Cycling, Water Parameters, TDS

[hanslanda]

Hello all!! So I set up a tank about two months ago and from what i'm reading did the least desirable method of cycling. This is a 55 gallon being setup for reef. I didn't have much rock at the time and the LFS told me to drop in a couple damsels. I did and what do you know all three died within a week. I'm guessing they jump started a cycle for me in the process of dying... or so i hoped. Either way, I decided to take a step back and get some things done correctly. Here's where i'm at now.


Tank setup
--------------

9/25/18
1) 55 gallon intial setup with 3 dead damsels (that I removed pretty much right away) about 5 lbs of rock (2 live, 3 dry) and 30lbs of basic black sand.


10/30/18
2) Added RO system to house, water changed 80% of the tank with this water. Old water was questionably filtered tap. For good measure my non-filtered tap is about 200-150ppm.


11/8/18
3) Added DIY sump with fuge mid-section. (fuge has mineral mud base with live-sand coat)

4) Added protein skimmer (not running)

5) Added 40lbs of dry rock. Began running tank water through fuge.


11/11/18
6) Put 8 hermits and 3 snails into tank for cycling (recommended by LFS)


Currently no changes from step 6 other than feeding a few pellets every other day and measuring water parameters. Now i don't know if i even needed to re-cycle? Because i'm guessing the damsels probably helped with that however I put very clean water into the tank afterwards and stopped feeding the tank. So maybe there was some leftover bacteria in there but it may not have been too active. I'm going to post my water quality measurements up until now, and i'm tracking the tank parameters daily. What I would love some help with is color identification on the charts, and if you think you have an idea what state my tank might be based on with the limited data, ill take that too

My first picture will be what my RO water measures with a very expensive TDS meter, the second will be the parameter testing i did today(help with colors), and the third will be my chart data on the last 3 days (I know, very limited data).

RO Water measuring 0.49 PPM


What do you read these colors as? I'm seeing 8.1pH/0.5ppm NH3/0.5ppm NO2-/0.0ppm NO3-


Here's data for the last 3 days since I added the clean-up crew and fed every other so far. If my colors are correct I see ammonias and nitrites slowly trending upwards with 0 nitrates.

 

[saltyfilmfolks]

Retest the ammonia or have the lfs do it.
Api is prone to error. (The .25 error is common)

I’m not seeing much for nitrates.

Hard to say if you need to add some ammonia.
I would look at dr tims fishless cycle. I’d buy some one and only in any case.
Wouldn’t hurt.

 

[1WildBill]

If you want to keep ghost feeding, drop a few flakes or pellets everyday. I ghost fed my 75 gal and it only took about 2 weeks to cycle. I also added a bottle of biospira to help.
Like Salty said though, not much for nitrates, and api test kits really bite. Get a salifert or Red Sea to test, or go to the lfs.

 

[hanslanda]

Thanks guys, based on the responses here, are the hermit crabs and snails not contributing to my bio-load? Are they not creating ammonias? Because those levels only rose to where they are after i added them(though i am feeding them). For kicks ill upload the other two pictures of my previous testing where you can see the difference. Previously ammonias and nitrites were definitely reading zero. Is it really ghost feeding if i'm feeding hermits lol?

My LFS uses API test strips so i don't know that will be any better or accurate.

 

[1WildBill]

If they are, it’s very little. Get a bottle of bacteria, it’ll absorb into the rock and make your cycle more stable.
http://www.mrsaltwatertank.com/bacteria-in-a-bottle-functional-or-fake/

Yes, the strips are even worse than the liquid from API.

 

[hanslanda]

Stopped by the LFS yesterday and got some Seachem Stability. Going to dose with that for now. Something that was weird, I had him test my water sample just for fun, everything matched for the most part, but I was reading 1.0ppm chlorine. Is that normal in a salt tank? I use RO water so i cant imagine where it would be coming from if not my salt?

 

[1WildBill]

Are you using just RO, or RO/DI? The Di more or less polishes it off and helps remove anything the RO doesn’t.

 

[hanslanda]

It’s RO/DI. I have the aquatic life 4-stage. I’ve tested the overall output to 0.48ppm TDS so it’s hard to imagine I’d have 1ppm of chlorine in there from only 0.5 TDS overall.

