how long for cycling?

[roseselene]

Hi! I just set up my marine tank. We have a 55 gallon. We have 100 pounds of live sand which is about 4-5 inches deep and 25 pounds of live rock. We are running a seaclone protein skimmer. The live rock is fairly cured. Any thoughts on how long we should wait until the cylcing process is complete? Right now we have about 0.75 of ammonia and 0 nitrites and 0 nitrates. Do you need to wait until you are at 0/0/0 until you add any fish at all? Also, I have read that some people reccommended started out with little tank cleaning critters....do you recommend those? Any ones in particular? when do you add them?
Sorry for all the questions. Thanks!

 

[Anonymous]

Hey

Welcome to RDO

Wait until everything is at 0 before adding any fish. It may take a couple of weeks.

Normally you will see a spike in Ammonia, then as that drops a spike in Nitrites, then as that drops a Spike in Nitrates.

I like to wait until the cycle is completely finished before adding anything.

HTH

Bryan

 

[Anonymous]

Hi! I just set up my marine tank. We have a 55 gallon. We have 100 pounds of live sand which is about 4-5 inches deep and 25 pounds of live rock. We are running a seaclone protein skimmer. The live rock is fairly cured. Any thoughts on how long we should wait until the cylcing process is complete? Right now we have about 0.75 of ammonia and 0 nitrites and 0 nitrates. Do you need to wait until you are at 0/0/0 until you add any fish at all? Also, I have read that some people reccommended started out with little tank cleaning critters....do you recommend those? Any ones in particular? when do you add them?
Sorry for all the questions. Thanks!

as for critters, i suppose the live sand you bought is the stuff they sell at mega pet stores.... it's wet but there are no worms or crustaceans in it?
if so, this is not what we like to call 'livesand' although technically it is colonized by bacteria. what i consider 'livesand' is a sediment that has either been collected from the sea and is loaded with organisms or the an aquaculture as opposed to a wild collected product.

what you need to knwo about this sand layer is that it needs the critters that yours may be lacking. if it is lacking i suggest you buy some real livesand or that you get some from a friend. ultimately the real thing is supposed to be best but it is spendy. i have never bought real livesand but i do have brittle stars and nassarius in my sandbed, they help keep things moving.

 

[ChrisRD]

Ditto what Bryan said. IMO it's good to wait even longer before adding any fish (if you have the patience ) to give your pod population time to build-up. A month or more would be good...

As for clean-up critters, I recommend letting the tank settle down for a few weeks and start building-up some different algaes first - then consider adding cleaning critters as needed. When your pod population builds up enough they should make a dent in some of the algaes that have formed too.

 

[roseselene]

Hi! you are right in your suspicion that there aren't any "critters" in my live sand. Its just sand with lots of bacteria according to the package. Are these critters anything that I can/should buy....or since we don't have them, should I just wait until the tank cycles a bit?
Thanks!!

 

[Anonymous]

Feed it, and you'll feed them, and have a larger population of nitrifying bacteria. Also, Bio-Spira is the SHIZNIT! I'm hearing great things about this stuff! (It's in the refrigerator section of your LFS.)

Oh yeah, good quality live rock will provide you with darned near everything you'll need. Be sure to cure it yourself, first - depending on its state that will be sooner or later (the curedness of it). We've got loads of information on curing live rock here, and in the www under my sig.

 

[roseselene]

Feed it, and you'll feed them, and have a larger population of nitrifying bacteria.

ok....call me crazy,....but by this statement, do you mean to go ahead and add a few crustaceans?
Thanks!

 

[Anonymous]

my opinion is that you should add some critters.
4"-5" of sand is pretty deep and will take quite a long time to colonize from live rock alone.
i would at least throw in some nassarius.

 

[Johnsteph10]

The only thing about adding detrivores/critters is that they need something to eat! For instance, crabs and snails need at least algae which won't be available in a newly cycling tank.

Did you cycle your LR in the tank?

You COULD add some critters if you feed them...which like what they said up there...you would also be feeding the bacteria.

Just remember the most important thing to have with a reef tank: TIME. You can't have too much of it, but we all have too little of it!

John

 

[Kevin1000]

I would add nothing to your tank until both ammonia and nitrates are zero. The length of a cycle will vary with each tank with the average taking about 6-8 weeks.

Your LFS should give you some live sand from one of their live rock tanks - this will help you on the road to making your packaged live sand into real live sand.

