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[reeferaddict]

Originally Posted by TheReefGeek

Seeing the spikes is not a panick, its great, because you know you are building up the quanitties of bacteria you need to break down waste. Without "seeing" the cycle, you don't know your tank can break down wastes effectively.

Also, why did you do water changes during the cycle? You were removing waste that should have gone towards building up bacteria levels.

If you have very little die off, and did water changes, and didn't record any spikes, I wouldn't be confident that your system actually cycled properly.

I couldn't agree more... usually water changes are done at the end of the cycling process - if there ever is an end - or rather when livestock starts to be added as anything added or subtracted will affect the bioload capacity even months down the road. While a system may take only a few weeks to go through the nitrate cycle, I feel it takes a year or longer to totally stabilize as observed through the various stages and fluctuations of nuisance algae that ALL tanks go through. Everything is always in such delicate balance - so adding livestock to any system, but especially a small system is going to create some bacteria imbalances that will take time to sort out. Sometimes when fish are brought to a new tank they get stressed and sick very easily no matter what the acclimation procedure is. Once that happens, a fish can succumb very quickly, especially in a "sterile" environment such as a young system.

From what you have posted I see someone being very conciensious but disappointed at failure... sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but welcome to the club. Keep doing everything as you have been, and once the ammonia and nitrite have been cycled out, give it another shot. I tried Percs in a couple of "newer" systems, and could never seem to keep them... this really pi$$ed me off when I'd see some swimming away happily in somebody's nano as I was always providing more space etc etc etc... now I have 4 that I put in a system that was over 8 months old, (buying 4 hoping TWO would survive after my abysmal previous attempts), and I still have all of them over a year later... go figure! I think the hardiest clown species are Maroons as I had my first long term success with one of those, but I think your tank size should limit you to Percs or Oscellaris...