Water levels

Himes102

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So these are my numbers right now currently..

Long story short one of my LFS sold me rock that had been bleached with phosphate.. so I found another LFS completely changed out tank (sand and rock) I’ve dosed twice with turbo start..

How do these numbers look?
 
Those numbers are normal for a cycling tank. Just be patient. The biggest mistake I made when starting out was to get fish before the cycle was complete. I lost a few expensive ones that way. If you are in a super hurry most saltwater fish can handle some nitrites, but never any amount of ammonia. Don't consider anything besides a cheap fish until ammonia and nitrites are completely zero. Snails, shrimp, crabs and coral are more sensitive then fish. What you will notice if you have fish and ammonia is that they tend to become what I call "zombies." They may still be technically alive and breathing, but they don't tend to swim around or eat. They just hide even for a week or more starving to death. I think the ammonia fries their brain.
 
Those numbers are normal for a cycling tank. Just be patient. The biggest mistake I made when starting out was to get fish before the cycle was complete. I lost a few expensive ones that way. If you are in a super hurry most saltwater fish can handle some nitrites, but never any amount of ammonia. Don't consider anything besides a cheap fish until ammonia and nitrites are completely zero. Snails, shrimp, crabs and coral are more sensitive then fish. What you will notice if you have fish and ammonia is that they tend to become what I call "zombies." They may still be technically alive and breathing, but they don't tend to swim around or eat. They just hide even for a week or more starving to death. I think the ammonia fries their brain.

Or i for sure agree with you... the problem i have is my tank was cycled before.. levels were great so I had my fish and shrimp and corals.. then I started getting REALLY bad algae and I test for phosphate and did a bunch of water changes and nothing was working.. that’s when I did this whole tank change and now going through cycle again but also having previous fish
 

You said "rock that had been bleached with phosphate". I'm trying to understand what you are meaning.

Phosphate is not a bleach and cannot bleach anything. It has no impact on organic matter.

Do you just mean rock that had been bleached and coincidentally has phosphate remaining on it?
 
So when I went into my second LFS I took in a water sample and my Phosphate was at a dangerous level. Everything in my tank was from the first store.. (Not naming store name) they told me that they've had people come to them with the same issue and they all started their tanks from this un-named fish store. They do not clean their water lines and have had issues with high levels of Phosphate.. They explained to me that the phosphate had soaked into my rock/fine sand bed that water changes were not going to fix it that I needed to start over.
 
I also had aragonite rock and heard something about this rock and phosphate
 
So when I went into my second LFS I took in a water sample and my Phosphate was at a dangerous level. Everything in my tank was from the first store.. (Not naming store name) they told me that they've had people come to them with the same issue and they all started their tanks from this un-named fish store. They do not clean their water lines and have had issues with high levels of Phosphate.. They explained to me that the phosphate had soaked into my rock/fine sand bed that water changes were not going to fix it that I needed to start over.

That's not generally true, although it is better/easier to remove excessive phosphate from rock before the tank gets going.

How high was the phosphate? 1 ppm phosphate in the water is not "dangerous" to tank creatures, but it can make algae control harder.

i know its too late now, but i would have aggressively treated with a phosphate removed before starting over with new rock. Maybe lanthanum if the problem was really bad. GFO if it is not so bad.
 
I also had aragonite rock and heard something about this rock and phosphate

Yes, phosphate binds reversibly to calcium carbonate surfaces. It can be pulled off by driving down the tank concentration.
 
In any case the OP needs to get an ammonia binder into that tank, or get the fish out. It sounds like most of the nitrifying bacteria were probably removed with the old rock and the tank needs to be cycled before fish can live in it safely.
 

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