worried about my params

hi,

just started two day ago my cycling and I am worried about my params. why my nitrate is alreay that high?

PH 8.2
Ammonia 0.30
NO2 0.25
NO3 30

my tank is 120gls, cycling with 80 lbs of uncured lr, 5 shrimps and two small fishes.

Kindly comment...

Thanks

 

Your numbers are going to be that high for a while, most likely even higher. I had my tank cycling for a week and my ammonia is at like 8 ppm. You just have to wait it out

 

And what kind of fish are they? Hopefully damsels? Because theres a good chance they might die

 

Take out the shrimp, it's not necessary and will prolong the cycle with that much meat in there. The fish will do the job, hopefully they are damsels, if not as already mentioned they may not make it. Don't worry about your parameters, there's no need to at this point, just sit back. Maybe do another test in a week or so.

 

ouch... because you are cycling with uncured LR. This cycle will take forever.

You need either A shrimp, OR a small fishy (or two) OR LR.

You definitely do not need all three... PufferChick has a thread on here... she's in week 10 or 12 or something of her cycle... uncured LR is a PITA to cycle with dude...

Two days in? I'd start over and not use uncured LR...

 

also, this is not proper use of ASAP

 

I have one damsel and one grouper, my two remaining fishes of my last 10 gls tanks. I will remove the shrimps and few lr and wait a week before testing again.

I though the nitrate would start to go up when both the ammonia and NO3 would be at zero! I batlled for months with my NO3 of my previous setup so when i see it already that high i freak out.

 

the nitrates, in this case, are not coming from the ammonia/nitrite break down from the cycle but are coming from the uncured LR that started their cycle some time ago....

otherwords, nitrates are leeching out of those rocks. Do some searches on the process it takes to cure LR... it takes a long time... I don't think you'd want to do that in your tank...

If you use this rock, IMO, you are in for a long and slow ride...


unfortunately, I feel the groupers chances are slim... do you have a friend or LFS that can hold it?

 

not trying to be rude but cycling with fish is the completely wrong way to do it. Yes it can and has been done, but it basically burns the fishes gill with amonia so high and everything else, it would be like putting u in the streets to live for 2 months then giveing you a nice home......Take the fish out and cycle with the rock.

 

Ok, so my fishy are out and I made a mistake but my LR are actually already "half" cured! Just found out with my lfs that he had them in his tank since three weeks and I didn't notice any bad smell at all!!