HELP Cycle time and questions?

[MAERAK]

Hey everyone,

I started a 28G nano cube about 10 days ago. I have about 25-30lbs of live rock in there. I started with about 15lbs of base rock and let it sit in a refugium of a friend's established tank for a few weeks prior. He also gave me some smaller rocks from his tank along with Arag-alive reef sand. I added about 12-13lbs more of live rock from a lfs about a 5 days later. I added a blue/green chromis to help create waste and now I have three crabs and three snails in there. All are doing great, ammonia has hit .25-.5 ppm a couple days ago, Nitrite hasn't budged, .25 ppm at most, nitrate has ranged from 0 to 20 ppm. My most recent test yesterday was ph- 8-8.2, ammonia - 0, nitrite - 0, and nitrate 15-20ppm. What should I be looking for, a large ammonia spike first, larger than what I've seen?

Any help would be appreciated bc I have a "large" (two clowns, pistol and goby, and a few corals) collection of fish and live stock in a buddy's nano and 75g, I don't know if he appreciates it or not. IMO I think he'll be sad when they're gone.

Thanks in advance.

 

[fwadiver]

if nitrite and ammonia are zero your cycle is complete. Be cautious about adding too much too fast as you can cause another mini cycle

 

[jm23]

if nitrite and ammonia are zero your cycle is complete. Be cautious about adding too much too fast as you can cause another mini cycle

+1, you should be good to go, just go slow adding new livestock. If you add your clowns, goby, and shrimp along with the corals at the same time I would just feed very light for the first week or so and slowly ramp up to how much you want to feed them each day. This way the bacteria in your tank can get to the level it needs to be to handle all the waste the livestock produce.

 

[MAERAK]

Thanks