Newbie with salt water

tosha0307 · May 20, 2015

Hi everyone! My husband and I have been interested in salt water fish for quite some time now so we started our tank about a month ago. A 55 gallon tank. But have a few questions. It's currently in the cycling process... How do we know it's finished cycling and what do we do from there? I think this part is going to be the most confusing and frustrating. I know to be patient with it but the unknown sucks. Lol. Thanks in advanced [emoji4]

Major_oak · May 20, 2015

Hi! I'm also a newbie but i know you need to Get a water test kit for starters

redfishbluefish · May 21, 2015

Most importantly, you need zero ammonia and the presence of nitrate. What occurs during the cycling process is the growth of bacteria to consume/process ammonia. The bacteria convert the ammonia to nitrite which then gets converted to nitrate. Ammonia is very toxic to fish and you need to wait until that falls to zero. Hope this helps.

steve&mari · May 21, 2015

redfishbluefish said:
Most importantly, you need zero ammonia and the presence of nitrate. What occurs during the cycling process is the growth of bacteria to consume/process ammonia. The bacteria convert the ammonia to nitrate which then gets converted to nitrate. Ammonia is very toxic to fish and you need to wait until that falls to zero. Hope this helps.

Agreed you need to supply ammonia source to feed bacteria to grow in numbers