Mr Crabs
Aquarium Advice Apprentice
Ok so I am getting 60lbs more LR today to basically start a new cycle. Put a fresh shrimp in saturday with my 30lbs of Fiji from LFS even though I knew I was adding a lot more LR today, didnt think it would hurt but did it because I was impatient. After 2 days the shrimp looked like it blew up like a balloon and had a sort of a cloudy/transparent white cacoon around it. Now it seems like it is slowly disolving and is a lot smaller than the shrimp that I put in. I have not put on the protein skimmer yet because I figured the crap in the water will help the LR cycle. I do have a regular HOB filter that came with the tank and running AC with it. The filter is disgusting and brown. I turned off the power pulled the cartride out and it seems a lot heavier and filled with gunk. I assume decaying shrimp goo. Ammonia spiked but is coming down a lot and now in the .5 range. Nitrites are coming down too from 5.0 to about 3.0 and nitrates are off the charts. I guess my question is does this sound normal? One more thing I asked this before but nobody responded. Is it recommend to add BIOSAFE or anything like that to you tank even though I used RO/DI water? TIA