Today's water parameters

[Crawling68]

Well the tank has been cycling for 2 weeks, and this is what i got so far-

temp- 82 Degrees
SG- 1.025
Ph- 8.2
Ammonia- .50
Nitrite- 0
Nitrate- 5.0

What do you guys think, progressing properly? Time for the shrimp?

 

[Atari]

Time for the shrimp?

Do you mean a raw shrimp? How have you been cycling the tank if you haven't added the shrimp yet?

 

[Crawling68]

Ive just been letting the tank run, did i need to put the shrimp in right away?

 

[Bang Guy]

The shrimp method works fine but I've had a lot better control over nutrient levels by using flaked fish food.

I keep the ammonia around 0.5ppm until one day overnight it drops to zero. I continure feeding the flake food until Nitrite drops to zero. Then I continue feeding the food until I get a pair of Clownfish in the tank. During the cycle I feed the exact amount of food that I would feed a pair of small Clownfish.

After adding the fish I never get the typical ammonia spike because the tank is already accustomed to that amount of nutrients.

 

[Atari]

Bang Guy, I would imagine using flakes would result in rather large amounts of nuisance algae growth. Do you not experience this?

 

[Bang Guy]

I sure do. It quickly goes away once the live sand is added. Tell me about your method

 

[Crawling68]

Well, by todays reading's, should i still add the shrimp, or just let it go.

 

[jackdp]

If you added LR, especially uncured LR, then your tank is probably cycling already and the shrimp would be unnecessary. I would guess that the ammonia and nitrite you are seeing now is from the LR addition.

 

[malkore]

... he has no nitrIte...just a smidge of ammonia, and nitrAte. kinda strange, unless something big died and caused a new mini-ammonia spike. nitrate test kits can be hard to read at lower lvls (2 of my nitrate kits start at 0ppm then 10ppm)

 

[Crawling68]

well today the ammonia is at .25, but everything else is the same.