Bi-Weekly Discussion of the Week: Cycling a tank

[Geoff]

what are the different ways of cycling a tank? lets talk both brand new setups and moving to a larger aquarium. how long does it take? what are the stages that the tank will go through?

G~

[yardboy]

Gee, I get to go first! In my Oceanic 70 with wet/dry filter I put 60 # of cured Marshall Island/Fiji Live rock and 40 lbs. of Aragomax crushed coral and ran it for a week, then put two (aaarrrgggh) damsels in, a blue and yellow-tailed. What a screw up. They were so pretty in the store.
I never saw any appreciable ammonia, small spike of nitrite, and 8 months later, <10ppm nitrate.

[salt creepette]

i cycled my 20 gallon with shrimp and a handful of live 'sand' (cc) from my 30G. It took 3 weeks to cycle

[salt creepette]

sorry i didnt finish, my boss walked into the room! ha ha.

anyways, no live rock, only a hang on powerfilter. I have since added live rock though.

I cycled my mother in law's 30 gallon the same way and it also took about three weeks to cycle. it now has live rock as well. we just wanted to get the tank cycling sooner and then we bought the live rock later, although finances allowing, i would do it with LR from the start next time.

[Awestralian]

For my nano, i used cured liverock, pure saltwater from the ocean, and a small peice of shrimp, which i took out after 3 days - just for a source of ammonia.
I also used a bottle solution called Nitrovec (sp?) to kick start the bacteria population - as to how effective it is - i dont know, but the tank was fully cycled in a bit under two weeks.
This is a quick cycle, because a) its a nano and b) i used cured rock.

Cycles are different for different setups, and i will say i had the tiniest amount of algae using proper salt water and no dsb compared to using a salt mix, tap water, and a dsb (that is the only difference to my old tank which was covered in algae very quickly).

Using cured lr should cycle a tank quicker than uncured, obviously live sand will help your dsb get established quicker.
Cycling with uncured rock should allow you to add a slightly heavier bioload quicker than u would in a cured lr tank, as there should be more bactria present than using cured lr with minimal dieoff.

[mandarinfreek]

for my set up I used crushed coral and 40lbs of LR. damsels and a few huge hermits for about 2 months . tank cycled and was doing well. then I went through a second cycle 4 months later which caused a large algae bloom (KABOOM). But tank is clear as crystal now and doing fine (Im a NEWBIE if you couldent tell

[Geoff]

when do you consider a tank cycled?

G~

[tims]

well when i first started the 65 i used CC and a hang on filter. NO LR at all. dumped in a few cromis and a YT damsel (mistake i know)
also added stress - zyme. picked it up at the LFS it suppose to help the fish and cycle the tank by adding bacteria. after maybe 4 or 5 weeks the levels were in a good range. everyone was happy.

my 6 yr. old decided to help the fish and tank by cleaning it
so......i had to start all over.
this time i kept the CC and use a canister filter and added about 20 lbs of fiji LR.

how do i know the tank has cycled? the srooms and star ployps and the pods living everywhere. i have two crabs and a aneome ( hitchhiker with the new srooms)
the tank leavel all are where they should be and everyone seems happy or at least as happy as a clam LOL....

i could be wrong.. but if i see pods i figure things are doing pretty well. i know i had a major problem a while ago with them but you helped me with that!!!

hope this is not too long

[Awestralian]

When ammonia has dropped back to less than 0.5ppm, nitrite to close to zero, and nitrate less than 50ppm.

(of course 50ppm would be bad news for corals, so dont be adding them yet! most fish would be fine with this though)



Edit--- i did get them around the wrong way! i knew it... fixed now...

[rockstar]

personally i try and start off with uncured live rock equal about 1 pound per gallon(more if possible) and 1 pound per gallon of live substrate(again more is better, but aesthetics also have a roll as well.) i choose uncured rock so i can start building ammonia quickly with the die off, and possible have a few cool surviving corals of sorts. I have found with this setup that my tanks cycle less than a week.

