Cycling Question

[marman2014]

So i know this has been in many topics but I hear both sides. My tank is in week 6 and showing 55gal -Temp 79.1,Phosphates 1.0ppm, nitrate, nitrate, amonia all 0 KH was 161ppm. Is it good or bad to do a water change during cycling? I used about 20lbs of dead rock and 20lbs of live rock from my current tank that I have had for 2 years. I used new Live sand and LFS RO water. I really havn't seen much for spikes in amonia nitite or nitrates only phosphate.

[DIZZLE808]

What did you use as your ammonia source?

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[Ingy]

I'm a big fan of ammonia dosing instead of raw shrimp for the source. Simple math gets you the dosing requirement.

Volume in liters (say 75 for a 20 gal tank) x 1000ml/L to get 75,000 ml. Then divide by ppm to get .075ml per ppm. Multiply by 4 to get 0.3ml per 4 ppm.
Now my ammonia is 8% strength (because ammonia is a gas at room temp&pressure). So divide .3ml by 0.08 to get around 4ml.
A 4 ml dose of 8% ammonia should raise a 20 gal tank to around 4ppm ammonia.
I love math.


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[marman2014]

Originally Posted by DIZZLE808

What did you use as your ammonia source?

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Well hopefully I didn't do wrong but all I did was put a big shrimp in it for about 1-2 weeks. I guess I figured since i took close to half of my current running reef tank and put into 55 would work the same. Might be why im also having phosphate problems

[TheTodd]

There should not be all zeros at the end of a cycle. It all ends up as Nitrates, which must be removed, so there should be some measure of nitrates. IMO, there is no reason to do a water change during a cycle, especially if you have water with nothing showing other than phosphate.

If you pulled some live rock from an established tank, there should be beneficial bacteria. Ideally, I would dose ammonia to about 4ppm and see if it's gone in 24 hrs. If so, you are good. You could try adding a fish and watch parameters, but you've gotta have a gameplan if ammonia or nitrites show up.


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