cycling with live sand and rocks

[yungKitten]

On 3/29/2017 at 7:45 AM, Weetabix7 said:

You can use either shrimp or straight ammonia, both will work. 

 

Skip cycling is different and uses rock that is already heavily colonized with bacteria and coralline algae. 

 

The rock you have can be visually deceptive in that it looks like it is already heavily colonized with coralline, but it's actually artificial coralline. 

Your rock probably does have bacteria, but also probably less than it needs to sustain safe additions of livestock, so it's a good idea to use either shrimp or the addition of ammonia to be sure it has enough bacteria to break it down. 

Keep testing and watch results. 

This is really the only post you need to read @Milky Way

[TheBig053]

4 hours ago, brandon429 said:

Its not something you see with cured liverock to go through such an ammonia spike. 

 

Sure we do

 

 

in any post on any forum when a fish dies in someone's rockwork. It doesn't mean the tank lost all bac, it means they were overwhelmed. We have countless examples of the event when people dose ammonia to live rock systems using dead shrimp. A spike is reported every time and the ammonia was never required lol.

 

 

 

The algae coming within a few mos w be a real test for the system. The masses will tell her to leave it in, that it's part of a cycle, many purposefully grow algae in new systems due to that practice but I would again go against the grain and say not to

 

Raw ammonium chloride should be used here so a max of 1 ppm can be had, we are likely above that level and everything is working as predicted in a system where group b rocks are spiked with ammonia in great excess

 

 

 

 

 

 

this tank is being cycled in the wrong way and a reference thread for what to do with live rock was posted.  

 

its good to challenge any claim in reefing, that's our evolution. detractors should post up some work in real reef rock threads that they posted in

 

  even though rotting shrimp isn't the correct cycling mode for real reef rock setups, this tank will be fine anyway so long as a custom algae plan is in place.  the bacteria on the rocks that came in wet will not be killed with the redundant cycling approach, its very common in fact. our big thread is just a time saver and the grand design is to give the keeper control over algae though they wouldn't think that would be the greater intent of a six page thread on cycling. Everything that is currently happening in Milky Way's cycle will bring on algae challenges, soon. have a plan ready

 

my new recommend if we are going to spike ammonia to live rock here is to keep the lights off while doing so.

 

am going to add a page on the big cycling thread solely around real reef rock soon=demand on the subject.

 

 When the lights are kept off to help on algae and cyano growth, we don't get to see the nice purple look for the way they make that rock. For the ammonia being boosted well above functional levels we are seeding the system with organics and slicks that have nothing at all to do with what nitrifying bacteria need... the feed for algae is being set in place as well. Our page on real reef rock cycling will have these high points:

 

-wet vs dry, and the history of the rock known via what we were told. Ive never met a LFS owner who buys real reef rock, pays more for doing so via shipping weight and cost, then dries it out, then sells it as cycled to trick purchasers. Im sure the next post will have such an example

 

-look for pods in the container these rocks came from at the pet store. look for pods on your own glass before blasting these with ammonia...before lights on at 6 am using a flashlight angled up on the tank walls is a fine technique to asses life forms who don't want to be blasted with rot.

 

-don't ever buy again from a store you think would trick you in step one

 

-if you brought home wet real reef rock, be sure and bring home some zoanthids too and a few mushroom corals. enjoy the purple and the skip cycle rock you and your chain of command has paid for.

I wish I had seen this post before spiking my tank with ammonia to test if it had cycled.  I also bought the cured/live real reef rock from a LFS, as well as live sand.  I had a very small ammonia spike on day two after setting up the tank and then ammonia and nitrite went to zero, and nitrate to 5 PPM.  I was under the impression that the "cycle" would take much longer and was advised to dose with ammonia or add a shrimp to the tank.  This past Saturday I added some (too much) ammonia to the water to test if it had cycled.  While the ammonia levels were quite high for a day or so, the tank did begin cycling the ammonia and a significant decline (from 3-4 ppm to 1.2 ppm) was witnessed on day two after adding the ammonia.  I went a head and gave my bacteria a boost with some Bio-Spira the evening of day two (Monday).  On Tuesday the ammonia was completely gone and nitrites were only at 0.02 ppm on my Red Sea Marine test kit, but Nitrate was up to almost 50 PPM.  Performed a 25% water change last night (Wednesday) to get the nitrates in check and it did lower levels closer to 20 ppm based on the shade of pink it was.  I also vacuum/siphoned the back chambers to remove the sand particulate some that had built up back there because my return pump keeps spitting it back into the tank.  I will be performing a 30-40% water change this evening to help reduce the nitrate levels even more.  Unfortunately, I have not seen the bristle worm that appeared over the weekend since the ammonia spike and I have not seen nearly as many pods on the glass in the last two days.  Oh well, live and learn.  Hopefully I can get the nitrates in check by this weekend as I was looking to finally add some live stock. 

