New to reefing
- Thread starter niebz77
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Mr. Mojo Rising
7500 Club Member
Welcome to the hobby, you need ammonia and bacteria to start a cycle. This thread will help a lot, reading and research is an important part of the hobby.
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The Supreme Guide To Setting Up A Saltwater Reef Aquarium
The Supreme Guide To Setting Up A Saltwater Reef Aquarium Introduction The marine environment is one of the most complex systems on the planet. The aquarium you are about to set up is only a tiny sliver of the vast ocean, but it is nowhere near simple. This task is going to take patience, a...
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lil sumpin
Digital Sponge
I’m kinda new too! I started with about 15lbs of Carib sea Liferock and 20lbs of their special grade arag alive sand. Apparently these products are seeded with dormant nitrifying bacteria that will help to establish the population of bacteria you’ll need to cycle the tank. I was skeptical of this so I decided to go ahead and add nitrifying bacteria anyway, I went with Fritz turbo start and used their ammonia to start as well. After dosing the initial 2ppm ammonia, it took 3-4 days for it to come down to around .5
At that point I began to ghost feed the tank with bits of leftover fish food and noticed the Seachem alert badge slowly peak up back to 1-2ppm ammonia within 2-3 days. By the end of the week it had gone back to the .25 to .5 range. Some folks add fish at this time but I decided to play it safe and bolster bacteria populations and so I added Hydrospace’s substrate sauce and afterwards during weeks two and three I noticed that 2ppm ammonia would drop down to .5 overnight. The fourth week I started to see diatoms, they took off the following week and so I assumed cycled and added CUC. Hope this helps!
