Is my tank cycled?

[mrcowboy]

My 50 gall has been cycling for about 2 and a half weeks now. It has 60 pounds of live sand and 75 pounds of live rock. No fish no cleaning crew. The highest my ammonia has been was .50 and the highest my mirtire has been was 5.0. For about two days now my ammonia and nirtire are at 0. Is it done cycling? My ph and salinity are perfect and my Nitrate is at 10ppm.

 

[theatrus]

looks like it

 

[mrcowboy]

Should I get a cleaning crew? Theres a bunch of debre on the sand bed.

 

[theatrus]

Its time to start thinking about that, yes. Some hermits (people have various opinions on how useful certain species are), some snails (astreas are good for algae, but make sure you have algae first ).

 

[sevise]

Once my cycle completed I tryed to vacuum out as much debris as possible. Then I'd blow off the rocks, next day I'd vaccum again. I did that for 3 days and got rid of alot of junk. Then I added my cleanup crew. It took them about 3 weeks to get my rocks clean.

 

[mrcowboy]

Now when people say vacuum is there a tool that I should get to do that without sucking up all my sand. My sand is super fine grade and is very powdery compared to the crush coral stuff.

 

[theatrus]

You can lightly hover over the surface, like you would a planted FW tank. When you add a cleanup crew, they will eat a lot of this material for you as well.

 

[vertex]

Just watching this thread, I'm a little past this stage, and am wondering about the clean up crew itself. Are hermits generally a good thing to have for a sand bed tank and are they safe to keep with snails? I've heard different opionions at the LFS. I only have a 33gal, with Ciris and Astrea snails right now.

What other cleaners are best in a small tank?

I will eventually like to keep soft corals and more inverts.

 

[theatrus]

Hermits like scarlets, blue legs, mexican reg legs are all reef safe. They will kill snails, but only when you haven't provided them with new homes in the form of larger empty shells.

 

[mrcowboy]

thanks for the info!

 

[IfoundNemo]

Hermits like scarlets, blue legs, mexican reg legs are all reef safe. They will kill snails, but only when you haven't provided them with new homes in the form of larger empty shells.

red mexican hermit crabs will eat the coraline on your live rocks. You might want to stay away from them if you want your live rocks looking nice purple.