Cycling question from a beginner using Carib Sea Life Rock

[david_n]

Hello all!

 

This forum is a wealth of information, so thank you all for that. I finally decided to take the plunge and get a SW tank after wanting one ever since I was a little kid. I remember researching reefing when I was a little kid in the early 2000's and finally decided to take the plunge. I've successfully kept a few FW tanks over the years and also have a gorgeous planted terrarium with poison dart frogs. Its a little similar to reefing in that there is an active little community of living things in the terrarium. Often times a new critter might pop outta no where! Obviously its a bit easier than reefing, not having to worry about water changes and what not, but I have a little experience in maintaining living ecosystems.

 

Anyways, I purchased the Fluval Evo 13.5 at my local LFS. Currently everything is stock, but I am 3-D printing a media basket for chamber 1 and will probably do some sort of cheato refugarium in chamber 2. I wasn't planning on adding a protein skimmer, unless you can convince me otherwise. I may upgrade the powerhead, or add a second pump somewhere down the line. I am planning on keeping mostly soft and LPS corals and a couple/few fish. I'd also really like to have a clam at some point but don't know how feasible that is under the stock LED lighting.

 

I set the tank up about a month ago with a bag of AragAlive sand and ~15 lbs of CaribSea's LifeRock. At this point, I also added one chunk of live rock from a very well established tank from Reefwise in the Chicago suburbs. The piece of LR had 2 little zoas on it (I don't know the species, they have bright yellow around the mouth and have dull brown arms). Since then I have added a few snails and 2 scarlet hermits and they are taking care of algae and doing fine. I am happy to report the little zoas seem to be reproducing-- I'm noticing some little buds forming along the base of the colony! They seem happy enough and only close up when a rogue hermit touches them and typically reopen within a few minutes. I've also recently noticed some copepods and/or amphipods scurrying around along the glass near the sand bed. Its super fun getting to notice all these little signs of life and I can't wait until I have everything up and running, but I know patience is key!

 

I'm a little confused about cycling considering that I used the LifeRock (I was convinced this was the way of the future by a sales person) and also used real live rock to "seed" the system. Most of what I've seen about cycling with LifeRock recommends adding ammonia, but I am reluctant to do that considering I have what seems to be a happy little zoa and a CUC in place (I've grown attached 😭). I've been testing salinity daily and Ammonia, Nitrate, and Nitrite 3x per week. They have remained constant: Ammonia is at 0-.25 ppm (having trouble with IDing color, using API kit), Nitrate and Nitrate at 0 (pretty sure on this one). I am fine with waiting before adding any more livestock, but what wondering what I can expect regarding test levels before knowing that my tank is indeed cycled. Should I go ahead and dose ammonia? Should I toss some freshwater flakes or a blood worm cube in there just to get things going? Also, maybe this is a really dumb question, but is there a danger of waiting too long before adding a fish? There is less and less algae-- can a CUC do their job too well? I was planning on picking up my first livestock at the Aquashella show in Chicago in about a month... should I add something before then? 

 

My other info is as follows (some with more noob questions):

 

-pH- 8.0 (maybe 8.2? Again having a hard time telling colors w/ the API kit. Is this too low?)

-Temp- 80 F plus or minus 1 degree. I usually read 79 in the morning after the LEDs lights have been out and occasionally read 81. Assuming this is OK?

-Salinity- 1.024 SG. I am bringing this up slowly with a target of 1.025 (should I go higher?) by topping off with salt water instead of plain RO/DI. I was testing w/ a hygrometer and switched to a refract hence the low SG.

-I am keeping a really lazy 12-14 hour lights on cycle. Usually turning them on around 8AM and off around 10PM. I'm planning on getting timer when I get some "real" livestock.

-I am using Reef Crystals and homemade RO/DI water (my partner raises orchids so this we already had one).

 

Anyways, any help would be appreciative! Sorry, I wrote such a damn essay... I guess I just wanted to babble to someone who maybe cares instead of everyone else in my life who just looks at me like I am crazy. Thanks a million if you made it through all this!

 

[MrObscura]

cycling should be approached the same as fresh water. Ammonia and nitrite should read zero before any live stock is added. life rock is just artificial dry rock painted Purple. It may be seeded with bacteria and seeding with actual live rock will help quicken the process, but the tank still needs to cycle. Therefore it needs an ammonia source. So when add enough pure ammonia to bring to to like 2ppm, and let it drop to zero before adding some more to bring it back up to 2ppm. Once the tank can covert 2ppm ammonia to zero in 24 hours, and nitrite read zero, the tank is cycled. 

[david_n]

Would suddenly spiking ammonia up to 2ppm (or even ramping it up slowly over a day or two) mess with the life I already have going? Should I just add chemical ammonia, or would there be some benefit to doing it in a more "natural" way like adding a chunk of shrimp?

 

[MrObscura]

You shouldn't have added anything before the tank was cycled. 

 

I use pure ammonia with no addatives to cycle. 

[Clown79]

Normally with dry rock you add an ammonia source like ammonia dosing.

 

With adding established  liverock to seed the dry rock, the one down side to ammonia dosing is potentially killing the beneficial life on that liverock.

