New Tank and no Ammonia???

[R.Allard]

OK the tank is going great i havent had anything die except a couple of tiny clear shrimp and it looks like a crab has shed his shell .
i have had the tank runnin fopr two weeks now and for one week
it has had some live rock (excellent live rock form Vihn).
I had it out of water for about an hour but it was covered by wet
newspapper..
the tank has been running for a week now with the live rock and still no ammonia spike .. should i be concerned ???? :roll:
R.

[Janice]

Never had an ammonia spike with our 29g. IME - if you buy enough good rock you shouldn't have much of one (if one at all).

[Tim Marvin]

You bought the rock locally from Vinh, so it was more like just moving a tank than setting a new one up. So the answer is no, don't be concerned be happy and put in a little livestock.

[R.Allard]

OK :grin:
Im the prowd owner of 6 turbo snails and a yellow head goby.. wooooohoooooooo!!!
a friend of mine is bringing over a coral beauty and thats gonna be it for a month or so till the tank gets caught up to the new wild life :-D :-D
thanks for all the help everyone..
the goby has been in the tank for a day now and wont eat and i know its gonna take some time but how long do i wait before i try garlic or other
measures???
R.

[R.Allard]

so do i just thaw the food out and put some garlic juice on it or is there something else i should try..??

[Tim Marvin]

Buy the fresh ground garlic in the jars at the grocery store.. Use the garlic in your cooking and the juice for the fish food.

[R.Allard]

Thanks Tim,
no need though :grin: the goby was eating last night and the
coral beauty was eating an hour after i put him in the tank.. well what
happend was i went to feed the goby and the both of them started to
eat some brine shrimp...i also put some of that (hmm cant think of the name ) seaweed you buy from chinese stores in the tank .. my q? is will the goby eat it ??
Thanks R.

[TexasState]

You should also test for your nitrate level.
I bought those live rocks from four different stores. Half of them were hand picked rock, so you get lots of good diversity when you bought the LR from me. The last time I added any LR to my tank was back in about September, so it's been curing for a long time. When you move rock around(even during a short trip,) you'll have a short cycle. So, you should wait until your ammonia & nitrate level are low enough to add the livestock. With that said, I've upgrade/downgrade my tank many times. Each time I left the rock sitting covered & moist for several hours, put it back in water w/ corals and fish, and not much died off.

[R.Allard]

as of now all the levels are at 0 ..
the only thing im kinda concerned about is im getting some brown alge at the bottom of the tank i didnt use the greatest water to start the tank off because i knew i was going to have an ammonia spike and get alittle
alge anyway.
i have been buying water from Albersons the distilled kind to add for
evaporation untill my ro/di gets here next week hopefully that will help ...
any suggestions??
BTW my protine skimmer is workin great its produceing some really
thick dark nasty skimate..
R.

[TexasState]

The brown algae is probably diatom resulting from the phosphate in the water. It's also present during a new tank cycling in. Don't buy distilled water at the store. Use RO/DI instead. If you don't have access to RO/DI, buy the RO water from the dispensing machine w/ the picture of the Penguin. After your tank is stable, get some snails to clean out the diatom. You can dose Kalkwasser to precipatate the phosphate out of solution. When you get your RO/DI unit in, do some big water change. Try to replace the filter pads in your RO/DI everything six month.