New Fluval 13.5 - GHA during cycling

[Captain45]

My Fluval 13.5 has been cycling for about 10 days using well established LR and new live sand. Filtration is just filter floss in chambers 1 and 2 via intank media basket. No chem filtration

 

I tested water at 7 days in (salifert tests) and was at:

 

Ammonia 0.10 to 0.25

Nitrites 0.05

Nitrates so low basically undetectable. 

Sal 1.025

Temp 77

Ph 8.3

Phosphates not sure.

 

Flow is a Sicce .5 on return. Stock return nozzles, one agitating surface water, one down towards LR.

 

Never saw any diatoms but I'm starting to see a bit of green hair algae pop up on the LR and now on the sand bed. Tested everything again today and Amm/Nit/Nitrates are all basically undetectable. Did I cycle and just never notice it?

 

I might have been running stock lighting too long. I'm cutting back to maybe 6 hours starting today. 

 

I don't have any corals or fish, just a hitch hiker collonista snail, asterina starfish (haven't seen In days though) some Colonial hydroids, and one hell of a big bristle worm, he's about 6 inches and poops everywhere. 

 

What do you guys think, should I add some cuc? Should I siphon sandbed lightly to remove GHA and bristleworm poop and replace with new saltwater that happens tog et remove during that siphoning? Should I go for a full on 20% water change. Should I just manually stir up the sand bed without siphoning? Should I just do nothing and reduce light and let nature do its thing? 

 

Ideas would be appreciated. Id like to get ahead of the problem before its a real problem. 

Heres the GHA on LR 

[DevilDuck]

No need to run lights if there's nothing in the tank. 

[brandon429]

this cycle is done, its a skip cycle, you're already into reefing choices. You can't get any safer for fish by waiting longer, the rocks carried in full bac complement the minute they were brought into the tank. regarding your ammonia: if you had a digital tester from seneye vs the one you have, your ammonia would read in the thousandths ppm so don't concern over what your non digital test kit says, this tank isn't cycling. you are currently fallow reefing...moving rocks among tanks doesn't cause dieoff or loss of bacteria. your other params tested aren't accurate either, so don't concern over them at all. pull up any video from a marine aquarium conference, notice how they have 250 full blown reefs running all by the start date/ Friday/ and nobody's reef cycles or loses animals? 

[Ratvan]

I would look at adding a clean up crew since they will likely have something to eat now. I would start small if you can and add maybe one of each of Cerith, Nassarius, Turbo/Turban, Astrea 

[Captain45]

Thanks people.

 

I added some CUC yesterday. 2 Trochus' and an Astrea and cerith. One of the Trochus is making short work of a section of the GHA within a few hours of being in the tank.