Dead shripm approach for cycling.

[Mab]

Per sugggestions on this board; I have had a dead shrimp (grocery store variety) in my new 55 tank now for 4 days and no a trace of amonia has shown up. I do not wat to use fish for cycling. I only have about 10 lbs of cured live rock in the tank (more coming from Gulf-coast) with the shrimp and 4 inches of substrate. How long should I wait to see the amonia/nitrite spike? should I add another dead shipm or should the one do it eventually? I have not yet added any bacteria supplements yet as I want to wait for the amonia to sky rocket first. Am I on the right track?
Thanks for the terrific help.

[Jimbo]

Hi,

You can add a few mils of amonium chloride to kick start your cycle. A small amount of urine will also work.

Hope this helps:

[FishDaddy]

Mab,
I wouldn't be concerned about the cycle at this point.....the shrimp you have will get the cycle started, along with the small amount of LR you have. Cycling may take 2-3 weeks but you should be seeing some Ammonia soon.

How much more rock are you adding? If your tank has cycled when you add a fairly substantial amount of LR, you will probably experience another cycle. If the tank hasn't finished this cycle when you add the LR, it will just extend the time a bit. I've cycled two tanks with live rock alone.
Dick

[tdwyatt]

If you think that it (the shrimp) is not decaying or producing ammonia, chopping it up will help, but you'll be able to tell if it is producing ammonia, just smell it... ...seriously... (just get the smelling salts out, it will REALLY reek, if it doesn't, then you know something is rotten in Denmark...)

[Mab]

Jimbo, Dick and Tom: Thanks for the valuable replies. A couple of follow up questions: Urine? interesting, how much? where does one get ammonium cloride? I am getting 20 more ponds of LR; I should I wait ubtill the current cycle has finished before adding it to the tank?

[Jimbo]

Hi, I have to agree with the rest of the people, chop that shrimp up and put in a piece of an old nylon stocking. I got the urine thing from a couple of other links. I was reading some stuff on clam propogation and it said that people would sometimes urinate in the holding tanks, clams grow better in the presence of ammonium and nitrate Well whether this has any bearing on reality I don't know. But while studing the nitrogen cycle plants will often uptake urea (NH 2 ) 2 CO. (pee). I'll stick my neck out here, if your dead set on peeing in your tank, I would only use 1/4 of a small pill bottle. Then check your ammonium levels.
Heck I'm not even sure if the urea would show on your test kit!,
I got ammonium chloride from my LFS

Hope this helps LOL

[JennM]

We don't swim in your toilet, so please don't pee in our pool!

OOPS wrong venue

I haven't heard of using urine, but I guess since fish pee does the same thing.....

I've cycled a bunch (and I mean a BUNCH) of tanks with live rock only.

I wonder if your shrimp has preservatives on it, and that's why it's not rotting? Some fresh seafood is really laced with stuff....just a thought.

I've even heard of people using household ammonia to kick start things. IMO, let the LR do its thing. If it was well-cured you might not see any spike, and go VERY slowly with your livestock.

If you choose to leave the shrimp in there, DO wait for the spike, but if you remove it, moniter levels for a few more days to make sure, and go slowly.

IMO bacterial boosters and supplements are a waste of money. Mother Nature does just fine on her own.

HTH

Jenn

[tdwyatt]

Originally posted by JennM
haven't heard of using urine, but I guess since fish pee does the same thing... ...I've cycled a bunch (and I mean a BUNCH) of tanks with live rock only... ...I wonder if your shrimp has preservatives on it... ...I've even heard of people using household ammonia to kick start things... ...IMO, let the LR do its thing. If it was well-cured you might not see any spike...
...IMO bacterial boosters and supplements are a waste of money. Mother Nature does just fine on her own...

You couldn't ask for better advice.

...haven't heard of using urine, but I guess since fish pee does the same thing...