[brandon429]

solid assessment. you can drain out all the water, refill and add some corals. If someone does want to re test the rock to ensure the wet chain of command was never broken, id keep the spike very brief and specific and very accurately measured using salifert only to about .5 ppm max or 1 at most. of course as a matter of bio pride I would never add ammonia to live rock, I would go strictly off the living animals as to whether ammonia gets dosed, but clearly that wont win any hearts out in the postverse heh 

 

* in our cycling thread, we state the ability to digest 1 or 2 ppm ammonia in the tank is cycled enough to handle an initial bioload. 4ppm-1ppm is 3ppm. we didn't state anywhere in the thread that ammonia has to be at zero, because many cases the cyclers are grossly overdosing with ammonia, and because they are using API which varies too much to wait on them to read zero to the eye of the beholder. the movement alone is a handy way to use api testing, because it takes a lot of nitrification to pull down 4 ppm to any lower amnt.

 

after digestion is verified, we state to do a large water change and get to reefing with a light initial bioload, that's how we get away from using inaccurate test kits to guide our cycles, so that more tanks will show consistent cycling completion dates.

 

If this tank has the ability to go from 4 to 1, how can we expect it would behave if it was dosed only to 1 ppm using an exact measurement method and not any higher than 1ppm? it would be cleared for ammonia by now

 

 

[Weetabix7]

The purpose of the cycle is to build up a strong enough colony of nitrifying bacteria to be able to break down & convert any system waste. 

If you take rock that is already heavily and/or healthily colonized with nitrifying bacteria and use that rock in a newly set up aquarium, you should be able to "skip" the cycle and go ahead and add livestock. 

We do this any time we take Live Rock from a healthy established aquarium, start a new aquarium with it & go ahead and add livestock. I've done it myself many times.

I have seen Brandon say in other places that a good way to recognize healthy, well-established Live Rock is by the presence of a large amount of Coralline Algae on the rock. 

In most cases I completely agree with this. 

However, we are now starting to see manmade rock that has artificial coralline algae on it. If you don't pay close attention, it looks at first glance like rock straight from the ocean or from a very well-established reef aquarium. 

Real Reef Rock is one these kinds of rock. 

I don't want to make the mistake of assuming that just because it looks like it's well-established, it does indeed have lots of nitrifying bacteria in it. 

A couple of days ago I took a look at the Real Reef Rock site & their description of how the make and cure the rock, and I have to admit it sounds really good. 

They are to be commended. 

Their process sounds as if it would indeed be a safe one and one that produces stable and well colonized rock. 

If the rock were shipped wet to the Retailer, and kept wet and in a healthy system by the retailer, it should have at least some nitrifying bacteria on it when purchased. 

One thing that I don't think we have any way of knowing is how well colonized the rock is with nitrifying bacteria. Was there a food source for the bacteria in the bins it was kept in?

In an aquarium, waste is produced and this is what the nitrifying bacteria feed on and break down. 

In rock bins at a store, I always wonder whether there is a food source for the bacteria. 

Anything that isn't fed will die back. 

 

What I am trying to say in conclusion is that if the Real Reef rock is kept wet it should have bacteria on it, as Brandon said, we just don't know if it only has a little or healthy amount. 

The only way that I know of to find that out is to introduce some source of ammonia to the tank, even if it 's only a small amount of ammonia, and watch to see how quickly that is broken down and converted to nitrite and then nitrate. 

[Hirsh]

Also, please keep in mind that the weight of the rock is no where near as important as the porosity and total surface area of the rock. The bacteria live on the rock surface, not inside of it or the water around it. Just an  FYI

[brandon429]

Yung kitten

*at no place on the RRR website does it say to concern over feeding the rock. nor shrimp cycling it.  they have lots of documented use of the rocks on the site to consider. The site actually shows 30 tanks at a marine convention skip cycling with it, no rotting shrimp in tow.

 

if at any time someone wants to digest test a group of RRR to ensure they weren't dried, we would use about .5 to 1 ppm max and liquid ammonia, not shrimp, and salifert testing ideally after verifying no pods were on the live rock.

