29 Gal

[ajg1460]

My tank is in it's first week. Ammonia between .5 and 1.0 I 've had my skimmer running since day 1 and it's working up a storm. It just dawned on me that it might be working against me. Please advise

[steve r]

i ran my skimmer from day one. your ammonia will most likely be elevated for about a month. be patient. the skimmer wont hinder your cycle. how are you cycling your tank? raw shrimp? live rock?

fellow 29er
steve r

[midiman]

I'm running my skimmer now, too, and I've just completed week two of my cycle with three dead shrimp in a 30 gal with a 10 gal sump. My skimmer isn't produceing much gunk, but my ammonia is now coming down (from 8+ for 5 days!). It's now about 3 and nitrites and nitrates are up, so obviously the cycle is going along just fine.

I'm going to add some choice but pricey LFS LR soon before adding my larger LR.com load in a couple of weeks.

Good luck.

[ajg1460]

I have 42 lbs of LR and I threw in one shrimp. My levels today are Ammonia .5, N0~2 2.0, N0~3 20. I didn't have my test kit until about the 4th day, have not seen the hudge spike of ammonia that I read about in this forum. Least not yet. Didn't expect N0~2, & N0~3 until the ammonia peaked.

[midiman]

have not seen the hudge spike of ammonia that I read about in this forum

Your LR is probably contributing to the cycle - it has colonies of established bacteria on it already. Your cycle may go a lot faster than mine did, because I started from complete scratch (unless you count the LS), so I had a "raw" cycle.

I'm going to add a few pieces of LR to help speed up the remaining part of the cycle, now that my ammonia has fallen. Then comes the mother load of LR