I have a new tank and I believe it has finished the cycling process as it's been four weeks and my nitrite readings are at 0 and have been for a week but I still have a wee bit of ammonia. I haven't conducted any water changes, just the normal added daily water from evap as I am waiting for the cycle to be complete so I can do a big major 50 percent water change. It's a 215g tank with 4"+/- of deep live sand and just ornaments of ship wrecks as I have no desire to use live rock. I do have some small brown algae diatom blooms going on and I would really love to do my water change now. With that little bit of amonia do you think it will be okay. My nitrates are 5.0, amo .50, ph 8.0.
cycling
- Thread starter tsnipe
- Start date
Keep waiting until the ammonia hits 0. What exactly is the filtration set up on the tank? What are going into it when you are done?
Thank you Radley for your reply, I am gonna wait for the ammonia to reach zero first, I am trying very hard to hold off on the water change until the cycle is complete. I have a blue throat male teenager trigger, three pec clowns, one six line juv wrasse, one blue spotted jawfish, one bi-color bleeny, one orange-spotted goby and four yellow tail "hellion "damsels. I also had a yellow headed clown goby which I think is causing the ammonia spike as I believe it's dead because I haven't seen it since the first day I put it in the tank and the damsels chased it. I have a 215g sw with 4" of deep live sand, my sump is a pro clear 300 with duel built-in overfolow boxes and a 36watt uv turbo twist 12x sterilizer hooked up to my magnetic drive 2400gph pump. I use a 950gph magnetic pump also on a etss 500 skimmer. I only use a white poly floss on top of my double box of bio-balls that I change every week. I also have a canister with some carbon media and some other kind of media like puri-cure in it which just cycles the sump independently. Long story short, I had a 30g tank that crashed because the canister filter went dead so instead of just buying another one I put the fish in my big tank with the damsels, all are healthy without disease as I have had them for awhile so I figured what the heck. Then I ended up buying another canister filter anyways sooooo, I should of just waited to add the fish butttttttt to late now.
I do plan on later buying this summer a male anthia with five or six females and then later after that two female blue throats to complete my tank in the end. I don't know if I will keep the damsels or not, my tank is pretty big and gurthy wide so I might just elect to keep them. I will buy another canister for my smaller tank and have it set up as a qt tank for the anthias and triggers later for sure before putting them in the main tank.
I do plan on later buying this summer a male anthia with five or six females and then later after that two female blue throats to complete my tank in the end. I don't know if I will keep the damsels or not, my tank is pretty big and gurthy wide so I might just elect to keep them. I will buy another canister for my smaller tank and have it set up as a qt tank for the anthias and triggers later for sure before putting them in the main tank.