Hope this helps.

 

[Anonymous]

Cycling and curing are two different things. Live rock already comes with nitrifying (and DEnitrifying) bacterial colonies, as well as PODLOADS of all sorts of little extras. Cure your live rock (assuming you haven't got any) separately, then add it to the tank.

When I say "feed", I mean place a bit of raw shrimp, some fish food, or similar in the tank to get your cycle going. Since you haven't really yet cycled, I would wait to add any sort of cleanup crew until you've already experienced the big peaks of ammonia and nitrite - those are the killers.

 

[Anonymous]

Cycling and curing are two different things. Live rock already comes with nitrifying (and DEnitrifying) bacterial colonies, as well as PODLOADS of all sorts of little extras. Cure your live rock (assuming you haven't got any) separately, then add it to the tank.

When I say "feed", I mean place a bit of raw shrimp, some fish food, or similar in the tank to get your cycle going. Since you haven't really yet cycled, I would wait to add any sort of cleanup crew until you've already experienced the big peaks of ammonia and nitrite - those are the killers.

my ideas are a bit different than the norm i guess.
i would like to ask a question or two on your method here, SM.

from what i gather, you are feeding the aquarium dead things and allowing a temporary one to stage death before adding it's survivors to the permanent aquarium.
why not just throw the dying LR in the aquarium and be done with it?
this minimizes death in the LR by allowing it to remain in one place.

this is the way i have done my tanks and the only bad experience i have had is this last time when i tried to house corals while curing... full MH on uncured rock with weenie skimmer = big bloom!

anyway, maybe this is why i differ with the critter addition. a deep sandbed with curing rock buried in it will need to be policed by something.

 

[Anonymous]

Boy, I've written a LOT on this whole cycling/curing and why I prefer to cure separately thing, but I'll go at it again. I am a frugal woman, and really hate waste, too.

Basically my premise is this: you just paid $XX.XX/lb for that live rock. You didn't pay that amount to just get bacteria, did you? If so, save yourself the time and money and go buy Bio-Spira if you can't wait for the shrimp to rot. The whole point of buying live rock, and buying good quality live rock, is for the LIFE to be found in and on it. Therefore, in my mind it makes NO sense whatsoever to allow huge ammonia and nitrite peaks that you know will kill even more life than just what shipping does. The end result is that you stand a very good chance of preserving the kind of life that makes good quality live rock outstanding. I've seen it, too.

In order to preserve this life, you have to perform the very water changes that we don't normally perform during cycling (the culturing of nitrifying bacteria). Outrageous skimming really helps during the cure process as well, but cannot subsitute for water changes.

If you get a chance to read the chapter on live rock in "The Natural Marine Aquarium-Reef Invertebrates", this will be explained in more detail. Also, I've written much more extensively on the matter on WetWebMedia itself.

In short, cycle separately, cure separately.

 

[roseselene]

Just thought I'd post that according to the LFS, the LR that I got is very cured. I'm new at this so I don't have much to compare this to. There isn't a whole lot of anything covering the live rock. But again, this is my first marine tank, so I can't compare it to anything. Their whole tank of live rock looked like this.
I've been checking and so far we have just had ammonia go up to 0.75 and that's the highest it read...and was closer to 0.5 this afternoon. We've tested 0 & 0 on nitrites and nitrates so far.
Thanks for everyone's thoughts.
So, if I don't need to cure my liverock, does that change anything?

 

[Anonymous]

i am assuming that you already have it in the aquarium where it will stay.
if this is the case then no, there is nothing to change.

wait until you hit zeros and stock very cautiously... always.
as for the degree of "cured". the more cured rock is, the less life there is dying on it. it is arguable that there is less life on cured rock as well.
if it doesn't smell bad then it is cured to a degree. i don't think anything shy of completely lifeless can claim to be fully cured as inevitably something will die on the rock when you move it from their facility to yours.

i am of the belief that uncured is a better buy if you are setting up a new system from scratch.

we all differ in methodology so please excuse my side dicussion. i don't plan on hijacking the thread. one more response and i will be done


Seamaiden,

i still don't get it but will try to find your work at WWM.
FWIW, i just don't see how cycling the aquarium while curing seperately is worth the trouble and lost life on the LR that will certainly occur moving the rock from one location (curing vat) to the other (display tank). the LR has nitrifying as well as denitrifying bacteria in it so i see no need for establishing them upon the glass or sand bed when the rock can perform and speed up the bacterial colonization within the sand bed while curing. LR will suffer it's curing process regardless. why make two cures if you don't have to?