[ruhspolostar]

Did you say uncuured live rock, I'd be interrested in why, I'm saying its bad, I've just seen a couple of "episodes" in which uncurred live rock was used and it wasn't pretty

-TO answer the question to cycle my tank (156 gallons) I used about 85 lbs of curred live rock and a 2.5" sand bed, half of it fine crushed sand the rest was crushed sea shells and corral skeleton and a scoop of LS, and I used a "cycle solution", about 2.5 weeks later I put in 9 blue green chromis, two died in the first week but not due to water quality. (They were really small and had mishap with the filter intake before a got a "screen" for it). Another 2-3 weeks passed and I noticed my sandbed had a lot of algae and copepods in it so I bought three red foot moon snails, an orange spotted gobbie and a two sand-siffting stars, I still have all of those and their doing great, this tank has been set up for about 6-7 months. I did not do the first water change for about 4-5 weeks, I make my own salt water in a 40 gallon mixing tank with COral Life, I do 15 gallon changes every 2 weeks...and well as usual I've answered more than what was asked...I tend to run on sorry...


_____________________
LIVE LONG AND PROSPER!

-a busy h20 Polo Captain

[captainken]

I went with 90# of liverock , made a 5 gallon water changes every 2 days. During this time I watched my ammonia. it spiked , then just as the ammonia spiked the nitrites started to rise. as the ammonia was high, the nitrites rose up, and then the nitrates started to rise. I kept making water changes to the ammonia level would not reach veryveryvery high levels. this does not prolong the cycle. then about in 12 days the ammonia dropped to half. the nitrites were high and the nitrates were still rising.
then in about 16 days, the ammonia was 0.2, the nitrites dropped like a rock and the nitrates were high but starting to fall.
I kept up the water changes every couple of days. then I quite unitl the nitrates started to drop near 0. when the all the tests reached 0 it was about 22 days. I did water changes to the ammonia level would not just kill every thing on my rock. I wanted to save as much as possible. It worked. but the tank is not done yet. after the levels hit 0 I did a 2 10 gal water changes for 3 straight days. Then on day 26 I added a clean up crew of turbo snails and redlgcrabs. started the refuge and added more cleanup crews. I took about 22-25days for all this to happen. so the message is BE PATIENT.......
Now after 2 months I am starting to have a nice tank

[CAT]

I like to use uncured rock. I find the cured stuff has pretty much been 'cooked' at the lfs - white with nothing much on it. I just bought a couple of large pieces of 'cured' l.r. Can't find anything good on it and it's Walt Smith rock.

I've been able to save macro algae, sponges, a variety of pods, and some cool little dusters and polyps by maintaining water changes and trying to keep the ammonia at a minimum. I also run my lights.

It seems to me that uncured rock takes a little longer to cycle but I figure there's no point in buying 'live rock' then killing everything with big ammonia spikes.

If you don't have l.r., feeding the tank everyday the way you would feed fish if they were in there works well too. That way the bio-filter is ready for fish when you add them.

My 0.02 cents worth

[Awestralian]

I think it depends on the rock itself Cat, as ive brought well cured rock covered with lots life, the best rock i have seen yet, and also brought semicured/cured rock that was not so great, with very little life on it...

[Geoff]

Awestralian-i am sure you also get some of the best LR around. since you are much closer to the source than we are.

when i cycled our tanks i just use whatever LR i can get. i have used both cured from previous tanks and new uncured stuff. i do not care. i also do not consider a tank cycled until i have a healthy population of feather dusters growing everywhere. this usually takes a couple of months. i also do not do any water changes untill a couple of weeks before i want to add any real critters. i feel that doing a water change removes the fuel for the beneficial bacteria we are trying to cultivate. since you are diluting the cycle i think you are weakening the ability of the system to handle the soon to be increased bio-load when you start adding bigger critters.

letting the tank sit and fester for so long allows everything to reach an equilibrium on its own. so far i have not had a nitrate problem this way.

i know it is boring for some of you to look at an empty tank for 2-3 months, but there are actually a lot of cool critters to see on the LR! i tend to look at the LR as much as the coral and the fish in my systems.

just to clarify, while i am cycling the tank i run the tank exactly the same way i would if it were fully stocked. the skimmer is a crankin, the flow is blowing and the media is changed. the only thing i do different is i do not do is water changes.

my .02

G~