Yes, this would work, but the concentration of urea in human urine would be variable at best, and most possibly low to ineffective at worst. Consider also that the ammonia you would see must go through an initial chemical transformation before it would be able to start feeding the bacteria ammonia. You must introduce another biological path to convert the urea that will not be needed in your biotope (humans produce Urea, which is a conjugated form of ammonia. fishes remove ammonia directly from their gills as their primary route of nitrogen waste removal. Fish poop may contain ammonia, but for the most part, it is eliminated through the gills.)

...I've cycled a bunch (and I mean a BUNCH) of tanks with live rock only...

This is the preferred method of cycling a tank. It avoids a second cycle from occurring when you finally do add your rock, and it uses the actual products of aquarium decay (from the rock) to feed the bacteria that we want to encourage to multiply in the first place. The results are a biosystem based on the actual processes you want and fully cured rock without an intermediate step.

...I wonder if your shrimp has preservatives on it...

A possibility, but the amount of preservatives needed to prevent biological decay in an environment like an aquarium would be staggering. Most of the preservatives added to shrimp are intended to preserve the color and preserve freshness (BHA, etc) and prevent taste changes. Unless it was loaded with large amounts of sodium nitrite, it is unlikely that the shrimp would be preserved by additives enough to prevent the ammonia from developing. It just takes a bit at times, and chopping it up and putting it in several locations will help promote this process.

...I've even heard of people using household ammonia to kick start things...

Most household ammonia products not only contain ammonia, but also detergents and surfactants (even the ones that say "non-sudsing") to make them better cleaners (they work by making water "wetter")... not to be sarcastic, but why not go ahead and add some Tide while you're at it???(this is a joke, do not consider adding household ammonia nor Tide as a viable alternative.) John Tullock reports on the use of Ammonium Chloride in his text "Natural Reef Aquariums". Dr Jaubert's original setup scheme for Monacco-style aquariums employ plenums as part of the deep sandbed substrate, and he suggests the use of reagent-grade ammonium chloride as a 6% w/v solution added to the volume of water when adding the sand at a rate to result in 3ppm ammonia when using a standard aquarium test kit. If you make your own, prolly best to put 1 gm in 1 liter of RO/DI, this yields 1mg/ml ammonium chloride, 1ml of which when added to 100 liters (about 25 gal US) solution yields 10 ppm. If you add 1 ml for each 75 gal US will yield about 3.3PPM. This is a pretty expensive method of adding ammonia when you consider the time and cost of acquisition to make this product, especially when you consider that LR will do it for free...

...IMO, let the LR do its thing. If it was well-cured you might not see any spike...

'NUF' SAID (FishDaddy taught me that!)

[Macaw Guy]

Reminds me of college when I caught my roomie (in a drunken stupor) peeing in my laundry hamper. I yelled at him to wake him up and go to his business in the proper place and he looked at me like "why are you sleeping in the bathtub?"

I guess it's a good thing he didn't have to #2! Might have had a unwanted present on my desk chair in the morning...

[Mab]

Jim (and all),

Thanks for putting such clear persppective on this issue. I am happy to report that as of this AM ammonia is almost 1 and the shrimp came out in small pieces (stinking up a storm!), I left some of the sraps in the tank (about 1/4) and took the rest of it out. I've decided gains unrine in the tank based on Jim's logical observations) I am hoping ammonia will go higher before it converts to nitrites. I want to make sure this cycle is done before I add any live fish or inverts. The additional 20 lbs of pre-cured LR form Gulf-Coast should be here today. I plan on re-curing for a few days before indtroducing to the tank (is this the right approach?) I also have a Sand Activator Package coming in tomorrow from Indo-Pacific Sea Farms to inject the 5 inch DSB, this dual approach should get things going in the right direction. I have 3 fish in the QT doing well and patiently waiting for thier new home, if they have to wait, thay have to wait.- agree? your commnets are nuch appreciated.

Thanks again,

Mab