Full Version: No cycle correct?
So tank is all up and running and i assume i should have no cycle to begin with since i used all dry rock and dry sand, i added a piece of live rock from a tank i already have running to help seed some bacteria and coralline algae. Should i just wait a month or so with this and just let it mature? Should i wait for some algae growth and then add a little clean up crew at time? Should i add some stuff right now to get my bio load going?
The piece of live rock you added should be plenty to kick start bacteria growth, but you'll need some kind of bioload to do this. I'd suggest adding a little bit of flake food to the tank every few days and test the water until you see the cycle or for a couple of weeks if you don't see any spikes.
I'm a noob here, set up my first tank a little over a month ago. Most of my rock was dead, and some live rock to seed, like you.
After about 3 weeks, my numbers balanced out, but I still had algea all over the place. Got a small CUC but it seemed they weren't keeping up with algae. I had one base rock near the top of my tank that was just completely covered. My parameters were out of whack and water changes were just keeping them in check.
Long story short, its not been over a month, and the green algae is going away, CUC is on top of it and more importantly, my dead rock is spotted with coralline algae.
If I were to do it over again, I'd wait at least a month, maybe a little more to give the dead rock time to seed, to get the natural filtration established. I had one piece of base rock near the top that was covered with hair algae that I just took out. Hermits and Turbo snails did the most work but I think it was really just getting the micro organisms time to re establish and get things back into balance.
Give it time.
After about 3 weeks, my numbers balanced out, but I still had algea all over the place. Got a small CUC but it seemed they weren't keeping up with algae. I had one base rock near the top of my tank that was just completely covered. My parameters were out of whack and water changes were just keeping them in check.
Long story short, its not been over a month, and the green algae is going away, CUC is on top of it and more importantly, my dead rock is spotted with coralline algae.
If I were to do it over again, I'd wait at least a month, maybe a little more to give the dead rock time to seed, to get the natural filtration established. I had one piece of base rock near the top that was covered with hair algae that I just took out. Hermits and Turbo snails did the most work but I think it was really just getting the micro organisms time to re establish and get things back into balance.
Give it time.
QUOTE (dirkgent001 @ Nov 6 2009, 09:17 AM) 
I'm a noob here, set up my first tank a little over a month ago. Most of my rock was dead, and some live rock to seed, like you.
After about 3 weeks, my numbers balanced out, but I still had algea all over the place. Got a small CUC but it seemed they weren't keeping up with algae. I had one base rock near the top of my tank that was just completely covered. My parameters were out of whack and water changes were just keeping them in check.
Long story short, its not been over a month, and the green algae is going away, CUC is on top of it and more importantly, my dead rock is spotted with coralline algae.
If I were to do it over again, I'd wait at least a month, maybe a little more to give the dead rock time to seed, to get the natural filtration established. I had one piece of base rock near the top that was covered with hair algae that I just took out. Hermits and Turbo snails did the most work but I think it was really just getting the micro organisms time to re establish and get things back into balance.
Give it time.
After about 3 weeks, my numbers balanced out, but I still had algea all over the place. Got a small CUC but it seemed they weren't keeping up with algae. I had one base rock near the top of my tank that was just completely covered. My parameters were out of whack and water changes were just keeping them in check.
Long story short, its not been over a month, and the green algae is going away, CUC is on top of it and more importantly, my dead rock is spotted with coralline algae.
If I were to do it over again, I'd wait at least a month, maybe a little more to give the dead rock time to seed, to get the natural filtration established. I had one piece of base rock near the top that was covered with hair algae that I just took out. Hermits and Turbo snails did the most work but I think it was really just getting the micro organisms time to re establish and get things back into balance.
Give it time.
agree. since you used dry rock. and 1 piece of lr, depending on the size of each. you may have a cycle but not sure how big but it will talk a long time for your dry rock to color up depending on how much lf you put to seed it. i had 27lbs cured liverock and added a other 25 from macro rocks. in 3 months they were green lol and beind seeded after a other 3 months all my rocks are perfectly purple with branching coraline also
it all just takes time and depends on the amount of each givin.
Just because it's dry rock doesn't mean there aren't any dead organics on it. You will probably see a normal cycle using dry rock unless it was made with concrete. When I set up my tank using all dry rock there was enough organic material to give me a 2 day ammonia spike, but the cycle went pretty quickly after that. I'd still check parameters before adding any CuC or fish.
how long should it take for my ammonia to start registering? I have yet to see any show up and has been almost a week?
Depending on the conditions of your rock when you put it in the ammonia cycle could have been quite short maybe even a few hours. If you are concerned that no cycle has started you can try adding a small piece of shrimp and wait for the ammonia spike and cycle to start.
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