Starting a marine aquarium,cycling and maturing.

If you have come from freshwater to the saltwater aquarium hobby, it’s completely different as to how things go in the long term,though the short term is very similar on a biological level.

Until your aquarium has cycled, nitrites to zero, never use protein skimmers or carbon filters during this time!

Understanding how to get the best cycling achieved.

To begin with different life forms waste or dead tissue give off different ammonia, this is important to apply when starting the system so the tanks bio community has matured life forms to cope with all types of waste at the start before adding susceptible life forms to stress.

A good way to get a very controllable aquarium is the dead coral and any other cal structures you use in the aquarium to boil and or possibly soak in chlorine or bleach to have a completely sterile start to the system and add life to the dead coral to become your own live rock with out any thing I you did not introduce yourself.

If this way or buying life soaked live rock from the shop, put in after the tanks water  is matured off the external bio filter.

Have your external bio filter with out algae at this stage until tank is matured.

The tank should have nothing in it as you inspire very high nitrites with a marinara mix rotting hung in the water some where with a stocking bag for ten days to get a good surge of ammonia.

The tank should have a large proportion of natural seawater fresh from the ocean with the necessary life forms to mutate to a full on nitrite cycling bacterium or buy the bacteria from the shops to start the aquariums cycle.

The nitrites need to go through the roof and then the bacterium explodes resulting in the nitrites achieving zero quite fast, cycling complete!

The next faze of evolution in the tank will be life forms mutating to protists, which includes the white spot protist, some others not the white spot protist graze out the bacteria and the biological filtration is now mature!

This is why you will always have white spot in a reef tank, they love to exist in wait with in the surface of a substrates to sense stressed fish and attack, if with out a white spot consuming wet section, you see the other more robust protists that take on bacteria to help oxidise the nitrite cycle-nitrite to nitrate in a symbiotic style similar to coral and their algae clades with in, these dominant protists eat them as the juveniles pass through, this makes a UV steriliser look useless.

What terms mean.

Cycling a marine aquarium starts with the support of oxidising bacteria taking care of waste gases, this is called cycling if there is no matured media added for this part of establishing a marine aquarium.
For each type of ammonia there is a different variation of bacteria needed to convert this, so from day one, use as many different decomposing life forms for production of different ammonia, best suited for this is some marinara mix left to rot in the tank in a pores bag hung in your water some where for 8 to 10 days!

Maturing, now it’s up to the hardcore biological community to kick in, these are called protists and graze upon the aquariums original cycling bacteria.

They will adapt to oxidise nitrite them selves or become the last stage before it is an actual algae life form, this involves housing oxidising bacteria in a symbiotic relation ship with in to subsidize its intake, these oxidise nitrite for a matured marine aquarium!

The more clean un-altered surface area with in oxygen rich waters for this community to thrive and these will give them the ability to expand quickly for problem times in the aquarium, thus less stress upon fish and few PH fluctuations in the aquariums waters!

Protists/white spot,
These exist at best in a subtrate,try not to have one of these in the aquarium and not out side of the aquarium before pre filtering,thast very important!
The protist family,which white spot is part of,were called protazoa/protozoan,this wording is more so used in schools these days,these constantly mutate, as do bacteria during cycling/maturing to carry out valued and initualy detrimental actions in your aquarium.

With in the aquariums protists community some will mutate/evolve to the protist nick named (ich, white spot), this equates to the impossibility of completely removing these parasites from the aquarium.

Phosphates
Your foods are producing phosphates whether it be initially or after consumption, these will be why the majority of phosphates are present, or in some cases, not present because sponges and robust photosynthetic life forms remove it.

If you have any algae anywhere,on the tanks glass,on the live rock, phosphates are being converted,also any sponges and there are always sponges on the back and under live rock, they are helping to clean your water.

If you have had the average algae bloom on your substrate most have this not long after starting, that will put a hole in the aquariums phosphates.

One fish per foot of live rock tank filtering is fine and very little impurities (phosphates) will be of an amount hard to remove for tank life forms for ages.

A skimmer will help reduce a little of the potential phosphates and the rest will be the work of algae/sponges, any algae even with in corals will photosynthesis phosphates, high levels will be a detriment to the corals of course.

Unwashed home made foods will increase phosphates, dried-flake-pellet foods will raise phosphates, waste mainly makes phosphates, if the life forms are slight and the feeding is slight, you will have very little phosphates, if any!

Its when you add to much life for the style of filtering you have or as a live rock tank ages, thats when it all starts to fade away in water quality, normally very slowly!

Marine tanks are at their best after a new set up from between 4months to one year, after that, if the filtering is not designed for longevity, it will be possibly a slight to painful head ache, or just okay, or not as good as could have been!

Phosphates are only a problem to help make algae blooms or sicken feather sea stars  and most corals, this substance has very little to do with anything else,though it can,over time enspire a little cyano algae/bacteria life forms.