Haha, yep, that's how it goes. I agree, I think it is best to wait. I even thought I had
beat the system, I had a trend downwards of all my bad levels so I thought I would get
a jump on the "official" end of the cycle, and I went and got some fish and a snail crew.
Well, lo and behold, IN ONE DAY, I get home from work and my tank is covered in diatoms.
I was totally trippin.But it was good to get the snails for that matter alone. You can really get
a realization on how much they love algae and how efficient they are when you look at PVC pipe.
I had a spray bar that I made to return water to the tank and it went from white to brown in a day.
I stuck a snail to it and woke up the next morning and all 4 feet of it were white again. Of course,
every other surface in the tank was still brown, but it takes a 20 snail crew a bit to finish off the rocks
with all their nooks and crannies. And sand is tough, too.
But yes, additives tend to have things in them that act as surfactants or something, cause it can
be like Old Faithful when they hit the skimmer. Run some carbon in your loop somehow and starve
the skimmer for air a bit and you'll get back there eventually. I finally also relented and drilled a hole
in my skimmate cup with a dremel and siliconed a tube into the hole and ran that to a bucket.
I hated to drill my skimmer, but you can't always be there to empty the cup. This way the excess
skimmate runs off to a larger collection point and can save your butt.