Cycling process...

L

LuvMyPiggies

Reefing newb
Hello again! Well, I did as instructed by some of the members and removed my fish. Since then, I have left the tank alone. It has been about 2 weeks now and my ammonia level has decreased right down to nothing as you all said it would. But as we all know ammonia turns into nitrate. So now my ammonia and PH are fine but my nitrate and nitrite are extremely high. Do I leave it and allow it to do it's thing, or do I start doing regular water changes?
As for the fish, my long-spine urchin eventually died, not due to the ammonia, but I had him in the tank where I work and my boss treated the tank with coppersafe:frustrat:. On a good note, now that the tank is cycling, my feather duster is growing it's plume back and at a remarkable rate. It doubled in a day! I look forward to putting fish in the tank again. Any further advice you can give is appreciated.

Thanks.
 
Your cycle is not complete until both ammonia and nitrite are at zero.You can do waterchanges to reduce nitrite if there are animals in the tank otherwise wait until its zero,then do waterchanges to lower nitrate.
 
Not time for a water change yet. You still have a few more weeks to go. Next time the boss goes near the tank break his fingers. lol
 
well the tank is virtually uninhabitable for anything other then fish now and that live rock cant be reused unless it goes into a fowlr now
 
Why can't I reuse the live rock?

I took out the fish and urchin but I still have a feather duster, strawberry conche, and about 10 crabs in there. Everyone in there seems to be doing fine including the duster.

As for the tank, I will leave it for a while longer then. Would you recommend changing the green-x though? That is supposed to be beneficial for Nitrate, Nitrite and PH?
 
because once copper is introduced into a tank it will get into every surface and if you reuse the live rock it has the potential to leech the copper which will kill all inverts and corals
 
Dustin the urchin was in the tank at her WORK, LuvMyPiggies, just dont put anything that has copper in it in your system EVER! So long as your live rock hasnt had contact with the coppersafe(or any other copper treatment) then continue letting your tank cycle. You are doing the right thing as of now.

Dustin my friend, not being an ass just constructive criticism, you need to make sure you read posts well before you tell somebody that they cant use ________ because of _________. Especially somebody that is very new to the hobby. Seriously Im not being a jerk just trying to convey my point.
 
I understand that Dustin, she temporarily had her urchin there due to adding it to her system too soon. HER tank is fine the WORK tank will no longer support inverts or corals(also inverts)
 
Sigh. Dustin, don't be a jerk for being a jerk's sake. Be nicer, and be more clear when answering.

Luv, you are doing just fine. Your HOME tank is still cycling, and it may take a while. The higher the ammonia levels spike, the longer it will take for the rest of the tank to catch up. Keep testing, and when your nitrite drops to zero, then you can do water changes and start adding animals.

As for your WORK tank, Dustin was right about that, no inverts can go into that tank again (no snails, crabs, corals, shrimp, anemones, clams, etc). When copper is used, it contaminates and soaks into the sand and rocks. So even if you remove all the water, the sand and rocks will still leach out copper and damage the inhabitants.
 
My boss has done this before too. She cuts the dose in half with hopes that it won't kill anything, however we have lost a lot of starfish because of it. But we always have shrimp, crabs and snails in there and they have always survived the coppersafe treatment. We currently have 3 cleaner shrimp with have been in there since March. Some of the crabs we have, have been in there much longer. Snails we have a difficult time with but it's usually because the crabs get them.
She also has a 250 gallon SW tank at home which she has used coppersafe on and she has 2 carpets, urchins, crabs, snails, etc in there. The starfish seem to take it the worse, although she lost one of her home urchins before to copper treatments.

I told her that we shouldn't use it. That we should stick to products like melafix and pimafix as they are 100% SW safe, so I will be telling her all of this too and see if I can get her to stop with the copper.

It sure is a good thing I found this forum. Although I would never use coppersafe on my tank, maybe I can help save the tank at work. I will suggest to her that we get rid of all the sand and live rock from that tank.
 
Well, it's pointless to get rid of the sand and rock if she keeps using copper. It will just recontaminate it.

The more important question is: why does she keep having to treat with copper? Is she getting disease outbreaks? If so, she needs to find the CAUSE of her disease problems, not keep treating it. With good husbandry and tank care practices, it should never be necessary to medicate for diseases with copper.

In saltwater, most diseases are opportunistic. Meaning, if your water quality is high and the animals are happy and stress free, disease does not have a chance to take ahold. The animals become more susceptible to disease and their immune systems are compromised when they are not happy and stressed.

Something is very wrong with her tanks if she feels a need to keep treating with copper.
 
We test our tank weekly, more if we feel there is reason to. Our levels are usually not a problem. We had a moorish idol in the tank who had a spot on it's fin, which I really didn't think was anything. It didn't look like anything to worry about, I am sure it was there when we got the fish. However, it was extremely stressed as for some reason a few of the other fish were picking on it.
A while ago the tank got ick as well. We think it was stress related as well as we have to drive 6 hours to get our SW fish so it was a combination of over stocking and stress from the long drive. But being that we have to travel so far to get our fish, it doesn't happen often so when we do go, we try to get enough to last us a while.
As for her use of copper, that is what we use on our FW tanks and it works well for them. Although she knows that coppersafe is harmful to inverts, etc, she thinks that by cutting the dose in half will cure the fish without harming the inverts. So I will be filling her in on everything I have learned here as well, which I am sure will change her mind on ever using it again.
On that note, which product would you recommend if we do happen to have a desease break-out? We stock melafix and pimafix which from my own personal experience works well for me and my FW tank. It also says that it is totally SW safe and treats many illnesses. But if there is a product that you recommend, than I can see if it is something that we can get in and recommend she uses that from now on.
 
If you cut the dose it is really really pointless to use, you are harming the inverts and not using a strong enough dose to treat the Ich. Copper and reef tanks just dont mix period. In a Fish only system by all means use it but otherwise its no good.
 
Heres what we do at the store I help at.
When a fish gets flukes,which is fairly common.We'll take a container of freshwater and put quick-cure in it.Then we'll put the fish in there for just a few minutes(no more than 10 minutes).That usually takes care of any flukes or visible ick parasites.
The only tanks we'll treat with anything are the fish only displays.
Have your boss try that next time.It'll save her a lot of money in lost/stresses inverts.
 

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