My tanks cycle

[VAreef]

At this stage with no corals or fish nah. Later you could lose many hundreds of dollars worth of corals due to it. Use this cycle time to learn how your tanks chemistry works. It's pretty basic(haha basic get it) and you will learn TONS. I also used tap water when I first started but I did a 50% water changeout after I learned Tap water was bad before even checking alk.

 

[Ulta]

Wow, so given your post sparked an interest in me trying to learn some more about alk and water chemistry I think I found a jackpot informative thread that explains it very well.

Looks like this guy put in a LOT of time and research into the subject (as far as even doing a study taking data of reef central's tanks of the months)
Basically I wasn't wrong saying that Alk is basically a buffer for other things. But it is much more complex than that. Even to the point of saying Alk should be the basis for testing your aquarium (The PRIMARY testing tool).
It seems that Alkalinity, Calcium, PH, Phosphate, and Magnesium ALL intertwine together so it is good to understand the relation between them.

I found this article to be super user friendly he does his best to put everything in lamens terms and supports everything with nice practical application to give you a great visual to help your understanding.

Here is the Link:
Alkalinity - How Corals Grow

I think I might even put up a dedicated post to it in the Water Chemistry section of the forums :)

 

[Bifferwine]

Too much alkalinity can be a bad thing. For the last 3 weeks I have been watching my tank slowly die, in part due to high alkalinity (it was at 21 at its peak). I have been doing constant water changes and finally got it down within the normal range.

Whenever you are messing around with additives and buffers, test, test, test. Before and after you use them.

 

[Cathic]

The tap is the cause of your green algae along with the trates, will go away eventually but you will have to battle with algae using tap.

 

[wontonflip]

If you can afford it, I suggest you just drain your tank and start over since you have no livestock. That's what I ended up doing when I first started my 45g. Had it all filled up, couldn't get my nitrates down from 120+ppm. I had used the tank's existing water (it was a hand-me-down tank), and added my tap, which both resulted in the high nitrates. I tested my tap, and found it had nitrates in it! So I drained it all, and refilled w/ just rodi, and hadn't had major problems since. I've been a true believer of not using tap after that. Luckily, I had no livestock in there.

 

[Ulta]

I don't think nitrates of 10ppm is really worth draining your tank over...

And as long as your not precipitating white "snow" in your tank, I don't think your Alkalinity is too high. (You can balance this out with calcium and small amounts of Magnesium)

 

[crazymman]

This may be a stupid question but what do you mean precipitating white snow?

 

[crazymman]

So im about to go to my lfs and get some water and a liquid test kit. Any advice? Like should i do a partial water change with the new water or just do the top off. Its about 8 gallons low from my skimmer going crazy last night.

 

[Ulta]

Here is a quote from that article I linked:

Saturation is a hard concept to get at first, but just think of it this way; the higher the level of calcium carbonate the more likely is that it will precipitate. Think worst case, by adding way too much kalk (limewater) you get what looks like a snowstorm in your tank, this is when calcium carbonate has reached past the point of saturation and is falling out of the water (precipitating), the water can not hold anymore because it has been supersaturated resulting in the negative effects of pH rises and alkalinity swings. This happens in our system when calcium, bicarbonate or both have reached a point where the water can not hold any more, the excess is seen settling on our heaters and sumps (heat attacks this) in the form of hard white deposits.

imo, your alkalinity will drop naturally. As long as you are not buffering it with anything.

But you should try to get an accurate 'reading' so we can better understand your position B)

Did you make a build thread of your tanks progress? It would be fun to follow along =D

 

[crazymman]

No I definatly should have though.

 

[Ulta]

So im about to go to my lfs and get some water and a liquid test kit. Any advice? Like should i do a partial water change with the new water or just do the top off. Its about 8 gallons low from my skimmer going crazy last night.

Test your water before you add the new water in. Then you will know if you have to drain more out for a larger water change or not.

 

[wontonflip]

You should do a partial change at least. Your water level is probably low due to evaporation. To top off for evaporation, use plain ole rodi/distilled water. Salt doesn't evaporate, so technically, your salinity goes up slightly as your water evaporates, hence why you top off w/ fresh water. If you top off w/ saltwater, your salinity will go up.

If you have a sump, you can mark off your normal water level so you know when to top off. If you don't have a sump, I'm sure you'll remember what level your water was at, and just slowly fill it to there.

Before getting an auto-top off system, I had to top off everyday for evaporation. That's normal.

 

[crazymman]

Yea but its most of its not evap. i was cleaning sand off of my rocks and it mixed up a bunch of stuff and my skimmer overflowed quite a bit. so im just replaceing it with this distilled.

 

[crazymman]

Ok heres my test results before i add the ro water.
Ammonia .25
PH 8.2
Nitrite 0
Nitrate 0 maybe just a little above. It was kinda hard to tell.
Now im gonna scrub off this white stuff from my rock and add the water. Then ill test again with the new water.

 

[VAreef]

Yea but its most of its not evap. i was cleaning sand off of my rocks and it mixed up a bunch of stuff and my skimmer overflowed quite a bit. so im just replaceing it with this distilled.

You just made me look at my skimmer cup. 1 inch from overflow LOL

 

[crazymman]

LOL. Ok so im in the proccess of doing this and the rocks that had the stuff on them smell HORRIBLE!!! Like Really rotten eggs. the ones that didnt have any on them smell fresh. Thee rocks that had it are black where the fungus was.

 

[VAreef]

That dead stuff and fungus probably used to be sponges. They will die if they touch air. Does it smell more like fish poop at the ocean smell? I'm not sure about rotten eggs but the other is pretty normal for rocks that have lots of die off on them. And also by your new test results it looks more like the beginning of a cycle now. Wouldn't worry about scrubbing em either just basically top off with RO/DI and wait. You should see some nitrites before long.

 

[crazymman]

It smelled just like rotten egg. Also noticing a lot of brown algae starting to layer the rocks. I was thinking maybe past the beginning the ammonia is lower than i was getting from the strips but those could be off.

 

[crazymman]

Checked the tank this morning and that white stuff is already starting to grow back. It's really annoying cause I don't know if it's bad or not. It must be if it smelled like it did. Is there nobody here that has had to deal with this? If so what did you do?

 

[BL1]

I had those on my rocks while my tank was cycling. I scrubbed them with a toothbrush and pulled it out with it, I haven't had any problems with since then.