150 gal corner build *Long overdue update*

Bump to the morning 3Reefers

 

So did you ever see a value for the NH3, no spike?

Since your nitrate is 10 you must have missed the ammonia spike. When I cycle from dry rock I add a pinch of dry fish food every other day, ghost feed, just to give the nitrifying bacteria a jump start.

 

I went from 0,0,0 on last Thursday morning, added StartSmart on Thursday afternoon, and was up to 0,1,10 on Saturday afternoon. I assumed (there's that terrible word again ) that the StartSmart pushed me quickly through the NH3 to NO2 phase. Maybe not such a good assumption...

 

Did you expirience a drop in pH? When I cycled my tank my alk was really low so my pH was all over the place which prolonged it because the nitrifying bacteria weren't able to reproduce.

By the way, beautiful scape.

 

My pH was a little low at 7.8, so I added buffer to bring it back up. I hate using the color strips with the API kit (I'm slightly color blind), so a pH monitor is getting ordered today. So, I'm not sure if I'm 7.8 or 8.1. There's not a lot of difference in those colors.

Thank you for the comment on the scape.

 

If you have nitrite and nitrates, then you had ammonia. You just missed it. I've cycled two tanks and both times I never caught the ammonia spike. It can be really small and brief sometimes.

Keep watching the numbers for a few days and see what happens.

 

Will do.

This tank is in the basement, has a cover on it, and a hood on top of that. It isn't "sealed", but there's not a lot of air movement either. I do have the PH's pointed so there's a lot of surface agitation for gas exchange, but I am not running my skimmer yet.

Can my oxygen level be low and stalling the NO2 to NO3 conversion? Has anyone ran into something like that before? I'm just a little surprised that NH3 going to 0 ppm went so fast and NO2 going to 0 ppm is going so slow...

 

If your less than three weeks into the cycle I wouldn't worry about it. My cycle took four weeks. For all of week three my nitrites were at five. Within three days they were at zero. Trust me, they will drop! Nothing good happens fast in this hobby.

 

LoL! Fair enough.

I took my time getting set-up, but I'm ready to stock that thing!

 

I can relate! Took me 6 months to get fish!