Finally Cycling

[LSUtiger]

Well, I finally have my tank cycling...I think. I placed ~10 lbs of LR in my 7G bow yesterday. Most of it has a nice covering of corraline algae. I got the LR from a store relatively close to me. I placed it in there and the tank was so cloudy that it was difficul to see the arragement, but in less than 24 hours, the tank is crystal clear. For the most part I like the arrangement, but I will probably move some stuff around a little. I want to try to hide my pumps.

 

When should I start testing for ammonia in the tank? A snail made the trip and is now in the tank. Does he stand a chance of surviving the cycle? He's been crawling around the rocks so far, and now I can't find him. Thanks for any responses yet again.

 

One more question, is there an easy way to clean up debris from the bottom of the tank? Things that fell off the rock are now on the sand. I probably should have dipped it first in some salt water in a bucket I guess to knock that stuff.

 

Mark

[HuBu]

your cycle should be short. as for the snail. what you might want to do is drop a few pellets of fish food into the tank to introduce some ammonia into the tank. but you shouldnt worry much. just test you water parameters in a wk and then add some more snails to clean up the tank.

[LSUtiger]

Do I NEED to drop some fish food in? I'm asking b/c I don't have any yet. Won't the ammonia spike w/o placing anything in there from some LR die-off? I wasn't planning on adding anything to help teh cycle other than the LR. Thanks.

 

Mark

[HuBu]

well you dont really have to, adding fish food is just a way to make sure theres an ammonia spike. there probably wont be a lot of stuff dying off since those lr are probably cured in the lfs tank.