Is it me or is this strange?

[Tillyspride]

Hi all,

So I'm a little confused at the minute, now either something is wrong or I have gone through the fastest cycle ever.

I have had my tank set up now for around 15 days, on initial set up I had my wave maker (koralia 1600), protein skimmer and heater in place along with a 2 inch bed of live sand. I added 11kg of live rock on Tuesday and fed with some zooplankton to aid with the cycling process.

I have tested my params today expecting to see some traces of ammonia in there but was confused as to my findings. The main 3 read Ammonia 0, Nitrites 0 and Nitrates 80 ppm. Now this has confused me a little as to if I have done something wrong along the way, surely my Nitrates shouldn't be like that yet??? I can't possibly have completed a cycle already in the space of 15 days and 4 days after adding my live rock?

Could any of you shed any light in this for me please? Point me in the right direction? Any information you may have will be a massive help to me

 

[Squishie89]

Live rock is essentially another filter, it contains nitrifying bacteria among other things. So it is not uncommon for live rock to aid in speeding up the cycle (I actually barely experienced a cycle due to using live rock right out of the gate). Do you have any algae growth in the tank yet?

 

[Tillyspride]

Don't have any algae growth what so ever yet, or at least not any where I can see it growing.

 

[fishroomlady]

I would say it's a little strange but things like that happen a lot in this hobby I'd be cautious in adding anything until you do at least a couple more water changes. Just my .02.

 

[Tillyspride]

I haven't got any intentions of adding anything at all until at least 6-8 weeks down the line and this is dependant on my parameters and stability. Need to make sure everything is ready before I start to add my CuC and corals

 

[Waters]

I cycled my tank using live rock also and never experienced a cycle. Not once have I ever recorded any ammonia or nitrites (or nitrates for that matter) in my tank. In my case (and yours also it appears) the amount of good quality live rock already had all of the necessary bacteria to handle the tanks biological filtration.

 

[ptpablo]

I had the same experience...Live sand, live rock and never saw a reading on ammonia or nitrites. Similar to you I still took it slow and things have been great in my nano!