My salt water tank had perfect readings before I added live rock, What do I do to bring it back to normal?

Question

I had a salt water tank that has been up and running for the last year. I had 20lbs of live rock when I started, the problem is my PH always fell to 7.8. After talking to the guide in my local pet shop I added 55lbs of live rock to my 46 gallon tank. My ammonia is now .50, the nitrite is 1.0, and the nitrate is 10. By the way, I also have 60lbs of live sand.

I had a salt water tank that has been up and running for the last year. I had 20lbs of live rock when I started, the problem is my PH always fell to 7.8. After talking to the guide in my local pet shop I added 55lbs CURED of live rock to my 46 gallon tank. My ammonia is now .50, the nitrite is 1.0, and the nitrate is 10. By the way, I also have 60lbs of live sand.

The55lbs of live rock was CURED....

Answer 1

Any time you move live rock (cured or not) you're going to have a few organisms die. Their deaths are what is causing your ammonia and nitrite. As long as you have live sand and live rock in the tank from before, the bacteria on these will help get these under control fairly quickly. It won't be as long as cycling the tank the first time around. But if you have fish or inverts, you should do a water change soon. It's best to keep the ammonia and nitrite below 0.5ppm.

To solve your pH being low, use kalkwasser. It's the only thing that I've found that will raise the pH as much as is needed. I also have marine tanks (3 currently) that like to stay around 7.8 without it. You may also find once you get the pH up, your ammonia problems may resove. Part of the die-off may be due to your low pH.

Answer 2

in case your sand and rock are really stay then the tank is already cycled. the total factor to cycling the tank is to make stronger the stay micro organism in rock and sand which they already have. Rock can contain many good critters so it would nicely be a good concept to acclimate your rock the way you would a fish. even in spite of the indisputable fact that I merely placed mine contained in the water the lazy way. as long as all of your parameters are good then the stay rock and sand are waiting to bypass and day after today you could upload your fish. some comfortable fish and all coral will choose an elderly and commonplace tank in spite of the indisputable fact that. in case your rock isn't cured then you actually favor to enable it treatment contained in the tank for a month before including farm animals. cured rock is stay rock that has had time for the lifeless organics to rot out leaving in easy words clean stay rock. before this, any lifeless count number should be bumped off if obtainable and remove sponges as they'll die besides. in case your rock isn't glued jointly to style it is ornamental structure then that's superb to placed the rock in before sand so as that later snails and sand borrowing issues can get below the rock and enable it shift round. once the sand settles you should use a turkey baster to bypass around the rock and blow the sand and crap out of the pores. this may also be executed for the duration of curing or atleast later on merely to make issues purifier. examine for such issues as PH and alkalinity and salinity before doing water variations to make sure that the water entering into matches the water comming out. sorting out for ammonia and nitrate before water variations enable you to understand what the tiers are on the optimal factor so that you recognize in case you want water variations more advantageous commonly or no longer. yet with the stay rock and stay sand and by no skill overstocking or overfeeding, your ammonia might want to stay at 0. A deep sand mattress and macro algae will superb shrink nitrates.

Answer 3

Did you put in cured LR...