Little White Hairs?

[JAKELABOB]

10 days into the cycle and my live rock as sprouted some small white hairs and can see some floating around in the water column. Any ideas?

current water conditions
Amm - .25
No2 - 0
No3 - 0
PH - 8.2
salinity - 1.026
temp - 79.1

Also When I bought the rock i brought it back in a bucket, and thank god I did because the rock punctured the bag and exposed a lot of the coralline algae to air. I was going to drop a shrimp in the tank along with the rock, but decided that the rock was exposed to the air long enough to provide enough dead stuff to jump start the cycle. Hopefully this was true or should I still drop one in.

.50ppm was the highest the ammonia has risen (tested every other day) and never saw a nitrite or nitrate spike.

I do have some diatoms starting to develop. Read on here that this could be a sign of the cycle ending.......but only after 10 days????........c'mon man don't tease me!

 

[little_fish]

looks like dead algae to me, not anything i would worry about. And as long as you saw the ammonia go up and down, i would consider the tank cycled.

 

[beeguiles]

Doesn't the nitrite have to spike also?

 

[ErinCahir]

Nitrites have to spike after the ammonia does. That's the "cycle" part.

 

[little_fish]

I would think that he had enough nitrite processing bacteria still alive and didnt see that spike. Plus nitrites arent toxic to saltwater fish, only fresh.

 

[JAKELABOB]

Thanks ladies! I'll let it go a couple more days. If nothing changes then I'll start adding the CUC.

 

[beeguiles]

Yea I was just researching nitrite toxicity to marine life bc I coulda sworn I heard they weren't as toxic. Youre right, they affected th fish after 330ppm.

 

[little_fish]

But I would still assume that they are toxic and damaging to inverts though.