry about with tap water. Most tap water has all kinds of nasty stuff that will cause algae headaches down the line. You'd do better to use the purest water you can get, like RO or distilled. Good salt will add most everything else you need.

Let your tank ride out for a while. When you finally add something, allow time for your tank to adjust to this increased waste before adding something else. It's slow and it's boring, but that's the way it goes.

no matter where you are, or what your LFS says, tap is an bad thing to add to a tank. some people get away with it, but the chances are that your tap is not pure enough for any marine critter. there is LOTS of documentation out there about tank cycling and use of tap. I HIGHLY recomend you do a good long search, so you can save sea animals lifes.

South Eastern US, GA., Fl., etc Publix sells RO water out of a machine for $.25 a gallon. Also, home depot is starting to carry it.

Check you local grocery stores. I bought a 5Gal. container from the guy who comes to work and distributes water. Have been using it for years in my SW fish tanks with no problems, no phospahtes.

SLOW DOWN!!!

Your just continuing a circle of death. Worry about your ph, ammonia, nitrites, and nitrates.....then we'll talk about dkh and calcium. Let the tank cycle, 0 ammonia, 0 nitrite, 0-15 nitrates, STABLE ph. The water is the most important part of your tank, don't skimp there. Rodi or di from LFS, ro from supermarket, distilled from supermarket. As far as lowering the nitrates go, either lower the bioload, or wait for the bacteria to catch up with it. The problem is never the high nitrates, its what causes the high nitrates. Don't buy anything else that is alive, do water changes(NOT with tap water), test your water weekly, and while you wait a month or so...READ, read, read, and search this site.

How come my water hardness isnt stable?I dont know if the salt I use will increase the hardness.The pH seems rather unstable.I do 40% water changes weekly.Should I lower the ratio?Is Red Sea Salt made by pHarm good?I use that brand but i still have to harden my water.

I stay away from tap water and just use Albertson's distilled. It contains no metals, nitrates, phospates etc.. If you do use tap water you should aerate it for a WEEK in a dark area to let all the unwanted material aerate out of the water and use tap water treatment to remove the chlorine and chloramines. Pollute your tank with some fish food every couple of days and your tank should cycle fine. Or you could even add some blue chromis damsels since you are doing consistent water changes and they will cycle your tank for you. Even after it cycles, don't buy expensive fish cause most likely they will stress out and die too. A good 8 weeks should make a fairly stable tank for some hardy fish(not coral). Buy a good book and you will understand how to maintain and start your tank a little better. The marine aquarist by Robert Fenner is a good one. He explains everything in detail.

Here is what I would seriously suggest. Put down the test kits and all the buffers. From this point on use ONLY RO or RO/DI water. Here is my reasoning: In a large aquarium concentrations will not build up as fast. When you are dealing with a small environment, chemicals become lethal and problematic MUCH faster!! Tap water has a TON of chemicals in it... They add all sorts of things to this water (including crap that is solely designed to cause dirt to clump together and fall to the bottom of the collection tank). I used to work at a "water treatment lab" (NO NOT WASTE WATER! TAP WATER!!).... trust me, with the # of chemicals put in that water you don't want to put it in your fish tank EVEN if you are using a water conditioner! Hell I even use a small amount of conditioner (prime) on my RO water!!

Here is the deal. Your tank is going to need time to go through its first FULL cycle, before it will be even remotely safe for anything. This process will take about 6 weeks... it is a long time to sit and look at rock in a tank I know, but that's the best way to do it. If you want to keep the damsel in the tank go for it, you don't have to get rid of it. But you should get the corals out (if you have more than just the one mushroom colony)... Let the tank sit for 6 full weeks starting now (I think that would make 7 weeks right?)... Don't test ANYTHING, every other week do a 10% water change (make sure you have the SG right on the new water, use RO or RO/DI to mix the salt with, you will be MUCH happier in the end). The two other things you will have to do are A) feed the fish, do this no more than 3 times a week and Top off with freshwater to replace evaporated water. That's it! There is no real need to check the parameters during cycle everything will be predictably up and down!

