No cycle

[chrisrex]

As title state

I have no cycle on my tank. I'm new to the hobby and I've been paying very close attention to my tank, I'm 19 days in and I have not had any rise in ammonia nitrite or nitrates from day one, but I have lots of green algea growing in there, I threw a cocktail shrimp in the tank 3 days ago and still nothing,

Specs.
29gal ocianic Biocube
Stock pump
28.5 pounds of live rock
30 pounds of live sand

I put a snail and a hermit grab in the tank last Friday and the hermit grab doesn't seem to be as peppy any more I think he might be a goner
Anyways any help would be great

[reelfishy]

It is possible with cured live rock.. Still you should not go crazy and start adding a bunch of bioload all at once.. Take it slow and test weekly for the next few weeks.

[shaginwagon13]

Someone had this question 2 days ago..... read and see the responses.

http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2145620

[xCry0x]

Someone had this question 2 days ago..... read and see the responses.

http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2145620

Someone asks this almost every other day.. you would think with Google around people would learn how to use search engines..

[CalisFinest]

the guy said he was a newb and he came here for advice. he didnt ask you for snide remarks.

[chrisrex]

Thanks shaginwagon and cry for your nice remarks that are no use to me at all. thanks genuinely to others for your help and advice also I'm guessing it is recommended to do waterchages like I have been ?

[rpjaws74]

are you turning on your lights... it might help speed up the process if your not

[ek9vboi]

19 days is still considered early in my book. I would wait, no need for a water change. The bacteria needs to develop and grow, some will argue this. Give it a month and it might or might not.

[shaginwagon13]

the guy said he was a newb and he came here for advice. he didnt ask you for snide remarks.

That wasn't a snide remark. It was a point in the right direction to helping him find the answer to a solution.

Thanks shaginwagon and cry for your nice remarks that are no use to me at all. thanks genuinely to others for your help and advice also I'm guessing it is recommended to do waterchages like I have been ?

What are you talking about? I gave you the the link to the thread that had many different suggestions and comments on how/what could be wrong and how to fix your cycle. I wasn't commenting on your question, I was commenting that this question was asked a couple days ago, there were some good advice in that thread, and suggested you read it because it could help you.



I think everyone needs to relax and loosen up a little.

[chrisrex]

Oh sorry didn't mean to type your name in my last message, my apologies didnt read your whole message

[shaginwagon13]

Oh sorry didn't mean to type your name in my last message, my apologies didnt read your whole message

Not a big deal... I guess everyone is having a bad night tonight.

Anyways, that link has a lot of different trouble shooting methods to get your cycle going because you should already have an Ammonia spike.

Was your LR cycled when it was added to your tank?

[chrisrex]

It was advertised as uncured rock when I bought it and the rocks were out of water for about hour and a half also I started the lights out at 4 hours 6 and now at 7 hours

[Jocko]

Hmm something is not adding up here. It would be possible to get readings of zero if the rock was very mature and from a well established tank and spent almost no time out of water. But from what you describe I would expect to see spikes in the levels. Especially with a nasty rotting shrimp in there.

Let's try to eliminate possibilities one by one and see if we can figure it out. To start: what type of test kits are you using?

[shaginwagon13]

Hmm something is not adding up here. It would be possible to get readings of zero if the rock was very mature and from a well established tank and spent almost no time out of water. But from what you describe I would expect to see spikes in the levels. Especially with a nasty rotting shrimp in there.

Let's try to eliminate possibilities one by one and see if we can figure it out. To start: what type of test kits are you using?

I agree, you should have gotten your Ammonia spike very soon after adding the shrimp to your tank to kick off the cycle... are your test kits old? Is it possible to bring a sample of water to your LFS and have them test it for you just to double check?

[TjwBlake]

What brand of tests are you using? perhapse they are not readin correctly.
You may be able to bring a sample to the LFS and see if they get the same readings you are.

UNcured and out of the water for 1.5hrs should give enough dieoff to kick off a pretty good cycle

[Esteven]

I recently set up my aquarium (7 days ago) and also had no amonia spike. But I used seasoned media and rocks from my 6 year old Aquapod. One of the rocks had several recently hatched snails that come out of it and was sure they would be gonners but so far they are doing good.

