Maturing Marine Aquarium Filters

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Maturing Marine Aquarium Filters, a short but informative note...

During the acclimation process of a saltwater reef or fowlr aquarium, after you have added living rock to a marine saltwater aquarium, and before you add any fish or invertebrates, you will want to mature the filters. Filter media that needs to mature and seed includes any bio materials such as: ceramic blocks, bio balls, live sand and live rock. Allow the lights to operate during the normal photo period (12 hours per day), this will help this maturation process.

*It is absolutely critical that you do not introduce any more live stock into the aquarium until the filters have fully matured. This means you must wait until there is a large enough population of nitrifying bacteria to deal with the bio-load of ammonia and nitrite already present in the water, from the addition of everything already added including the original water.

Make daily tests for ammonia and nitrite levels until the readings show zero for both.  It is likely you will not see any evidence of ammonia or nitrite right away, but this does not mean the coast is clear, as the levels will build up gradually and sometimes spike back up quickly, with ammonia peaking first.

In conclusion be patient, and wait until you have had several consecutive days of zero readings before considering adding the remainder of your live stock.  When you are certain that all is clear, make a 20-25% water change using reverse osmosis saltwater which will help to dilute the resulting levels of nitrate that may form.

For a step by step detailed look at setting up your marine aquarium, check out our article titled, "How to set up a miniature nano reef aquarium". You can find it posted in various directories, simply type the article title name into Googles Search; or you can go to www.ehow.com and input the article title name into their search.

In the upcoming blogs, we'll talk about: Live Plants, Temperature Difference and External Filters.  

Thank you for your time. OCReef.com

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