yet another cycling question..... sorry

So... I finally think my tank has cycled. MAYBE.. ammonia went up then stay there for a bit then went away now I'm showing levels of around 20 for my nitrates. Does this mean my cycle is over? I never got a spike or even a reading for my nitrites. I did add more live rock in the middle of my ammonia spike so... yeah no idea. And if the cycle is over do I want everything to be at zero? So that calls for a slight water change right?
Thanks for any help

 

How long has the cycle been going? How big is the tank and how much LR/LS do you have in there?

 

knew you were going to ask that.... sorry. i have had the tank up and "running" for about 5 or 6 weeks? maybe? I have 40 lbs of live sand about 200$ of live rock (treated i think. they had it in tupperware boxes with running water in it. no idea how many lbs that is but its enough to fill the entire tank and stack it in a few spots) and I have 4 damsels in there too to "help" with the cycle petstore's idea.....

 

After the cycle is complete, you will see NO3 creeping up, or jumping up... Start doing somewhat large W/Cs then to remove as much organics and NO3 as possible..Don't want to start a new tank off dirty, do you?

Are you going to keep the damsels once the cycle is complete?

 

Don't worry about the test strip. The initial cycle is over when you see diatoms. That doesn't mean you can just dump fish in. It'll take a year or so for your tank to become fully established. Add fish one at a time (over weeks).

 

I like this. Pretty much how I feel as well. So many phases the tank goes through. Mine went through the diatom phase before the tank was cycled, but alll tanks are different.

 

I have a couple bully damsels I am going to get rid of. But the yellow tails seem pretty laid back. Or is this a bad idea?

 

Wow, that's unique, I havn't seen a tank with both ammonia and diatoms in it before. Technically speaking the tank is still cycling, as we would define cycling as a series of steps and biological processes which a tank will go through to reach maturity. After diatoms there's usually a cyano/hair (or eek! both) outbreak. Then there's a beneficial coraline outbreak as the tank begins to stabilize.

By the way I recently saw a 600 gallon tank set up the hard way (dump everything in and WC to keep ammonia below 1ppm). This was at a LFS where they could dedicate a lot of time and they wanted the display up RIGHT FREAKING NOW. The owner drove out every night around midnight as well to perform another 10% WC. This went on for a month and a half despite the use of existing live rock from a 280G tank.

Even if you're good at this there's no real way to cheat the cycle, to make it faster.

 

thanks for your help you guys explaining this stuff again.