[chrisrex]

That's what I figureed as well I should have had some spike by now I just bought the test kit brand new it's the API master saltwater test kit with the PH, Ammonia, Nitrite, and Nitrate I'll check the expiry date when I get home today and take a water sample to my lfs tomorrow to see what's up

[xCry0x]

Thanks shaginwagon and cry for your nice remarks that are no use to me at all. thanks genuinely to others for your help and advice also I'm guessing it is recommended to do waterchages like I have been ?

Sorry is this more use?

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=Why+is+my+tank+not+cycling

I honestly think this is one of those teach a man to fish type situations where there are so many issues/questions that come up with tanks that you are better off looking into the massive information archive that the internet is as opposed to asking a question and assuming the handful of people who respond have the right/best answer. Look at everything online, then if something does not seem right ask a very to the point question.

That said,

When you cycle a tank you want to add a source of ammonia since the cycle needs ammonia to start. This is achieved through adding a live fish (looked down upon), adding a raw shrimp, adding pure ammonia, or adding live rock that has a significant amount of die off.

Once ammonia is introduced denitrifying bacteria starts 'the cycle' of converting the ammonia to nitrite, nitrite to nitrate and if you have anaerobic areas nitrate to nitrogen gas which fully leaves the system.

If you added 30lb of live sand and live rock to the tank and until day 16 did not add any true ammonia source you might have had a small amount of die off as bacteria essentially starved through deprivation of ammonia and the remaining bacteria digested that. Or your live rock was not really live rock and was dry rock that was recently added to water and sold as 'live'.

Regardless, if you have a full sized shrimp decaying in a 30g tank you should see at least nitrate forming. If you are running a skimmer you might not see nitrate but you are inherently doing this wrong because the cycle is supposed to be skimmer-less.

Do not change the water until the end of the cycle, you want ammonia to build up in deadly levels so the bacteria can build up and convert it. When the cycle is done and you want to add fish then do a big change, get your nitrate down to the 20-30ppm range and add a fish.

Do not be surprised if clean up crew type inverts live through the whole process. I cycled my tank with bottled ammonia, knocked up the ppm over 15 and over a month it was all converted out of my system to the point that I had 0 ammonia, nitrite, nitrate. Throughout that process every f'ing hitch hiker crab I would rather have not had that came on my piece of live rock survived to terrorize my tank another day!

At the same time it is fully possible that with a tank filled with live rock from the get go you have no cycle and could throw a fish in day 1, that is half the purpose of buying live rock for 3x the cost of dry rock imo; the second half is the creatures that come with live vs dry rock.


Also, if you have a lot of green algae growing like you mentioned it means there is some sort of nutrients in your water that is feeding the algae. Algae can pull nitrate out of the water.

Are you using ro/di or tap water for this?

[chrisrex]

I made the mistake of
Using tap water initially with a primer additive, as of the weekend I bought a ro unit and I'm getting tds readings of 1-2 and I did a aggressive water change around 30 percent hopefully some of the algae will die off in couple weeks

[xCry0x]

It should be fine, I had a RO/DI and I was too eager to fill my tank up in the first night so I used tap anyways.

The real issue for me was all the phosphates leaching out of all my pukani dry rock.. it is going on 7 months and still leaching. Saved money up front buying dry rock, spent it down the road buying GFO to absorb the phosphates from dry rock.. lol

If you use ro/di from here on out you will be fine, the junk from the initial tap water load will get used up and as long as you do not keep replenishing it with tap you will be fine.

[chrisrex]

I don't have an ro/di just a ro filter (reverse osmosis) should be fine because I'm getting really low readings

[dzfish17]

Sorry is this more use?

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=Why+is+my+tank+not+cycling

I honestly think this is one of those teach a man to fish type situations where there are so many issues/questions that come up with tanks that you are better off looking into the massive information archive that the internet is as opposed to asking a question and assuming the handful of people who respond have the right/best answer. Look at everything online, then if something does not seem right ask a very to the point question.