 

[Jolieve]

rosalene, do yourself and your tank and your animals a huge favor... and for now, just sit on the tank for like a month. Use this as an opportunity to save up money for all the little extras that you're going to find out you will need. (You have no idea how many little things you need until you've spent a month working with your tank... trust me on this one.)

While you're waiting, head for the web and start researching fish that you might like. You are looking for hardy fish, that will not outgrow your 55 gallon tank, and relatively peaceful too.

Congratulations on your first system. This hobby is amazing, and I think you'll love it

J.

 

[Anonymous]

Hi Jo! Been a little while, eh? Hope all is well with you and yours.

Pod, you're operating under the assumption that there will be the same loss of life moving the rock from a vat or tub to display as what occurs during shipping. This is simply not the case. And, to be clear, I've never once said the live rock does not have starter cultures of these bacteria in situ, in fact, I've stated exactly the opposite. This does not preclude the fact that there will only be numbers sufficient to consume available "food" for said bacteria. In attempting to make a system ready for fish without the ammonia and nitrite peaks that can kill, one must feed these bacteria first in order to increase numbers sufficient for future nutrient load. Granted, there is no real way for the hobbyist to know exactly how much to feed in order to achieve a specific number of bacteria, but it's my belief that in these situations overkill is better than underkill. My experience bears this out as well.

The book to which I refer is "The Natural Marine Aquarium-Reef Invertebrates" (Calfo & Fenner). As for WWM, do a search on live rock, curing, cycling.

Roselene, since you've got the live rock in there, and it's fairly well-cured (you'd be complaining of the stink and gunk coming off of it if it weren't), then you will want to get your first fishes established in quarantine. The easiest way for you to get a biological filter going for quarantine is to get an air-driven sponge filter, or a HOT power filter sufficient for the container you're going to use, and either place it in the display or the q/t container and begin feeding it during this time. The 30 days the fish will be in q/t are usually sufficient for you to make sure you've got enough bacteria cultured in the display to ensure you get no peaks of ammonia/nitrite once the fish are introduced. Again, an excellent shortcut seems to be Bio-Spira, I receive nothing but very positive results from folks.

Have you decided on what you would like to keep in this tank? (Note: since you already have the tank, this dictates to a certain degree what you can and cannot keep, which can make the process a bit easier.)

 

[ChrisRD]

This does not preclude the fact that there will only be numbers sufficient to consume available "food" for said bacteria. In attempting to make a system ready for fish without the ammonia and nitrite peaks that can kill, one must feed these bacteria first in order to increase numbers sufficient for future nutrient load.

Not to be argumentative SM, but I have not found this to be necessary. I have never added anything to my tanks (or tanks I've setup for others) to induce any further cycle after curing the rock (which of course caused a cycle). Just let the tank sit for a month or so and then started adding fish - never had a problem with ammonia spikes, etc. after the initial rock curing.

Apparently the bacterial populations were either adequate, or mutliplied quick enough to keep up to prevent a spike in all cases. Now granted, I did cure in the main system on all counts, and I do stock very slowly, so maybe that's what made the difference...<shrug>

JME...

 

[roseselene]

Have you decided on what you would like to keep in this tank? (Note: since you already have the tank, this dictates to a certain degree what you can and cannot keep, which can make the process a bit easier.)

Hi! I wanted to ask about the fish. Since we'll be waiting a while to add fish....I had read that most people start with Damsels since they can weather cycling (sometimes). Since we're waiting a month and allowing a good bacteria population to grow, is it necessary to start with damsels? If damsels are still recommended, are there a less aggressive variety to have so that they will not be attacking any future fish I may get? How many fish are a good number to start with for a 55 gal? 4? Also, if it is not necessary to start with damsels, is there a different beginner fish? From what I've noticed, i think that the tangs seem to be too big for my tank, i didn't come accross any that stayed small. We like the clowns, but we do not have enough lighting for anenome and we did know if it was ok to get clowns if we weren't going to have anenome. Any thoughts?
Thanks!!

 

[Jolieve]

Yes, it's perfectly okay to have clowns without an anemone. I have a mated pair of ocellaris (false percula clowns) that I have kept without an anemone for nearly a year.

They will host in anything... caves in your rock work, powerheads... you name it. They don't need the anemone to host in.