Cycle Question

thegeb2909 · Mar 25, 2016

My tank has been up about 6-7 weeks, I am wondering if there is an issue, my rite & rate haven't kicked in and my ammonia is off the charts, the water goes from cloudy all day long to magically crystal clear at night, I have live sand and live rock, I'm running a cascade 1000 canister filter, I'm using Current Marine LED lighting. This is my tests results as of this morning..

I am wondering if I should drain the tank and do it over again

3/25/16
PH 7.8
Ammonia 8.0
Nitrite 0.0ppm
Nitrate 0.0ppm
Temp 78
Salinity 1.026

twilliard · Mar 25, 2016

Odd one.. 7 weeks and no nitrogen cycle?
Can it be possible? Absolutely no bacteria?
[HASHTAG]#reefsquad[/HASHTAG]

Shep · Mar 25, 2016

I might try a new test kit and maybe get a bacterial additive

thegeb2909 · Mar 25, 2016

My thoughts excatly, could the cycle have been fouled up somewhere. Am I better draining a starting over? At a loss, ready to start pulling my hair out. I added pictures to show how it goes from cloudy all day to crystal clear at night, it's like this water is possessed. I use RedSea Reef Crystals

thegeb2909 · Mar 25, 2016

Shep said:
I might try a new test kit and maybe get a bacterial additive

There's 2 full bottles of ATM Colony in the tank, and still nothing. I had it looking great at one point, crystal clear water diatoms began growing etc, now it looks like a swamp and not a reef tank

twilliard · Mar 25, 2016

Bacterial outbreak!
Is that a fish I see?

I would try a different ammonia kit

andyg1960 · Mar 25, 2016

try a different test kit

thegeb2909 · Mar 25, 2016

twilliard said:
Bacterial outbreak!
Is that a fish I see?

I would try a different ammonia kit

Domino Damsel he's been in there since day one..

thegeb2909 · Mar 25, 2016

twilliard said:
Bacterial outbreak!
Is that a fish I see?

I would try a different ammonia kit

The bacterial outbreak would cloud water during the day and then mysteriously disappear at night?

twilliard · Mar 25, 2016

thegeb2909 said:
The bacterial outbreak would cloud water during the day and then mysteriously disappear at night?

The are still there at night just not as visible
Take a ph test, keep it capped and watch how many hours it takes to turn yellow
This has been a method of mine for quite some time to roughly gauge populations.

redfishbluefish · Mar 25, 2016

By chance, did you use tap water or RO/DI? And if you used tap, did you de-chlorinate?

twilliard · Mar 25, 2016

Not seeing any skimmer so a water change may be needed to help with the bloom
Also wash the canister out good and replace pads

thegeb2909 · Mar 25, 2016

redfishbluefish said:
By chance, did you use tap water or RO/DI? And if you used tap, did you de-chlorinate?

Tap and always de-chlorinate. Where I live our tap is zero on all scales, it's filter out from the sink and then I add the de-chlorinator

thegeb2909 · Mar 25, 2016

twilliard said:
Not seeing any skimmer so a water change may be needed to help with the bloom
Also wash the canister out good and replace pads

Yes I have never used a protein skimmer, I washed the canister out real good about a week ago, and replaced the carbon, I'm think of now replacing all the factory media inside and adding a higher quality media, also throwing in purigen

thegeb2909 · Mar 25, 2016

twilliard said:
The are still there at night just not as visible
Take a ph test, keep it capped and watch how many hours it takes to turn yellow
This has been a method of mine for quite some time to roughly gauge populations.

So do the PH test, and just let it sit until it's yellow?? And once this happens what am I gauging and how?

twilliard · Mar 25, 2016

If it turns yellow before 8 hours this always tells me to change water (I do 50% when I have to)
Sometimes the bacteria get out of hand and without going into carbon fixation it's just not healthy for the tank.

thegeb2909 · Mar 25, 2016

twilliard said:
If it turns yellow before 8 hours this always tells me to change water (I do 50% when I have to)
Sometimes the bacteria get out of hand and without going into carbon fixation it's just not healthy for the tank.

Okay, I just did a 50% change about a week ago and this haze is unreal, you can see it with the circulation swirling around the tank, it almost looks as if someone poured milk into the tank.

twilliard · Mar 25, 2016

thegeb2909 said:
Okay, I just did a 50% change about a week ago and this haze is unreal, you can see it with the circulation swirling around the tank, it almost looks as if someone poured milk into the tank.

Yes that is a flock
depending on the size you may be able to add a polishing filter in the canister to capture this bacteria.
I used to run the Rena xp3 and used polishing filters all the time

thegeb2909 · Mar 25, 2016

twilliard said:
Yes that is a flock
depending on the size you may be able to add a polishing filter in the canister to capture this bacteria.
I used to run the Rena xp3 and used polishing filters all the time

I think since I just did a 50% water change I am going to clean the canister, replace the floss etc with high grade product and add the bag of purigen and see what happens, I really don't want to drain and start all over from scratch