Cycling My Tank

[Sinestro]

My tank has been up and running for 8 days now. I have a 90g +20g sump. There is 135lbs of LR (pre-cured by Vivid Aquariums Vivid Aquariums Tropical Fish Store in Los Angeles - How to Buy Live Rock (http://www.vividaquariums.com/Liverock.asp)) and 120lbs of Live Sand.

I have been checking the NH3, NO2, and NO3 levels daily (probably overkill, but I want to be thorough). The NH3 has been .25 every day, NO2 has been 0.05 every day, and the NO3 started at 2.5 and rose to 5.0 on day 4 (where it has remained thus far).

Is it too early to see the NH3 spike? Is the .25 NH3 the spike? Is the copius live sand and LR preventing the spike? Do I need to add something (ie a dead shrimp from the grocery store) to get the NH3 to spike?

[Seahorsedreams]

Yes, you need to add a source of ammonia. Either pure ammonia or a table shrimp .

[PreauxPhoto]

personally i feed my tank. i give it 1 cube of brine every 4 days for the first 2 weeks and wait till the levels settle down.

[Sinestro]

Ok, the LR has been in for 2 weeks now. I started getting the brown diatom bloom about 5 days ago. I noticed some hair algae (green, fine strands) the last couple of days (spreading rapidly). The cycle is not complete (NH3=.25, NO2= 0.05, NO3=5.0, pH=8.2, PO4=.1).

Do I need to do anything about this hair algae? If so, what?

[Phurst]

Almost all tanks get it due to increased nitrate (sometimes phosphate, although .1 isn't too bad) and a lack of predators.

Once the cycle is complete, you can add a cleanup crew, work on getting rid of the nitrates, begin removing it manualy, and maybe growing some macro algae in your sump (you don't mention a fuge).

[Sinestro]

Almost all tanks get it due to increased nitrate (sometimes phosphate, although .1 isn't too bad) and a lack of predators.

Once the cycle is complete, you can add a cleanup crew, work on getting rid of the nitrates, begin removing it manualy, and maybe growing some macro algae in your sump (you don't mention a fuge).

No refugium. I am anxiously awaiting the drop in NH3 and NO2 so that the clean-up crew can start their work. I plan on adding turbo snails, astraea snails and possibly a Sally Lightfoot crab. I hear lawnmower blennies are great for this also, but I think I will need to wait longer before adding one of those.

Do you think it would be a good idea to cut back on the lighting a bit, until I CAN add the cleaners? I'm currently running the actinics 12 hrs and the MH's 10 hrs.

[Phurst]

Well, it won't hurt. There shouldn't be much of a photosynthetic nature in your tank yet.

A lawnmower blenny was my first fish, great personality, but they only eat the shorter hair algae and film algae, etc. They totaly ignore the longer stuff.

[keyozoxmfc]

should i do the same on my Quarantine tank? i currently have it full with tank water and the bio wheel filter was running on my DT for about 2 weeks. my tank has no fish though, just LR clean up and corals. in my qt theres some liverock i was gonna use to seed the filter...but it was running on my tank for a while. is it possible that the LR is gonna seed it? i plan to probably buy a chromis first though just incase something goes wrong.