55 gallon fish tank saltwater not cycling yet?

Question

I have a 55 gallon reef tank that is 3 months old.I still have no nitrites nor nitrates. I have about 30LBS of live rock,a 2 1/2" sand bed,fluval 303 filter,water heater, protein skimmer, powerhead 402 for extra water flow, 25 nerite snails, 1 tomatoe clown, 3 different types of damsels and 8 anemones that grew from the rock. Fish are fine everything living is fine. even the green macroalgae that is taking over my tank.what am i doing wrong. my salinity is at 1.024. i have 290 watts of lighting.

Answer 1

If your algae is growing that well, it may be removing the nitrate in the tank if the level is low enough. If the tank is already cycled, you shouldn't get any nitrite. Are you do the water tests with strips or liquid reagents? The paper strips can be off by a good amount, so you might take a water sample to a local pet store and have them double-check your results. You will have to trim back the algae eventually if you don't want it to overtake your tank - it's the growing algae that absorbs the nitrate the best, so you'll need to harvest the algae to completely remove the nitrate fron the tank. If it overgrows and some of the lpwer parts which aren't exposed to as much light start to die, this will release the nitrate bact into the tank.

If you have multiple anemones that grew from your live rock, make sure these aren't Aiptasia, which are a nuisance anemone: (see photo: http://fins.actwin.com/pics/Aiptasia_sp2.jpg ). Adding a few pepermint shrimp will eliminate them - the shrimp will eat the anemones once they have adjusted to your tank (about a week), but will leave most other polyps alone.

Answer 2

These colors can be easily accomplished if you mix various schools of fish (guppies, harlequins, tetras... so many kind of tetras out there like lemon, neon... glofish, etc.) Most of these do well with other small schooling fish. They are all freshwater, active schooling fish. The only thing I would say is please read up on cycling a tank before you buy fish. Cycle your tank (with fish or a fishless cycle, your choice). Once the tank is cycled stock to full capacity by introducing 1 school of fish every week. If you are very selective you could keep a male Betta as a center piece fish but there are some fish it can't live with (like guppies). On the other hand, if small fish don't do it for you, you could pull off 3 colorful fancy goldfish in this tank. But I don't think you can pull off all the colors of a rainbow with just 3 fancy goldfish.

Answer 3

No nitrites or nitrates are great..If you are showing no ammonia then you have already cycled..Good live rock will cycle a tank very quickly..Mine cycled in 4 days.I would think yours is cycled also with the anemone growing that tells me you have cycled,,and with the rock and live sand you probably had a very small short cycled and missed it.

Answer 4

Are you still getting ammonia? If not, then your live rock, sand bed and skimmer are taking care of it for you. If you are still getting ammonia, then get more live rock.