What did your cycle look like?

[Phyl]

That title looks much stranger in type than it did in my head, I can tell you! LOL!

I'm 10d into my cycle and am wondering what a typical cycle looks like. Right now mine is starting to look kinda nasty Maybe that's a good thing, maybe it isn't! But I thought if you would all care to share with me what your cycle looked like (I know these are going to vary dramatically) I would start to get the sense of whether or not my tank is moving in the right direction.

To tell you a little bit about my cycle... When it first started the water went through a couple of really cloudy days. Then it cleared up beautifully and looked like the perfect tank. About day 5 or 6 I started getting some cacoon/jellyfish looking blobs on some of my rock. Some time around day 7 I started getting brown crud accumulating lightly on the SB. By last night (9) the brown crud was pretty well coating the sand and starting to crawl up the glass.

I haven't tested the water since Thursday but my phospates were at 0 when I tested them and my nitrates were still at 0. My ammo was creeping up and was .8 my nitrites were at .2.

How high did your spike go? What kind of water quality/cleanliness issues did your tank have? Did these clean themselves up?

I've used tap water but it doesn't show any levels of phosphate or nitrate so I'm hoping not to be doomed to failure by the nature of the water I used. The LFS that I use says that it doesn't matter if I use their water or tap, their water would just save me the mixing time but since I didn't care about that out of the blocks I went with the ease of dealing with 120g of water at home rather than having to transport it. I'm hoping that they know area water well enough to know that it isn't likely to be a problem in the middle of NJ.

I'd greatly appreciate any cycling stories that you have to tell.

Thanks,
Phyllis

 

[bound_for_obx]

I initially put 60 #'s of live base rock in from liverocks.com into a 75gal tank with a 3-5" DSB The tank and sand had been up and running for maybe 6 weeks before adding the rock. I tested the water for the first week after adding the rock and never saw a rise in ammonia, nitrites, or nitrates. Later I added 80 #'s of mixed keys and gulf rock and only experienced a slight bump in ammonia.

 

[blorkiemom]

I got a couple of cloudy days, too--just a bacteria bloom, I think. I was cycling a 20G tank with just a little cured LR, so my cycle wasn't strong (though it wasn't particularly short, either). I had ammonia after 3 days, lasting about a week and peaking at .25; 2 weeks of nitrites, getting not very high but I can't remember the numbers, and then nitrates starting the week after that. Some hair algae started soon after, along with LR growth (sponges, feather dusters, etc.)

I was cycling a QT, though, and the cycle ended up not being very "strong." When I added 2 ocellaris, I got about 2 1/2 weeks of low but detectable ammonia/nitrites again, so I had to change water every other day or so for a while.

 

[supafreak]

i'm currently cycling a tank, and have had no cosmetic problems. It's just finishing up it's first week. I started with base rock and a little live rock. I took established filter medium, and took some water from a cycled tank. I also took some of the crushed coral from my established tank and put it in a filter bag and stuck it in the filter. I also used declorinated tap water, and i'm from ontario. We have a ph of about 7.5, and pretty good water conditions. I'll keep you posted if i see anything strange. Hang in there. It's likely just part of the cycle. Do you have anything in the tank? I stuck in 4 damsels right away, but some people dissagree with that option. So far it's worked pretty well, except one nasty incident with my powerhead sucked the little bugger right in

 

[Phyl]

Your tank sounds a lot like mine until that point hit Right about where you are is when the wacky stuff started to appear. I was also wondering if I was running my lights too much. I leave them on during the day, switch to actinic in the evening and then off with moonlight for the night time. Is that too much light for this early in the cycle? I've got my UV filter off and my protien skimmer off as well.

I've got decaying shrimp, tucked out of sight so that I don't have to explain to my 3 an 5 year olds why I've got decaying shrimp in the tank! I couldn't tell you what it looks like at this point.

 

[Iccemaan]

Not sure about some of your questions as I have yet to cycle my first saltwater tank however I have read UV filters aren't needed and can actually kill off good bacteria in your live rock.

Just a bit of useless info for ya