Once the tank is cycled, SLOWLY stock the tank (I wouldn’t put more than 1 fish in a 4 gallon unless it was something like 1 clown goby and a neon goby)! Ask around here before you add something (it is easier to prevent a problem than to fix it once it has already occurred). Keep an eye on the water parameters: nitrate, ammonia, nitrite, pH, and salinity (or specific gravity). You need not worry about alk, calcium, iodine, ect (don’t even test for them, for a while). Perform 10% weekly water changes! This will replenish the used trace elements and keep everything balanced. Do not add anything, in terms of trace elements (iodine, calcium, strontium, ect). It is very possible to "over dose" the tank (especially in a Nano!) and cause it to completely crash. Wait a few months, after you have gotten a "feel" for the tank, which will happen. It is weird; all of a sudden you will just "know" when something is off or wrong. Keeping a journal will help too (I'll actually be posting mine on-line as soon as Chris lets us up-date web-pages again). Once you have a feel for the tank, start using something like DT's Phyto. This is a great one to begin with (even though it is just food), since it will teach you how NOT to over dose! For, when you go over the amount your tank can handle it will create an algae bloom (better than crashing your tank with a supplement –think about it as a gateway dose to harder supplements), then start moving into calcium, bi-carbonates, strontium, iodine, ect.

Take it slow, I know it has been said a million times here, but it is well worth repeating: "Good things happen slow, bad things happen fast." I cannot stress how true this is with nano-reefs. For the bad things happen even FASTER when you have less and less water volume! *hey JAG is that how to set-up a nano report up on the web yet (I’ll send you a PM, if it is please post the link here!!)?

-hope this helps out,

Anthony

p.s. if everyone is telling you the same thing, then it is probably for a reason. We all keep nanoreefs, there is no place better out there to learn from than 2,049 people who have experiance in creating the exact same thing you are trying to create!

Just wondering if nitrates will lower my kH?Can anyone plz tell me if Red Sea Salt made by Coral Reef is good?Does it harden water?Does tap water make the pH,kH and everything else unstable?How much water should I change weekly while cycling?I change almost 40% cause the nitrates are high.

Listen: You have to stop worrying about your KH. Stop it! OK, when your tank is finished cycling you can start worrying about your KH again. Until then, put away every test kit except the ones for ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate.

Now, stop changing more than 10% of your water every week. I repeat, DO NOT CHANGE MORE THAN 10% no matter how high the ammonia, nitrite, or nitrate gets.

When your ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate are all zero, your tank is finished cycling. Unlike other kinds of tanks, reef tanks consume nitrates, but that process can't start if you keep interrupting the cycle with these huge water changes. If you have any fish in there, find another place to put them until the cycle is finished. Never put fish in a tank until the rock is cycled if you're starting out with live rock.

Now, please post the specifics of your tank: what are you doing for water circulation, are you using any other filters, do you have any live sand?

No live sand or filteration, only a powerhead.

Do i sense a little ADD here?

Listen to these guys, the more you try to change things during cycling the more trouble you'll be in. Trust me I was all worried about my PH, Calcium, Nitrates and kept trying to add buffers/kalk and all I did is upset the natural cycle of things.

I finally heeded everyone's advice, did weekly 10% water changes with RO water for three weeks and everything finally has balanced out. I still have some nitrates after a month & 1/2 but they too are slowly going away.

Oh yeah, why argue about using tap water when all you have to do it get distilled water from the grocery store or RO water from your LFS? RO water at my LFS is only like .50 cents a gallon.

Patience, Patience, Patience...

There is lots of good advice there kiddo, you can buy a De Ionizing filter for less $$ than a couple of marine fish, I have one by Aquarium Pharmaceuticals and I tell ya, I use it for Discus and everything else, including my rare Orchids that can cost upwards of hundreds of $$.