 

 

 

In our cycling thread we introduced three ways bac will die to a degree we can measure their loss, and those three haven't been updated in a long time

-true drying of surfaces

-medication events

-extreme temp issues

 

 

Feed from the hand of a reefer factors not at all

 

 

 

 recall how we survived the 80's when dr tims wasn't around:

 

10 yr old kid walks into pet store-

 

-I want the rasboras and platties and guppies from that tank.

owner: what size tank do you have at home

-none, im buying that ten gallon tank and corner bubbler too, right now.

owner: don't do that. leave the fish here. take the tank, epoxy rocks, corner bubbler, and this api start right and go home and fill up the tank. dechor it. wait 30 days (a recurring them in cycling threads as of 2017) then come back and ill sell you the fish

 

we didn't have to add ammonia nor bottle bac for the reasons listed above. the owner didn't say to add flake food, or the biofilter cannot begin. that's what 90's reefers made up on the spot. adding those fish on day one would have made the tank a cloudy stinky mess. waiting thirty days put a biofilter in place solely because we added water in a non lab setting, literally the biofilter needed only water to get started. filtration bacteria are housed alongside nonfiltration bacteria, and in this association they all gain feed in various ways

 

all these aquaria are going to cycle after we add water no matter what we do with a bunch of rotting meat or not. the reason all this detail matters is for the algae that is surely coming. I cannot count the times we've watched a tank get overgrown with algae because the poster commented they cannot clean the tank without causing a cycle, all of this is for algae control not cycling

 

  the rock was stated wet by Milky Way and by the place it was bought,  if we inspect closely the pods and associates they back up that no ammonia was needed here although to do it anyway isn't a huge deal. have a plan for algae is a great next step to consider

 

Reco here not to add ammonia to live rock 

 

 

[Hirsh]

I skip cycled my 5.5gal and never had a cycle. I did get diatoms but it was because i overfed reef roids. The great thing about little tanks is that water changes will save your ass everytime there is an issue. 

[TerraIncognita]

You could also toss in a bottle of Bio-Spira "Start Up" 

 

https://www.amazon.com/Instant-Ocean-77964-BIO-Spira-8-45-Ounce/dp/B003ODDS5E/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1490914747&sr=8-1&keywords=bio+spira

 

This helps add beneficial bacteria to the tank and get's it started up and going.

 

I suggest you also watch BRSTV's Video on You Tube "re" Starting Up a Nano Tank, that has some really helpful advice.

 

Otherwise don't do ANY water Changes until the Ammonia is at 0, Nitrites are at 0, and Nitrates will be MAJORLY up. Then you can do a water Change :).

[Milky Way]

12 hours ago, brandon429 said:

Its not something you see with cured liverock to go through such an ammonia spike. 

 

Sure we do

 

 

in any post on any forum when a fish dies in someone's rockwork. It doesn't mean the tank lost all bac, it means they were overwhelmed. We have countless examples of the event when people dose ammonia to live rock systems using dead shrimp. A spike is reported every time and the ammonia was never required lol.

 

 

 

The algae coming within a few mos w be a real test for the system. The masses will tell her to leave it in, that it's part of a cycle, many purposefully grow algae in new systems due to that practice but I would again go against the grain and say not to

 

Raw ammonium chloride should be used here so a max of 1 ppm can be had, we are likely above that level and everything is working as predicted in a system where group b rocks are spiked with ammonia in great excess

 

 

 

 

 

 

this tank is being cycled in the wrong way and a reference thread for what to do with live rock was posted.  

 

its good to challenge any claim in reefing, that's our evolution. detractors should post up some work in real reef rock threads that they posted in

 

  even though rotting shrimp isn't the correct cycling mode for real reef rock setups, this tank will be fine anyway so long as a custom algae plan is in place.  the bacteria on the rocks that came in wet will not be killed with the redundant cycling approach, its very common in fact. our big thread is just a time saver and the grand design is to give the keeper control over algae though they wouldn't think that would be the greater intent of a six page thread on cycling. Everything that is currently happening in Milky Way's cycle will bring on algae challenges, soon. have a plan ready

 

my new recommend if we are going to spike ammonia to live rock here is to keep the lights off while doing so.

 

 

 

-look for pods in the container these rocks came from at the pet store. look for pods on your own glass before blasting these with ammonia...before lights on at 6 am using a flashlight angled up on the tank walls is a fine technique to asses life forms who don't want to be blasted with rot. I posted real work from a thread just like this one, which had the pods, and we began reefing because that link and this thread are the same setups.

 

 

 if we brought home wet rock, enjoy the quick purple aged look and the skip cycle rock we and our chain of command has paid for.

- don't ever farm algae or cyano in your tank, though fifty reasons to do so will be posted

 

at no place on the real reef rock website does it say to do what is being done here. In fact, they have links to 30 aquaria that used this rock as skip cycle rocks for a marine convention. polar opposite of what is happening here~

thank you Brandon! Very informative! really appreciate your reply 

[Hirsh]

Brandon knows his sheet

[Milky Way]

5 minutes ago, Hirsh said:

Brandon knows his sheet

[reef-luva]

...and lets not try to 'reinvent' the wheel here, people have been housing marine life for millennia, without test kits and fancy filtration,

only aeration and strict husbandry.

