New Tank Cycle

[Dave Bees]

Hi everyone I'm very new to saltwater fish keeping.

I have recently purchased a 25 gallon Fluval M90 Aquarium ,well 26 days ago to be precise.
The problem I have is I don't know if it's cycling as the test results seem to go up and down
I have approx 18 kg of cured live rock 10 kg of Carib live sand and nothing else in the tank apart from a lot of brown nasty stuff on the rocks and sand.

The Rock has been in the tank 21 days now and I haven't seen any living thing at all. I have included a few pics and my test results and was wondering if anyone out there could give me some idea of what's happening,many thanks in advance...

 

[Becky]

Welcome to the forum Dave! Hopefully someone will be able to help you out here :)

 

[salt_for_brains]

Hi Dave and welcome to Living Reefs!!

What kind of test kit are you using. Sometimes API will give you false positive readings. It is a little more difficult to notice a substantial cycle when you use cured live rock. Looking at your numbers it appears you had a cycle. Now I believe you are getting some bogus numbers on your ammonia and nitrites. You have diatoms which comes with a new setup. I would do a 10-20% water change and see where your numbers go. I would also mix your water change with your SG around 1.027 and try to bring up your total SG to the 1.025 number. Let us know what happens. Good luck!