Marshall

I am 4 months into this hobby. I went through exactly the same
uncertainty and trauma with the live rock. I took advice from lots of
folk and settled on a strategy of letting the ammonia rise but doing
water changes to keep it at or around 50ppm (yes five-zero!). This
meant about 3 x 50% water changes over a 2 week period. Opinion was
split as to whether such high levels would kill off all but the
bacteria in the rock. It didn't. All kinds of suff emerged after the
cycling and now the tank is extremenly stable - not a trace of ammonia
and nitrite since with reasonable bio-load.

To monitor high levels, I was using a 1 in 10 dilition of the tank
water so I was looking at readings of around 5ppm on the test kit
(measuring higher levels is hard). Finally, when things started
dropping of their own accord in the third week, I did an almost
complete water change (80-90%). I then watched with satisfaction as
levels dropped from about 3ppm to zero over about 2 days.

Oh, yeah - definately get a skimmer fitted immediately. Mine pulled
out tons of muck during cycling.

Good luck.
Knowleman


(marshall baines) wrote in message . com...
Hi,

I am pretty new at this so I am hoping someone can help me. I
received half of the live rock for my 90 gallon tank 2 days ago. I
have been constantly doing multiple water changes (30% 2-3 times a
day), but the ammonia just does not seem to be getting under 1ppm so
easily. I noticed last night that there are multiple white spots on
the rock and corals and I am wondering if I am doing something wrong.

I have spoken to my friends, and many of them did not go through the
high ammonia levels that I have. Any recommendations? is this die
off normal or am I definately doing something wrong?

Thanks,

Marshall