That said,

When you cycle a tank you want to add a source of ammonia since the cycle needs ammonia to start. This is achieved through adding a live fish (looked down upon), adding a raw shrimp, adding pure ammonia, or adding live rock that has a significant amount of die off.

Once ammonia is introduced denitrifying bacteria starts 'the cycle' of converting the ammonia to nitrite, nitrite to nitrate and if you have anaerobic areas nitrate to nitrogen gas which fully leaves the system.

If you added 30lb of live sand and live rock to the tank and until day 16 did not add any true ammonia source you might have had a small amount of die off as bacteria essentially starved through deprivation of ammonia and the remaining bacteria digested that. Or your live rock was not really live rock and was dry rock that was recently added to water and sold as 'live'.

Regardless, if you have a full sized shrimp decaying in a 30g tank you should see at least nitrate forming. If you are running a skimmer you might not see nitrate but you are inherently doing this wrong because the cycle is supposed to be skimmer-less.

Do not change the water until the end of the cycle, you want ammonia to build up in deadly levels so the bacteria can build up and convert it. When the cycle is done and you want to add fish then do a big change, get your nitrate down to the 20-30ppm range and add a fish.

Do not be surprised if clean up crew type inverts live through the whole process. I cycled my tank with bottled ammonia, knocked up the ppm over 15 and over a month it was all converted out of my system to the point that I had 0 ammonia, nitrite, nitrate. Throughout that process every f'ing hitch hiker crab I would rather have not had that came on my piece of live rock survived to terrorize my tank another day!

At the same time it is fully possible that with a tank filled with live rock from the get go you have no cycle and could throw a fish in day 1, that is half the purpose of buying live rock for 3x the cost of dry rock imo; the second half is the creatures that come with live vs dry rock.


Also, if you have a lot of green algae growing like you mentioned it means there is some sort of nutrients in your water that is feeding the algae. Algae can pull nitrate out of the water.

Are you using ro/di or tap water for this?

Alot of folks will do water changes during the "cycle" to save some of the life on the rock. Letting the ammonia build up to deadly levels is overkill in my opinion. There really is no need to get the ammonia that high...the shrimp should do the trick.

[chrisrex]

So I checked the expiry date on the test kit it is 2016 so it should be good i am going to go to the local fish store and get them to
Test my water and see if they come up with anything

[Jocko]

Alot of folks will do water changes during the "cycle" to save some of the life on the rock. Letting the ammonia build up to deadly levels is overkill in my opinion. There really is no need to get the ammonia that high...the shrimp should do the trick.Yeah it's also bad from a cycle standpoint as the ammonia allows the bacteria population to reach epic levels. Problem with that is, as soon as the crazy ammonia levels are gone, the majority of your bacteria starve and die which causes another spike. Rinse and repeat. Your tank remains unstable for a longer time.

It's tough when you are new and using the Internet because it can be hard to tell the good info from the bad.

[chrisrex]

So little update the green algae is starting to clear up, the cocktail shrimp I threw in rotted and disappeared so I threw another one in there with same results with little white ticks eating at it, with this said I've still had 0 spike in any levels and every one for my test read I 0 besides PH 8.0 I'm going to do a water change tomorrow, other then that I'm a little unsure about my next course of action, plus I have my likes on now at 6hours and increasing it slowly, any advise is awsome thanks

[Jocko]

Have you taken some water to an LFS to be tested? That's probably a good next step.

If that confirms you really are legitimately reading zero across the board, then technically you can go ahead and add a little livestock. Maybe a tiny cleanup crew?

We can still try to hypothesize on what went on with your situation, but no sense in holding things up if you find out the tank really is ready to move ahead.

[ChrisL1976]

Kind of went through the same thing wit my jbj 28. Cycle seemed to last like 2-3 days after I put in LR. Had 2 days of slightly elevated AM and than everything flatlined. Been that way for 3 weeks now. Algae and pods growing nicely and CUC coming today. Lets see if Reefcleaner.org sends me 3 times as much as I ordered and what kind of bioload that puts on the tank....LOL

Do have a couple corals (Green Leptastrea and dragon eye zoo's) from the frag class and raffle at the MACI event a few days after everything flatlines, so water does seem to be legit readings.