Here is one of many articles on the history of fish keeping, very interesting and a good way to appreciate our hobby and the advances

that have been made to 'improve' our hobby, but not necessarily to reinvent it.

The old Thai guy I bought my aquarium store from talked of keeping highly successful reef tanks in the late 50's early 60's with just air stones.

 

http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2004-09/rv/feature/index.php

[Weetabix7]

18 minutes ago, reef-luva said:

...and lets not try to 'reinvent' the wheel here, people have been housing marine life for millennia, without test kits and fancy filtration, only aeration and strict husbandry.

Here is one of many articles on the history of fish keeping, very interesting and a good way to appreciate our hobby and the advances that have been made to 'improve' out hobby,

but not necessarily to reinvent it. The old Thai guy I bought my aquarium store from talked of keeping highly successful reef tanks in the late 50's early 60's with just air stones.

 

http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2004-09/rv/feature/index.php

 

That's a really cool article, thanks for sharing!!!

[Hirsh]

 followed Brandon429 advise and this is my tank after 1 month. Started adding coral after 2 days.

[Milky Way]

5 hours ago, Hirsh said:

 followed Brandon429 advise and this is my tank after 1 month. Started adding coral after 2 days.

 

gorgeous tank!!!!! what lights do u use????

[Milky Way]

Hi Folks ! Cycling is going well. Ammonia dropped down to 1p. Nitrites rises to 0.25

[Weetabix7]

4 minutes ago, Milky Way said:

Hi Folks ! Cycling is going well. Ammonia dropped down to 1p. Nitrites rises to 0.25

 

Excellent!!

 

[Milky Way]

i really appreciate all of your support, time  and advices

[Simulated Fish]

Sounds like you got a healthy bacteria population to me!

[Hirsh]

40 minutes ago, Milky Way said:

 

gorgeous tank!!!!! what lights do u use????

Thank you. I use a Kessil A80 Tuna Blue light.

[RotaryReef]

How is the tank doing @Milky Way?

[Milky Way]

8 hours ago, NanoSteve said:

How is the tank doing @Milky Way?

thank you for asking. ammonia is still at the lever between 1 -2. Nitrite 0,5 Nitrate 0. 

how long its gonna take till ammonia completely disappear?

 

Right now I'm using stock filter media: sponge with carbon and biomax.

I'm thinking to get rid of sponge and make a filter basket using egg crates and then stuff it with carbon purigen and denitrate

When would be the best time to do that? now of wait till the tank will be fully cycled?

[1891Bro]

https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/the-microbiology-of-reef-tank-cycling.214618/

[TerraIncognita]

1 hour ago, Milky Way said:

thank you for asking. ammonia is still at the lever between 1 -2. Nitrite 0,5 Nitrate 0. 

how long its gonna take till ammonia completely disappear?

 

Right now I'm using stock filter media: sponge with carbon and biomax.

I'm thinking to get rid of sponge and make a filter basket using egg crates and then stuff it with carbon purigen and denitrate

When would be the best time to do that? now of wait till the tank will be fully cycled?

IMO I would do it now.

That's what I did. I did it before I added live stock. Realize any change you make is going to alter your parameters, I wouldn't neccesarily add De-Nitrate, it's like giving Quinine for someone who doesn't yet have Malaria. The less Chemical Filters the better IMO.

I made a 3 tier Media Basket with Egg Crate, have Polyfiber on top, Purigen in Middle, and ChemiPure on Bottom, with a 2 Inch gap on the bottom to allow for flow into the next chamber.

Where I have Marine Pure Bio Balls on bottom and Chaeto on top (The flow runs up) then into the third chamber with a Heater and Skimmer.

 

Hopefully you can imagine that alright. 

 

Anyway, I established that during the cycle, as it will make changes on your Param's and stabilize it out, rather than adding it after, which could change things.

 

Your Ammonia will dissapear once the Biological filter is established enough turning it from Ammonia, to Nitrites, to Nitrate. The Bacteria Multiply by splitting so you could go from 100 Per Square Inch to 200 in an hour, and then to 400, 800 etc so it could happen very rapidly (Those figures aren't any actual base on actual bacteria amounts just an example.) 

 

I added Biospira to mine and it was fully cycled with (Active Live Rock and Live Sand) within 4 days total.

 

I know that doesn't really give you an answer to "When will it be done" but that's just to give you some idea of maybe when, since It's kind of hard to judge, just keep measuring your water Param's. It can feel like watching grass grow sometimes :). 

[Hirsh]

Patience young Jedi, patience.