 

[cromag27 Verified Sponsor]

It’s RO/DI. I have the aquatic life 4-stage. I’ve tested the overall output to 0.48ppm TDS so it’s hard to imagine I’d have 1ppm of chlorine in there from only 0.5 TDS overall.

buy a new spectrapure .5 micron carbon filter. this will remove chloramine. i’m guessing your filters and di carts are of very low quality. 1ppm of chlorine is more than enough to burn through your membrane and di carts as well.

https://spectrapure.com/FILTERS-MEM...RIDGES/0.5-Micron-Carbon-Block-Filter-10-inch

 

[cromag27 Verified Sponsor]

as far as your cycle goes.....

do not add anything else at this point.

get a seachem ammonia badge. this tests for free ammonia and is much more accurate than other tests.

how do you know if the tank is cycled? it will process 2-3ppm of ammonia within 8-12 hours. you can test this by dosing 100% pure ammonia. do not use fish, fish food or other livestock.

i personally don’t care what any of the other parameters are during the actual cycle because all we care about is ammonia.

 

[hanslanda]

Like i was saying though... iv'e tested my RO to 0.5ppm TDS. This means its impossible i'm getting 1ppm of chlorine from my RO/DI. Even if ALL of that .5 tds is chlorine thats still only .5 ppm chlorine. I did around 20 gallons of water changes over the weekend, ill retest for the chlorines maybe its leftover from the initial fill.

 

[hanslanda]

Like i was saying though... iv'e tested my RO to 0.5ppm TDS. This means its impossible i'm getting 1ppm of chlorine from my RO/DI. Even if ALL of that .5 tds is chlorine thats still only .5 ppm chlorine. I did around 20 gallons of water changes over the weekend, ill retest for the chlorines maybe its leftover from the initial fill.

Alright. Verified it’s not my RO by taking a pure RO sample to the LFS and testing that alone. Didn’t show any trace of chlorines. I guess I need to do some more pretty heavy water changes to get the existing chlorine out. If not just a full 100% water change? I diluted about 20 gallons over the weekend on a 65 gallon total.

 

[hanslanda]

Okay here's what i'm going to do. I read 1ppm chlorine Saturday. Iv'e since done about (4) 5 gallon changes. By my math that would have diluted me down to around 0.75ppm. If I break off and do a 50 gallon change today this should dilute me down to 0.2ppm. A 50 gallon follow-up change should place me at 0.06 ppm. However i do it, i'm going to water-change out to zero chlorines, since ammonia and nitrites were both below 1ppm this means they will also be zero. So i'll be re-starting this cycle regardless. Going to grab some Dr Tim's One and Only and some dosing ammonia. I'll check back in some time after thanksgiving... thanks for the pointers guys.

 

[1WildBill]

Good luck.

 

[hanslanda]

Good luck.

Well i might need some of that after reading this.

https://store.drtimsaquatics.com/One-Only-Climate-Control-Shipping-Package_p_215.html



Where I live it's freezing and amazon didn't take this into account at all from what I can tell. Bacteria will probably arrive dead on my doorstep. And since the LFS doesn't carry this stuff i'm in a very interesting predicament of ticked off.

 

[ElitePirate]

I started with API test kits, but it's not reliable at all. Switched to Salifert and it's very accurate.

Good luck

 

[hanslanda]

Haha my response from Dr Tims regarding my product probably showing up dead because amazon doesnt offer any type of temp controlled shipping.


"As to what will happen to the stuff you already ordered - it might arrive fine it might arrive frozen we have no idea of knowing as there are many variables.
It would be best to make sure to make sure the package does not sit outside for any length of time so be there when the package arrives."

My advice would be to pull that product from amazon

 

[hanslanda]

Hello all once again! Iv'e done as i said i was going to and now i'm at a point of question.

So, I water changed out all of my water... as much as I could get out of the tank, I did. I pulled out the snails and hermits. So i was left with zero trace of anything that's not in my salt mix, as today my RO is measuring 0.3 ppm on the same filters.

I poured in a bottle of Dr. Tim's One and Only.

Next I begin the first stages of his fish-less cycle using his ammonia chloride solution.

I'm 8 days in, and i'm on day 5 of Dr. Tim's schedule for the fish-less cycle... other than being slightly behind, everything has been going great until today. However currently i'm still not seeing any nitrates. Why? Iv'e had nitrite in the tank for over a week and seemingly there's not a single trace of bacteria producing nitrate out of nitrite.

Anyhow, i'm nearing a point of concern, due to Tim's aggressive schedule of adding ammonia, nitrites are stacking up. The tank is processing ammonia just fine (not all that fast yet), and now I have around 3-5ppm of nitrite. So far iv'e added a total theoretical of 4 ppm of ammonia. Will also post my graph of the last weeks parameters.


Fish-less cycle for reference:

https://www.drtimsaquatics.com/resources/fishless-cycling

 

[1WildBill]

The cycle takes time. Some go fast, some don’t. Be patient.

 

[hanslanda]

The cycle takes time. Some go fast, some don’t. Be patient.

I'm not in a rush even though it may have sounded that way. My urgency is the worry i have about my nitrite level. At what level of nitrites am i effectively harming the cycle?