Am i getting close to ready

[FrostyMountain]

Have had my 55 gallon up and running for about 5 weeks now. Have a hang on Back reef octopus classic 1000 running about 2 weeks. 60 lbs or so of rock, 60 to 70 lbs of Carib live sand, fine coral mix. Have been testing water regularly. About 3 weeks and had a small Ammonia reading between .25 and .50 ppm. That lasted about 3,4 days. Then just a slight nitrite .25 for only a few days. Nitrate now has been between 5 to 10 ppm for about 10 days, never higher. All other readings are zero. Ph remains constant at 8. I got a salifert KH Alk kit. !0 days ago showed 8.3 KH -DKH (hope I'm expressing that right) and 2.96 meg/L ALK. Same readings today. About three weeks ago I put a cleaned shrimp in the tank, still there decaying very slowly. Absolutely no algae, ( haven't been using my lights) I did a 20 percent water change 10 days ago.
My plan is to put easy care corals in eventually, along with a watchman goby and shrimp, a dartfish and a few others occupying hopefully different areas of the water column. No clean up crew yet but the tank is spotless. What should I do next, or just wait til Nitrate goes back to zero.

[Reincarnate]

I would add 2 or 3 snails and see how they do for the next week or so. If all is well then you can go ahead and start adding more livestock. Go slow though.

[madweazl]

Have had my 55 gallon up and running for about 5 weeks now. Have a hang on Back reef octopus classic 1000 running about 2 weeks. 60 lbs or so of rock, 60 to 70 lbs of Carib live sand, fine coral mix. Have been testing water regularly. About 3 weeks and had a small Ammonia reading between .25 and .50 ppm. That lasted about 3,4 days. Then just a slight nitrite .25 for only a few days. Nitrate now has been between 5 to 10 ppm for about 10 days, never higher. All other readings are zero. Ph remains constant at 8. I got a salifert KH Alk kit. !0 days ago showed 8.3 KH -DKH (hope I'm expressing that right) and 2.96 meg/L ALK. Same readings today. About three weeks ago I put a cleaned shrimp in the tank, still there decaying very slowly. Absolutely no algae, ( haven't been using my lights) I did a 20 percent water change 10 days ago.
My plan is to put easy care corals in eventually, along with a watchman goby and shrimp, a dartfish and a few others occupying hopefully different areas of the water column. No clean up crew yet but the tank is spotless. What should I do next, or just wait til Nitrate goes back to zero.

If you have a piece of shrimp in there rotting away and you have no ammonia or nitrite, you're good to go. The nitrate wont go away on it's own, it is removed chemically, biologically, or manually. The nitrate levels are fine for fish and invertebrates as is but can be reduced with a water change. Remove the piece of shrimp before adding critters.

[mcgyvr]

yep.. tank is cycled so you are good to start adding (but not mature yet so go slow with the additions)..
And yes.. start doing water changes to get that nitrate down and keep it there.
5-10 is just fine for just about everything.. Just keep it there..

[DePinchGonze]

i would remove the shrimp now, add bottled ammonia up to 3ppm and see if your biological filter can convert to nitrites then nitrates within 48 hours. I only say this because .5ppm is not that much of an ammonia spike.

[OrQidz]

Sounds like you are doing things the right way, good job! I would start with CUC, not a huge number of them because there isn't a lot for them to eat yet.