Questions on maturing tank

[Lotus99]

I may just be impatient. Please tell me if I am. :) I'm trying hard to be patient.

My tank is 120g, 140lbs LR, sump with fuge (with mud and macroalgae). It was set up six weeks ago. I have about 10 turbo snails and 6 hermits. Coralife Super skimmer 220 in the sump. It has been cycled about a month. No fish yet. Thinking about getting a fish to quarantine, but not sure if I should wait.

1. My nitrates aren't dropping. They're at about 15ppm. Am I being impatient, or should I do more water changes? I currently do about 20% a week to try to reduce the nitrates. I was hoping the fuge would be sucking some out. The macroalgae is growing pretty well in there.

2. I haven't seen a whole lot of stuff popping out of the LR. I am worried the snails and hermits wiped out some stuff when they got rid of the diatoms and hair algae (there were a lot of diatoms, not much hair algae). Is this another case of impatience?

[portjeffski]

Are you using R/O water to do your water changes?
Might just have to give it some more time.

[zoomfish1]

All sounds pretty much on track to me. Keep doing your water changes and trates will eventually drop more. You are prob ready to add a fish or two at this point.

Let the macro keep growing and it will start to do a job for you. BTW, what kind of macro are you growing. Chaeto seems to work best for reducing nitrates, but it takes a while.

Keep up the good work and thanks for the patience. I know it's a hard thing to cope with, you know, an empty tank, but it will be better in the long run because you had the patience to do things right. Congrats.

[Lotus99]

The water isn't currently RO water. That's our next equipment purchase, most likely. We knew we wanted to get one, but while it was cycling it didn't seem like a big issue. I know we have phosphates in our tapwater (about 1ppm), but there are no nitrates. So far, the algae hasn't been too bad.

The macroalgaes I have are grape caulerpa, Caulerpa nummuforgotthename and an unidentified macro that I keep meaning to post in the algae forum. They're all growing well. I hope to get rid of the caulerpas and replace them with something else eventually (chaeto is a candidate). My pod population is doing well, too.

We will probably get a fish or two for the quarantine. Possibly this weekend, more likely next weekend. Life has taken a turn towards the busy, and I'd rather be around to monitor the new fish in quarantine. I also have to run a set of tests on the quarantine, to make sure everything is OK. It's been set up a few weeks with a piece of LR, and I just want to check it's all OK before I get a fish.

[WaterKeeper]

Hi Lotus,

Removing nitrate can be a slow process. Even in tanks with a true DSB it can be a month or two before the bed reaches a point where it reduces nitrate levels.

I would say getting a good RO/DI unit would now be your number one priority. It will pay off in the long run as tapwater with a ppm of phosphate is far too high and will result in nasty algae blooms.

As far as Q-tanking a fish at this point it would be fine to do so. For want it in quarantine for a month and your tank should be in pretty good shape by then. Also, fish can tolerate fairly high nitrate levels. Nitrate is much more of a problem to corals and other inverts.

[Shagsbeard]

Test your "clean" water for nitrates and you'll never get below that using it for water changes. You need to harvest your macro to remove nitrates from the system... trim some off and toss it (or sell it back to the LFS). If you macro isn't growing, it's not consuming nitrate.

[Lotus99]

I just tested tomorrow's water change water. Nitrates are at zero in the new water. I'm guessing I still have leftover nitrates from the cycle. I had some huge nitrite spikes, and I suppose it's just taking a while for the nitrates to go down.

I will see if the LFS has some chaeto. They gave me the caulerpa and mystery macroalgae for free (yipee), so I'll see what they have today.

It looks like we'll get a fish next week. :D I'll see what they have today, just in case there's something I would like to reserve.