Cycle the tank, Don't do 40% water changes, that is a shock to your system waiting to happen, 10% monthly or if you like to mess about with it do a 1% daily change. Add live rock and some red or blue legged hermit crabs, maybe a tube worm too but NOTHING else and use actinic light to get coraline aglae growth, add fish once your Nitrates are down, with Nitrates that hi I assume you still have hi Nitrites which are as deadly as Ammonia. Get some live sand, and sit back.

For all the $$ you have spent, not to mention the fish and inverts you have killed, you could have waited 2 months and filled your tank with Coral and inverts.

Its a tough lesson to learn but a good one, I've learned this lesson myself a few times.....

Do you guys have any idea how long more my tank has to cycle?An approx will do. My mushrooms seem to be alright.The damsel is fine too.And the mushrooms are even multiplying and I have 2 colonies of mushrooms now.Even so the nitrates are still high.Do you ppl think there's any problem with the mushrooms in such lousy conditions?My tank has entered week 5 of cycling.

I suggest that you break down your nano, sell your equipment, go to your LFS and buy a goldfish or a Betta and be happy with that. I think a reef tank is too much for you right now.

I would say you are almost there, as long as your Ammonia and Nitrites are 0, thing is, some test kits are bad or inaccurate, I ran into trouble a few years ago, a buddy gave me some fish and told me what the water paramaters were, I set up a tank for them and picked the fish up, his pH kit said the water was 7.2 when I go the fish home I checked the bag out of habit, my test kit showed the water at a pH of 5.5ish I bought a second test kit and found out my kit had died.

Never a bad thing to have a back up test kit OR take a sample of your water to the LFS and have them test it for Ammonia, Nitrite and Nitrates, as well as anything else they will test for.

Usually cycling can take any where from 3 to 6 weeks, some times longer, sometimes less if you add a large amount of already aged tank water and Live rock.

Hello....by this time u would have learnt a real lesson. Take it from the old guards, be patient....

Don't add in any more stuff while u still have the shrooms. U said your water isn't that good and maybe the shrooms r just SURVIVING not thriving. Wait till everything is stable before u attempt to do anything else...And get good RO water...

And I pray hard DAVE ESPI doesn't find this thread now that I have responded, it will be at the top right now....

Dude, I'm telling you your cycle is probably No where NEAR done... I am not trying to screw with you, and I woudn't waste my time posting this info if I didn't think I could help you... You have been preforming 40% waterchange (even if only done twice) this is a big problem durring cycle -or anytime for that matter. You also had a lot of die-off, way more than people normally go through. If you have enough live rock in the tank I would say you are looking at at LEAST a couple more weeks (if not 4 or so) before you can even think about your cycle being done. Take eveyones advice: Don't use tap water. Stop checking your water parameters. And don't add buffers durring your cycle. Over correcting (buffers), major die-offs, and over water changing will cause your tank to re-cycle, and force you to wait another 5-6 weeks for a cycle! I would wait for 2 weeks before you check the parameters again!! Don't do a single water change for these 2 weeks. Are you using a "water conditioner" on your tap water?!?!?

I will NEVER give up on this tank.I condition my tapwater with some expensive water conditioner.Now I bought a few bottles of RO water.Should I do a water change?

no, I wouldn't do a water change... If you want do one, no more than 10%, in a week or so... In the mean time just let the tank do it's thing... I normally only do 1 or 2 water changes durring my cycle and I use uncurred LR... I don't recommend that you quit on the tank just go a little slower. If you have any questions feel free to send me a PM. I would be more than happy to help walk you through the process as probably anyone else on this site would... A lot of people jump into nanoreefs not knowing what they are doing, or worse yet with bad advice from their local fish store... The key is to correct the problems as you go along. You did the right thing by picking up RO water. It will be very handy with your next water change. Eventually you will replace all the tap water in the tank with RO, but as with everything in nanos the key is to do it slowly.

Maybe I should do a 10% water change cause there's a damsel and mushrooms in there.