Cycling Process

On water changes I make my salt mix in a 5 gal bucket with a power head and heater, the heater is important because if your using a hydrometer and the temps off it will give you a false reading and when doing a change different temps are bad on your livestock, or if you need more water just use the container you are curing your live rock in when its done curing or buy a ten gal tank only about 10.00 at most lfs.
 
Water changes are simple all you need are a powerhead, heater, hydrometer and a container such as a rough toat or trash can make your saltwater mix in the container place in the heater and powerhead have your water reach the same temp as the tank check it periodically with the hydrometer when the specific gravity and temp has been reached, make sure your tank is topped off, remove the amount of water you wish to add to the tank and replace with the water you made general rule of thumb do at least 10 percent. Ie is you have a 30 do at least a 3 gal water change as far as when to do it there are alot of different views on that I do mine once a week. Hope this helps.
 
And it's a good idea to let the new water sit for about two days (with a powerhead and heater still on) before you add it to the tank. Adding water that you just mixed straight to the tank can hurt the fish.

I used to make my own water, but it took up too much time and space, so now I just buy premade saltwater from my LFS. It's the right pH, temperature, and salinity, so I just bring it home and add it to my tank immediately. For mine and other relatively small tanks (55 gallon), buying it is easy, but I can see why people with larger tanks would rather make their own. Anyways, if you don't have the space or time to make your own, you can always buy it from fish stores (but remember to test it before you add it to the tank, it can still have problems).
 
Yes only replace evaporate water with fresh ro water or over time your salinity will get too high.
 
Yes walmart,kroger, and you lfs should sell it for anywere from about .30 to .70 cents a gal and about .99 for already mixed at your lfs.
 
Would petco/petsmart have the mixed water?




Btw, I added the LR to my tank for curing. Should that raise the pH at all?
 
yes petco does have it I buy there 5 gal mix its 8.93 here and saves me headache. No I dont beleive it will raise your ph however you will have a spike in amonia and nits due to dieoff. Hope this helps.
 
My pet-co only sells ro not mixed but I went there yesterday and they had it for .8 a gal not bad at all.
 
you can order it online through petco I forget the name of it but it is a five gal bag of saltwater. As for your previous post for cycle of the tank anything that adds waste to the system whether its uncured live rock, an extremely hardy fish that can survive the cycle, on into food its all up to you.
 
I talked to a buddy of mine at work and he said I should do a 10% water change and not add any chemicals for a few weeks. Hes got alot of years in the hobby. Sound advice?
 
If you are just curing the rocks, I'd say your friend makes sense. A 10% water change (or even more) will help lower your levels.
 
You should use R/O water if possible. Tap water can contain heavy metals, nitrates, phosphates, all the stuff you're trying to remove with a water change.
 
Well, you guys are definately right about the smelly stage.lol. I took some readings earlier tonight, and Ive stopped adding biozyme. My parameters are as follows-

Nitrites- 3.3-33 mg/l
pH-7.7
KH-8
Ammonia-3.0 mg/l
CO2- 5 mg/l
 
Yes it will be extremely smelly lol but when the rock smells like a cool fresh breeze over the ocean then thats when you know that the curing stage is complete I recomend up to a month. Yep she's cycling all you can do is sit back and let nature run its course. And biffer is right dont use tap too many chemicals in it not just chlorine and chloramine but you have metals on top of phosphates (algae food).
 
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Im looking into buying mixed water or an ro/di unit. Will the ammonia levels go down naturally? I wanted to do a water change a few days ago, but I havent been able to check out any stores and look for water.
 
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