Cycling new 10 Gl tank

[ekudl]

Hello All, I have a question about maintaing a 10 Gl nano for filtration. It has just completed cycling after 2.5 weeks. It was started with 3 inches of dead sand and 20 lbs of dead rock. Although I did seed the sand with a cup of Live Sand and a piece of LR from an established tank. I also have a Penquin 170 Biowheel started from the beginning as well.

 

My question is:

 

Does anyone think that now that my tank is cycled, I could simply turn off the Penquin Biowheel filter and rely solely on just the 20 Lbs of Rock in the tank ? Would the 20 lbs of rock that has been in the tank from the beginning be "Live" enough to maintain the cycle?

 

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[Satchmo]

Yes, you can rely on the rock alone. Your tank has cycled with the LR + biowheel, so your bacteria bed is split between the two. For this reason, when you pull the biowheel, you may go through a short minicyle while the rock takes over as the sole biofilter and catches up with the loss of the biowheel. With an unstocked tank, you probably won't even notice. Just to be safe, keep an eye on your levels for a few days after yanking the biowheel and before adding anything.

[SeaMountain]

Satch... Don't beat me for this, but I HAVE read the cycle article C-Mark has. And I HAVE used the feature!

 

Many advocate doing water changes, and many don't. I do have approx. 6g of SW mixed and ready to go (SG 1.023 Temp 79) in case I have a crash or something. Just a good practice I believe! Especially since reading about some of the mishaps which happen. CRAK!

 

If I elect to NOT do WC's during the cycle, how high should I allow the ammonia to get to before I really should step in and reduce it?

 

C-Mark's article said to run the lights 10-12 hours to stave off die-off. Yesterday I ran them for 4 hours. My lights are timed to come on at noon and run to 9pm right now.

 

Where is the balance between too much die-off due to excessive ammonia levels, and controlling the levels with WC's? ???

 

Lizbeth? Crak? C-Mark?I would add Ross but he's GONE!

[LiQuiD]

It depends on how much LIVE rock you used to seed your 20 pounds of DEAD rock. The same with the sand. If you just added a golf ball size rock to the 20 pounds of dead and a thimble full of live sand to your dead, chances are it is going to take way longer then 2.5 weeks to cycle, more like 2.5 months for the bacteria to spread to all the dead rock and sand. You could speed it up by creating amonia for the bacteria to eat and reproduce to catch up. Throw in a dead shrimp and let it boost the rate of bacteria growth.

 

What I am getting at is this, if you have no die off of anything and or no amonia spike, you can't go through a cycle. If you just waited a couple weeks and tested the water and everything read 0, that doesn't have to mean it is done with the cycle, it may not have really even started yet. If you put nothing but dead rock and sand in with water, it would appear after you tested in a couple weeks that it was done cycleing, when actually no cycle had even started. I hope I am making sence here, I would just hate to see you throw a fish in now that it is "done cyceling" and have the rapid amonia spike kill them off in a couple days. I guess the main question would be, did your tests show your amonia spike and did you continue to test through the short nitrite spikeor did your first test just show 0 for everything?

[ekudl]

Thanks all for your reply, the tank HAS cycled. I have had 4 small damsels in it with 2 blue leg crabs from the beginning and there was an Ammonia and Nitrate spike, all now is 0.

 

Although I am not totally new to the reefing world, even though I may sound like it. I have an established 20 Gl Nano with many corals that is doing great for about 8 months. That tank is being skimmed and nothing but good LR for filtration.

 

My intentions with this 10 Gl tank is to just get this small tank going and get the rock "Live" and a small Red Volitan or Spotfin Lionfish or a Maroon Clownfish in it for only about 2 months or so then upgrade my 10 to a 75 Gl tank to a FOWLR tank. I will be then adding more rock at that time as well.

 

Before I get a lecture about size of tanks and fish requirements, I know that these fish need a whole lot more room than 10 Gl but that is why I have a 75 Gl tank that will be upgraded to Salt in 2 months or so.

 

What I really want to know is having 20 lbs of newly "Live" rock be enough without a biowheel filter and a skimmer for complete filtration ? The answer would probably be no if the plan was to house a Lionfish, even for a short time in it, I bet ? If so then perhaps I would be better off keeping the Penquin 170 Biowheel going as well for extra filtration and to use the Biowheel on my new 75 Gl to help cycle that one when the time comes ?

 

Thanks again in advance.