short cycle?

[slojmn]

I received live rock from Harbor Aquatics 11 days ago. My tank is currently showing 0 nitrites and 2.2 Nitrates over the past 4 days. This seems like a very short cycle. The rock was cured, but I know there has been die off as I have been blowing off the rocks periodically. I have been running my skimmer 24/7 and running VHO lights 10hrs and MH 2hrs/day. I have a nice coating of brown algae on the sand. It has little bubbles all over it that are being released into the water column. I am also noticing bubbles in the layers of sand as well, that is cool. I ordered a detrivore kit from IPSF with a mixture of stuff as well as a bunch of snails/scarlet crabs. I have three or four snails cruising the tank now that are seemingly healthy. OH, BTW I have not done a water change, but plan to in the next few days. Do you think I went through the cycle already? seems awfully quick. I don't plan on ading anything but the snails et.al. for at least a few weeks. Just wanted a little input.

Thanks

[Rebel]

With a large supply of good LR you may have a good enough bacteria base to process the die-off from the rock and show a "completed cycle". I have had this happen--the CHS tank cycled in a week--but we still went very slowly while adding things to raise the bio-load slowly, thereby allowing the bacteria to multiply and keep up. You should be fine if you go slowly, IMO.

J

[slojmn]

Thanks J, my thoughts too. Slow is the name of the game. How is the CHS tank?