How's my tank doing so far?

[BaileyB]

First saltwater setup! Been cycling for just over 3 weeks w/ turbo start... 20G tall with 20 lbs. of live sand, 20ish lbs. of live rock, and 2 oz. of Fritzzyme TurboStart 900 and RO water. But my problem is the turbo start is suppose to speed up the cycling process. But my ammonia levels have been reading 0.25 for 2 weeks now. Here's my levels since I added water to the tank.

Now I am using the API liquid test kit so it is kind of hard to read, so there is some minor fluctuation in things like Ph but my Ammonia won't go down to zero..

This is the color my ammonia test has been since 11/12/18, not even a hint of yellow on any days tested. Always test in front of window with soft-white bulb for extra lighting.


I don't plan on adding any fish until around New Years, so plenty of more time for the tank to establish itself. I just started getting algae growth a couple of days ago and have been documenting its growth. Again I'm new, but isn't algae growth a good sign of the tank cycling and gaining some life? I had my light schedule running for 11 hours a day, but I've cut it back to 5-6, just to give it less light to explode like crazy, or should i completely keep the lights off? (I'm using a 12" Current USA Orbit lc, I had the factory red's and green's on for a couple of days but they have been turned down to zero for a while).

3 photos are 4 days apart.



No algae anywhere on glass which is good, just on live sand and rock. Although, shouldn't my ammonia be reading zero by this point? I've had the same water sitting in it since i started, heard it was bad to do water changes to try and resolve the 0.25 reading. Adding more water will just add more ammonia/ makes the bacteria restart its cycle? From what I've researched the cycle isn't really complete and isn't ready for fish until Ammonia reads zero. right?

So how's my cycle going? on track? not on track? any help from anyone would be greatly appreciated.

 

[lapin]

My guess is the test kit will only go down to .25 You have plenty of nitrates so the tank processed the ammonia. To check I would add ammonia to bring it up to 1 or 2. Then test the next day. If its back to .25 your basic cycle is done. Change out a lot of water because you only want to start with about 5ppm nitrate to avoid a massive algae bloom. Algae is a good thing. Means your tank is alive and has nutrients. It will go thru some ugly stages before it settles in. Lookin good so far.

 

[saltyfilmfolks]

The .25 is a common error with api. You could test it tomorrow and get a more normal reading.
But you probably do still have ammonia. Speed , is a bad thing in Reefing.

You could grab an ammonia alert badge to confirm the test

 

[Barry_Cuda]

That color chart for the master test kit is very different from the one that came with my ammonia-only kit. I assume API is packaging the same test reagents for ammonia in both kits, but the color you're seeing is pretty much exactly the 0ppm color from my ammonia-only one. I've never had the API kit show yellow like the 0ppm reference on your chart. Conventional wisdom is that the API ammonia test is garbage anyway... I'm planning to order a Salifert kit in the near future and chuck the API.