Follow my Oceanic 144g half circle reef tanks progress. 
First Cycle Complete!
Posted 11/19/2011 at 05:01 PM by Aaarrrggg
Tags cycle, dr tim, nitrifying bacteria
Well after what seemed like endless days of the Nitrite test turning the water purple on contact, it stayed blue today! Hurrah!
It's possible it was actually 0 yesterday, but it had been stubbornly purple for so long that I gave testing a day off. I guess that means the cycle is technically complete (12 days,) however Dr Tim's site says to add more Ammonium Chloride at this point.
I'm all for having even more bacteria, so I dropped in 10ml of Ammonium Chloride. I'll test again later and see if I can hit the magic number of 3ppm Amm. Apparently the cycle should happen faster this time around. Then I top up the Amm again, cycle again and finally one more time... which should reach Amm 0, Ni 0 in 24hrs. THEN... I'm done! I'm pretty nervous about adding Marly and Guybrush to their new home, so I'm happy to wait it out and make sure everything is perfect for them.
The brown dusting in the center of the tank is still there, despite the lights being out all this time. So I guess it's not diatoms. Perhaps its random "stuff" from the rocks? The way the mp40s are positioned the current does end up in the center. Maybe it's picking stuff up off the rock as it swirls around the towers and then dumping it in the middle?
There hasn't been any signs of life in there, although I wasn't expecting anything from mostly dead rock. I added a handful of LR from my nano at the start of the cycle. I'll add some more when it's over and shake my chaeto out in the sump to get some pods started too. As a reward for completing the 1st cycle I've turned the lights back on. Want to get the horrible "Argh my tank looks so awful and brown!!" stage out of the way so I can add some CUC as soon as the 4th cycle is done. Looking forward to having something moving around in there. At the moment it just feels like an expensive rock sculpture we made!
Oh also, the frothing in the sump has stopped, (must have been because of the sand settling,) but the pipes still do make quite a racket. Thanks to everyone for the plumbing advice, we're actually getting used to it though! I'll see how it sounds after I get the doors on there, but I might just leave it as it is. One good thing is it acts as a bit of a white noise machine and stops the dogs from hearing all the neighbor dogs barking! It's actually been rather peaceful.
It's possible it was actually 0 yesterday, but it had been stubbornly purple for so long that I gave testing a day off. I guess that means the cycle is technically complete (12 days,) however Dr Tim's site says to add more Ammonium Chloride at this point.
I'm all for having even more bacteria, so I dropped in 10ml of Ammonium Chloride. I'll test again later and see if I can hit the magic number of 3ppm Amm. Apparently the cycle should happen faster this time around. Then I top up the Amm again, cycle again and finally one more time... which should reach Amm 0, Ni 0 in 24hrs. THEN... I'm done! I'm pretty nervous about adding Marly and Guybrush to their new home, so I'm happy to wait it out and make sure everything is perfect for them.
The brown dusting in the center of the tank is still there, despite the lights being out all this time. So I guess it's not diatoms. Perhaps its random "stuff" from the rocks? The way the mp40s are positioned the current does end up in the center. Maybe it's picking stuff up off the rock as it swirls around the towers and then dumping it in the middle?
There hasn't been any signs of life in there, although I wasn't expecting anything from mostly dead rock. I added a handful of LR from my nano at the start of the cycle. I'll add some more when it's over and shake my chaeto out in the sump to get some pods started too. As a reward for completing the 1st cycle I've turned the lights back on. Want to get the horrible "Argh my tank looks so awful and brown!!" stage out of the way so I can add some CUC as soon as the 4th cycle is done. Looking forward to having something moving around in there. At the moment it just feels like an expensive rock sculpture we made!
Oh also, the frothing in the sump has stopped, (must have been because of the sand settling,) but the pipes still do make quite a racket. Thanks to everyone for the plumbing advice, we're actually getting used to it though! I'll see how it sounds after I get the doors on there, but I might just leave it as it is. One good thing is it acts as a bit of a white noise machine and stops the dogs from hearing all the neighbor dogs barking! It's actually been rather peaceful.
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