60g new set up cycle question.

[choonchie]

Hey everyone started my tank about 4 weeks ago. Going for FOWLR tank. I used 15 pounds of live sand I had from a running nano tank with snails, an emerald crab, and two peppermint shrimp. Also used about 20 pounds of live rock from the same tank. There were tons of pods in the tank also. It used to house a naked clown that decided to wedge itself in between two rocks and commit suicide. Ok back to my question. I've been test water and had a slight ammonia spike but never had nitrites and now I'm showing nitrates. What's going on? Never had this happen before. Thanks!


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[choonchie]

Forgot parameters:
Nitrites 0 nitrates above 10 ammonia 0. Temp 79. Ph 8.2. Running a canister filter is rubble rock. No lights right now as tank is empty except for 3 snails and one hermit that I feed mysis twice a week.


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[alyxandria]

What brand of test kit are you using?

 

[Ingy]

Since you took a decent amount of sand and rocks over from one tank to the other you won't likely see much in the way of spikes. The ammonia spike was probably due in part to the die off of bacteria in the sand as they didn't go back into the new tank at the same sand depth as they started (different oxygen amounts then). But as the ammonia eating bacteria recovered, so did the nitrite eating bacteria, meaning the ammonia to nitrite conversion was being pretty much matched by the nitrite to nitrate conversion.
In a new system it takes time to progressively build up different bacteria, but yours just had to recover.


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[choonchie]

Api test kit.
Thanks for the replies.
Going to dose with a tiny bit of ammonia and test again next weekend just to be in the safe side. If all is well I'll put in a fish or two in two weeks.


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