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01/23/2012, 07:12 PM | #1 |
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Could i have missed it
so its been 8 days now and i have not seen a spike in my levels. nitrate is 0 nitrite is 0 pH is 8.3 ammonia is 0 salinity is about 1.026. i have a crazy amount of diatoms all over my sand and lR. is it possible i missed the spike i have been testing the water every 3 days.
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01/23/2012, 07:20 PM | #2 |
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Was there ever any ammonia?
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01/23/2012, 07:25 PM | #3 |
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01/23/2012, 07:32 PM | #4 |
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Diatoms eat (for the lack of a better term) silica that's typically found in some sands, they have nothing to do with the nitrogen cycle. If you don't introduce ammonia into your system somehow, the tank will not cycle i.e. no nitrifying colonizing bacteria will grow.
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01/23/2012, 07:32 PM | #5 |
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I'm also starting my first tank. But I started with no live rock only marco rocks and sand, added ammonia and waited for the miracle over a week. Finally I bought a live rock and started seeing both nitrite and nitrate the next morning. IMHO try adding a little ammonia daily until you see something, just make sure it is pure ammonia with no detergents.
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01/23/2012, 07:33 PM | #6 | |
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01/23/2012, 07:35 PM | #7 | |
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01/23/2012, 07:41 PM | #8 |
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Ghost feed the tank for a week with flakes or a few pellets a day or you can use the shrimp. I would be very careful adding pure ammonia from a bottle into the tank, the problem being the actual purity, if it has other contaminants in it, that would not bode well for the livestock.
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01/23/2012, 07:48 PM | #9 | |
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01/23/2012, 07:56 PM | #10 |
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01/23/2012, 08:40 PM | #11 |
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01/23/2012, 08:43 PM | #12 |
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btw: I tried ghost feeding for a couple of weeks and never saw any ammonia.
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01/23/2012, 08:58 PM | #13 |
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01/23/2012, 08:58 PM | #14 |
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01/23/2012, 09:34 PM | #15 |
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Any ammount of ammonia is what you want to start the process. Here's a pretty simple explanation of the process, disregard the part where they say to add Damsels to start the cylce, that's how us cavemen used to do it. http://www.saltwater-aquarium-online...gen-cycle.html
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01/23/2012, 09:55 PM | #16 | |
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01/23/2012, 11:40 PM | #17 |
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Just feed the tank any type of fish food, flakes, pellet, shrimp will all work.
Do you have live rock in the tank, or what is in there now?
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01/24/2012, 02:51 AM | #18 |
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01/24/2012, 11:50 AM | #19 |
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01/24/2012, 12:20 PM | #20 |
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brightwell microbacter7 is a great way to start your tank in the right direction, I use that on all my tanks. I have never started any of my tanks with any thing other than live sand and live rock, on my first tank I did the damsel thing(never doing that again). the microbacter is a bottled bacteria that your tank is making on its own anyways and it needs to establish a health tank.
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01/24/2012, 12:27 PM | #21 |
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just get some ammonia and dose it, if amm and nitities gone within 24 hrs
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01/24/2012, 12:29 PM | #22 |
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also how big is your tank? the cycle can take any where from 2-8 weeks, just be patient, if you don't have that then you will have a horrible time in this hobby and get out of it sooner than later and that is no fun and will make us all sad.
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01/24/2012, 10:01 PM | #23 | |
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