New tank.. no ammonia?

G'day,

I've had a couple of tropical tanks before, but this is my first marine tank, so please bear with me .

I've purchased a new tank on Sep 28th, and unfortunately went with the advice of the LFS. What I ended up with is as follows:
A 220L tank (58 gallon).
A Fluval 405 canister filter.
10 mollies to start the cycle.
An AquaOne Maxi 104 powerhead.
A cheap but sufficient heater.
30 KG of coral sand (66 pounds)
Some bags of marine salt that they measured up for me.
The knowledge that I'll also need a protein skimmer + lighting before adding fish/coral.

They told me that the process should go something like:
1. Set up tank, filter, powerhead, heater when I get home.
2. A few days later, put in the mollies. Ammonia should start to rise.
3. Another week later, put in live rock. They didn't specify why this was.
4. After another couple of weeks start adding some fish.

After having the mollies in the tank for 3-4 days, it was evident that ammonia wasn't rising. The test thing they sold me (SeaChem AmmoniaAlert) was showing around .05ppm and it wasn't rising at all.

On the Oct 2nd, I rang another LFS who told me that the 10 mollies aren't going to produce enough ammonia for the tank, and that the Fluval filter will be taking out the ammonia with it's activated carbon.

This shop recommended I get some live rock in there to help produce some ammonia and speed up the process, so I went down there and picked up 30ish kg (66 pounds) of live rock. I asked him if it was cured or not, but he didn't really answer me, just saying it was the cheaper stuff without much coral or algae on it, so I'm not sure exactly what it is. I live in Australia, so it could be that they use different terms or something down here. It had a small lobster, a live mussel and a couple of small bits of live (or recently deceased) coral on it. I also turned off the filter as I figured I want as much ammonia as possible in the tank at this stage.

The problem is, the ammonia level has gone down rather than up, back down to 0 now. The ammonia has never gone above .05 - 0.1ppm. I haven't seen any nitrates with the test kit i bought ( Nitrite Test Kit - API ). I don't have a nitrite test kit, because they both told me that if nitrites exist, nitrates will exist after a day anyway.

Does this mean that the live rock contained enough beneficial bacteria to destroy the ammonia produced by the mollies + live rock? I'm not sure what's going on here, because from everything I read I should have a big ammonia spike by now, and ammonia levels shouldn't be falling yet.

Should I just wait longer and see what happens? Or should I do something to build up more ammonia in the tank? I was hoping to be able to monitor the cycle, but it seems nothing that should happen is happening . Any explanation as to what could be going on would be greatly appreciated.

 

live rock will remove ammonia pretty fast, but ammonia is the only thing you have to watch to know if its cycled. and 10 mollies is alot to start a cycle. they didn't have one small damsel?

edit: that was suppose to be isn't

 

So the ammonia going to .05- 0.1ppm and back to 0 in around a week means it's cycled? From what I've read it should take 4-6 weeks.

If they had a damsel, they didn't mention it.

 

that was suppose to be isn't the only thing to watch sry about that
yea it should take around 6 weeks, i think there is some stuff that we
cant even test for that needs to balance out, but check your nitrate, nitrite, alk,ph

ironic Australians have the biggest reef in the world but probably have a really hard time getting livestock(yes i know its due to evironmental protection of the reef) lol, thank goodness for the third world countries that dont have any environmental laws or we would be out of a hobby.

 

Ok, thanks for the advice. I'll just order some more test kits and leave it as is for a few weeks. Do you think I should leave the filter going or will the activated carbon disrupt the cycle process?

 

yes i do i would only do mechanical filtration, no chemical during cycling. get yourself a good protein skimmer its much more important then a canister filter in my opinion.

 

a good skimmer, a p04 reactor, a little mechanical filtering (filter sock or decent filter pad) activated carbon or eq. should be all you would need for you water filtration. MAybe even a denitrate coil. If you are doing a reef tank include a decent cal reactor

 

You need a nitrite , nitrate test kit also.

After the ammonia goes to 0 doesn't mean it's done cycling.
I'm on day 7 , but my readings are about day 3 of this chart:
A Typical Break-In Cycle
a lot of things can effect the cycle time... for example temperature... higher temperature will let the bacteria grow faster.

 

Thanks for all the info.

Regarding the Phosphate and Calcium reactors.. are they really necessary? I haven't read anything about them previously.

It seems there are cheaper ways of dealing with Phosphate (such as Korallin PO4 - Phosphate Minus 500ml or Filter Media [Aqua Medic Antiphos 500ml] ) and calcium, such as Reef Supplements [SF Kalkwasser Powder 300g] .

Are there downfalls to these products that make it necessary to buy reactors? A good protein skimmer and lighting is looking like it's going to eat most of my budget. I was hoping to have some coral and invertibrates.

 

I know you are excited about the saltwater tank but if you don't slow down a bit you are going to bring on a lot of problems down the road. You won't need a skimmer until that tank is about 6 months old.
You better learn to research what you are doing BEFORE going to a LFS because they are out to make money and talking you into buying things makes them money. 10 molly's to cycle...don't know where that one came from. Way too many fish in that tank this early.