Alk and ph durring cycle.

scrapdaddy · Mar 15, 2017

Ok so I believe I am in the diatom stage. I have been testing amonia and nitrites/ates and everything seems to be going as expected. However my PH and alkalinity are doing their own thing. So my question is this. The supreme guide basically says to do nothing to the tank till ya get Green hair algae. So should I be testing ph and alkalinity and be keeping it balanced or is that part of the ride????

brandon429 · Mar 15, 2017

pH and alk testing isn't required for cycling it's ok to disregard them, and nitrite too.

Though those params may vary, they don't vary enough to become antibacterial or limiting to bacteria

Even nitrite, though there are writings that state to concern over it, we just don't have to. Nitrite testing at any stage is the most unneeded reef test kit of all.

Cycling bacteria legitimately use alkalinity we can read in many of Randy's posts in the chem forum but they will not strip the water bare to make it a limiting factor. Those are more coral specific params and even then not everyone monitors them in smaller tanks, we know our weekly water changes will suffice.

brandon429 · Mar 15, 2017

If you ever want to make cycling as simple as possible, only ammonia matters. Even algae has nothing to do with cycling... cycling is about getting the tank to process a reasonable bioload by a certain timeframe depending on the types of rock used.

Maturation has to do with algae stages, diatom stages, coralline stages etc

scrapdaddy · Mar 16, 2017

brandon429 said:
If you ever want to make cycling as simple as possible, only ammonia matters. Even algae has nothing to do with cycling... cycling is about getting the tank to process a reasonable bioload by a certain timeframe depending on the types of rock used.

Maturation has to do with algae stages, diatom stages, coralline stages etc

Thanks for the info!!