Reef nutrition

Anna & Pablo’s RSR P650

I like the knobs :)

By the way, as far as I know the TapaTalk mention tag doesn’t work on our site. Use @ then the user name. TapaTalk in general sucks and doesn’t work well for our site, so you may want to just access through bareefers.org.
 
3 days of dead shrimp and no detectable ammonia...what gives? I also threw in a cube of mysis and a few pellets. I guess I should test nitrate and nitrite.
 
Oh - the cycling article says it takes about a week for the shrimp to start making ammonia. I need to be patient.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
Wait...the above two statements sound contradictory.

I received Fritz Ammonium Chloride, so I plan on taking out the lovely shrimp and use it instead.

I should be able to observe the ammonia being consumed by the bacteria and I’ll keep feeding it until I get my first fish.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
Yeah I’m saying you could likely add a fish or two now and let then continue to feed the bacteria.
Or you can go slow and feed it with chemicals for awhile until you’re confident there’s “enough” bacteria. Then you could likely add a small group of fish to start with. Basically the same result either way.
 
Wait...the above two statements sound contradictory.

I received Fritz Ammonium Chloride, so I plan on taking out the lovely shrimp and use it instead.

I should be able to observe the ammonia being consumed by the bacteria and I’ll keep feeding it until I get my first fish.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

If you dose the ammonia chloride so that you can read 2ppm of ammonia, a cycled tank should be able to process it to nitrate within 24 hours.
 
When it come to Cycle there are 2 paths natural and intervention.
If you are going through the bacterial additives you need to make sure you supplement with bacterial nutrients to sustain the bacterial population until they establish, or add bacteria frequently till its established.
My cycles are 14 days at the end of which I start adding all type of coral and fish. But I can do that because i use bacterial additives program that add bacteria and bacterial food(carbon)

The other path is to add some bacteria, add a fish or 2 and wait till the tank go through all its cycle phases and establish..
 
Last edited:
You don’t need to see detectable ammonia and nitrite when you are cycling with addition of bacteria. Those toxic intermediates are there in trace amounts, but are rapidly converted by the bacteria to their end product that accumulates, nitrate. So in a normal already-cycled tank you never see ammonia or nitrite even though you do have them being produced and consumed constantly.

That’s why I said your numbers looked good; you are adding protein and starting to accumulate nitrate without detectable toxic intermediates- ammonia and nitrite. That’s the goal of the cycle.
 
Understood. I had my cycling processes mixed up.

Also - had our first mini flood today. Yesterday, the Apex alerted that the ATK upper sensor registered water - which shouldn’t happen. I went to look and indeed the top off was dripping, indicating a siphon between the reservoir and the sump. So, I fiddled with the connection from the ATO pump until it broke the siphon and turned off the ATK for the night. This morning, when I turned it back on, the fitting was loose and sprayed water everywhere until I managed to turn it off.

Lessons learned:

If you fiddle with something, make sure it works correctly afterwards. Expect it to fail and be prepared.

Fix the root cause. The root cause was that the siphon hole was not drilled all the way through. By fiddling I stopped the siphon but I didn’t fix the root cause.
 
Back
Top