shadesatsetbreak
Active Member
- Joined
- Nov 16, 2019
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- 141
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- What state or country do you live in
- California
Brand new to this gig, let me outline everything: I received two boxes of live rock on Feb 7th, so we are going into our third week of curing at the time of this post. When I first received the rock, I had someone visiting so I quickly threw it all in a tub and let it do its thing for a couple days, with a 100% water change on the 9th, and another 100% change on the 11th.
Pulled all the rocks out and gave them a solid scrub on the 14th, I think. And obviously all new water.
Since then, my ammonia has been off the charts except for right after water changes. I'm using the Hanna LR Checker so that only equates to >3.6ppm, but I've reason to believe it's considerably higher than that. The corals and feather dusters that are on the live rock are doing totally fine, so I try not to worry about it.
I've not really been keeping track of nitrites because I also stupidly got the Hanna checker for that, and it only comes with a few sachets of reactant and it's ridiculous how much they cost to refill so I've just been ignoring it.
My water changes started at 100 percent every two or three days to now about 50 percent every three days.
My nitrates today read .12ppm.
So my rock still seems to be curing, or at least there's die off in the tank because my ammonia is still sky-high even with frequent water changes.
Lights are running about 7hrs/day.
I've been feeding reef roids for the corals every two days- they really needed it and have responded well to feedings...any tissue that was lost during transit is growing back rapidly.
Diatoms just started showing up. I know this is normal, but there's a decent bit of sediment and (detritus?) on the bottom of the tank. I wanted to remove the rocks, give them a good scrub like I did on the 14th, to remove any dead tissue in hopes it slows down the ammonia spikes.
However, now that I have diatoms and readable nitrate levels, I'm worried that removing the rock and scrubbing it will stall the cycle.
So my question: do I remove the rocks and scrub everything real good and put everyone in new water, or do I just keep letting everybody do their thing and perform 50% water changes to keep ammonia in check until the die off stops? I expected the diatom bloom to happen after all my ammonia was gone or at least when it had stopped producing.
Pulled all the rocks out and gave them a solid scrub on the 14th, I think. And obviously all new water.
Since then, my ammonia has been off the charts except for right after water changes. I'm using the Hanna LR Checker so that only equates to >3.6ppm, but I've reason to believe it's considerably higher than that. The corals and feather dusters that are on the live rock are doing totally fine, so I try not to worry about it.
I've not really been keeping track of nitrites because I also stupidly got the Hanna checker for that, and it only comes with a few sachets of reactant and it's ridiculous how much they cost to refill so I've just been ignoring it.
My water changes started at 100 percent every two or three days to now about 50 percent every three days.
My nitrates today read .12ppm.
So my rock still seems to be curing, or at least there's die off in the tank because my ammonia is still sky-high even with frequent water changes.
Lights are running about 7hrs/day.
I've been feeding reef roids for the corals every two days- they really needed it and have responded well to feedings...any tissue that was lost during transit is growing back rapidly.
Diatoms just started showing up. I know this is normal, but there's a decent bit of sediment and (detritus?) on the bottom of the tank. I wanted to remove the rocks, give them a good scrub like I did on the 14th, to remove any dead tissue in hopes it slows down the ammonia spikes.
However, now that I have diatoms and readable nitrate levels, I'm worried that removing the rock and scrubbing it will stall the cycle.
So my question: do I remove the rocks and scrub everything real good and put everyone in new water, or do I just keep letting everybody do their thing and perform 50% water changes to keep ammonia in check until the die off stops? I expected the diatom bloom to happen after all my ammonia was gone or at least when it had stopped producing.
