Cycle Help - Where are the Nitrates going?

[BillyKVT]

Hello all,

I am new here and after many years of wanting to join the hobby, I finally did. I'm really excited to join your community and be a part of it!

Having said that, I have a few years of experience with planted freshwater tanks but not with reef tanks.

I'm really confused with my cycle and I would like some feedback. Attached is my parameter log over the course of this past month. Please let me know if it looks ok. I have done 0 water changes thus far but my nitrates are disappearing.

It is important to note that I started the cycle with a piece of raw shrimp - about two weeks in my wife surprised me with a pair of clowns for my birthday not knowing the tank wasn't ready for fish yet so I had to throw them in there. Luckily, no ammonia was present.

Setup:
20 gallon long
NO light at all thus far (have a couple AI primes to install in a month or two)
Canister filter (filter floss only, 2 purigen, small bag of chemipure elite)
Aquamax reactor (full of fast growing chaeto - 1/4 of the reactor worth which becomes full each week and then i trim)
QQ1 Protein Skimmer HoB - still breaking in
Tunze nano ATO

Salifert Test Kits for ALL besides phosphates (api)

Any feedback would be much appreciated.

Thank you.

 

[Spare time]

You shouldn't cycle with the skimmer or any filter media. The bacteria needs to grow in the rocks and sand and biomedia, not the carbon and purigen which may unfortunately happen.

Also you said your nitrates are dissapearing. did you mean ammonia and nitrite?

 

[BillyKVT]

You shouldn't cycle with the skimmer or any filter media. The bacteria needs to grow in the rocks and sand and biomedia, not the carbon and purigen which may unfortunately happen.

Also you said your nitrates are dissapearing. did you mean ammonia and nitrite?

I only recently added the gfo and purigen in an effort to keep algae away coupled with the lack of lighting for a few months. And no, I meant nitrates hence this post

 

[Spare time]

Ah I didn't see you had chaeto.That makes sense that your nitrates are going down. Just make sure they never hit 0! I also misread thinking you were getting the clonws in 2 weeks and were cycling. I guess I was showing off my lack of sleep lol.


I would remove the gfo if you have chaeto. You risk have 0 phosphates and dinos (caused by 0 nitrate and or 0 phosphate). If you continue with 0 nitrate and 0 phosphate you will get problems. Aim for phosphates between 0 and 0.1 and nitrates between 5-15 (20s are ok too.
Just be careful not to let them get too high to where it is a struggle to lower them). However, an easy fix for this is to get some more fish

 

[BillyKVT]

Just be careful not to let them get too high to where it is a struggle to lower them). However, an easy fix for this is to get some more fish

Hey, no worries! We've all been there, haha. Thank you so much for replying. I'll me removing the GFO at some point over the weekend to allow for some phosphates.

What are you referring to getting too high, phosphates?

Also, after reading your reply I took a look at my chaeto reactor. The chaeto is still growing fast and has turned yellowish and I see some muck on it - could this be dinos?

 

[Spare time]

Hey, no worries! We've all been there, haha. Thank you so much for replying. I'll me removing the GFO at some point over the weekend to allow for some phosphates.

What are you referring to getting too high, phosphates?

Also, after reading your reply I took a look at my chaeto reactor. The chaeto is still growing fast and has turned yellowish and I see some muck on it - could this be dinos?

Light green chaeto is good. If it turns brownish grey and starts crumbling then its dead. Dinos look like snot with bubbles so I think you are fine. The muck could be a bunch of stuff but its its probably just crud.

Also for too high I meant nitrates.

 

[Spare time]

btw one thing to remember is that if you go a while without water changes, you may need to dose some sort of trace element for the chaeto. I use chaeto gro for my macro algae. Again this is only if you don't do water changes to replace things like iron.