 

The established liverock shouldn't cycle and caribsea liferock, I have never seen a spike in ammonia when using it.

 

[david_n]

I'm sorry, I'm still really confused. I get it, maybe I made a mistake by adding a chunk of established live rock to the tank when I used predominantly LifeRock for the main aquascaping. But the situation I'm in now is that I have a tank with life I'd like to maintain and I have plenty of time before I add anything else. I don't want to kill the hitchhiker zoas that are doing well or my clean up crew by spiking my ammonia suddenly. I guess I'll start ghost feeding and test my ammonia daily and hope I can get a cycle started. 

 

I guess I don't understand how this LifeRock is supposed to work. Should it only be used with "dead" sand then? Wouldn't suddenly adding ammonia potentially kill the beneficial bacteria in live sand? Is the only way to get it cycling to artificially raise the ammonia level?  

[SaltyGallon]

The live vs. life rock thing is confusing, I dunno what CaribSea were thinking with those names. For the purposes of explaining let's ditch those terms... It sounds like you've used a mix of un-cycled (dead) rock and cycled (live) sand.

 

In an ideal world you'd have stuck those things in, filled the tank up, added an ammonia source, and then watched until the cycle completed, before even thinking about fish and a CUC when the first diatoms or algae appeared.

 

But what you've done is also kind of fine, because you've kind of half arrived at that same end point, in a hybrid round-about sort of a way? If it's been set up for a month, I suspect what you've got is a half cycled tank which must have some nitrifying capacity, but no real ammonia source. If the snails and inverts aren't dead then that's something, as they're pretty sensitive when it comes to new tanks and nitrates, but then it sounds like the nitrifying bacteria in the tank likely haven't had much to process.

 

The sand and 'seed rock' will bring some good stuff to the party in time, and it sounds like it already is, but you will need an ammonia source if you want to properly complete the cycle. Providing that your trates and ammonia are holding low and your other parameters aren't out of wack I'd say add a small fish - that'd give you a constant low ammonia source to fully complete the cycle without causing a through the roof ammonia and nitrate spike that'd cause harm to the fish, CUC and zoas (which sound like yellow star polyps, from your description)

 

The above could be terrible advice, so I'd be interested to see what others think - the take home message would be have patience as the early stages are important longer term 😎

 

Your other Qs:

 

- A pH of 8-8.2 is fine

- that temp range is fine

- don't split hairs over the minor salinity change, but do slowly bring it up or down to 1.025 with top offs

- the light cycle also sounds fine

- sounds good to me, the RODI made with a filter at home will be 10x better than stuff from the LFS!

[reefhead101]

I agree with Azur

In an ideal world you should have done a few things differently

But it is done now, so i would say at this point it is all about the best way forward.

It is not my tank and this might be bad advice, so I am going to put a disclaimer and say this:

IF it was MY TANK, I would do the following:

First I would settle on a filtration system, by this I mean decide exactly on what type of filtration you plan on using, this might change over time but for now make sure that your next move is in the direction of which filter system suites you best for now.

Second I would add a small fish (one that you have decided you want part of your tank long term) BUT when adding the fish I would use a bacterial product with it, something like Aquavitro Seed or Seachem Stability has always worked well for me.

This will ensure that you have a ammonia source (the fish) but along with that you are adding enough bacteria into the system that it should be able to rapidly deal with the amount of ammonia produced before it harms anything in your tank

for me this would probably be the best way to ensure your tank fully cycles while being the situation that you are in

I don't think it s a major train smash and you should be fine, just keep testing your parameters when doing the fish addition and if you do have a major spike there are also products that can help to control ammonia for a short term period or you could also just be ready to do a fairly large water change that should help to control the spike  

 

I don't think the live rock is the really important thing here

[Clown79]

The difference between liverock and liferock is

 

 

Liferock is dry aragonite rock with spored bacteria. This allows it to be safe to use even in a cycled tank when you use it because the bacteria goes out of dormancy once added to water, giving you some biological filtration.

 

 

Liverock- can be straight from the ocean or in a lot of cases these days was dry rock that has become liverock because it comes from an established tank. Therefore there is no cycle to minimal cycle when using liverock. 

 

In an ideal world, when you start a tank you cycle it before adding any livestock. That being said, when you use liverock, you can start a tank and it won't go through a cycle because the liverock is already established with beneficial bacteria that processes the nitrogen cycle.

 

Many use dry rock combined with liverock, it just takes time for the dry rock to be seeded, also depending on how much liverock you added and the size of that liverock will also be a factor.

 

Your cuc is alive because the live rock you added and the bacteria in the liferock, is enough to process the current bioload of cuc. It just wi take time to develop enough bacteria to process a fish bioload.

 

With time, even without an ammonia source with a dry rock only new system, the bacteria will develop. It just takes longer.

 

Adding some bacteria like bio spira, macrobacter7, will help.

 

Can you post a pic of the liverock or how much/size of the liverock?

 

[j.falk]

31 minutes ago, Clown79 said:

Adding some bacteria like bio spira, macrobacter7, will help.

 

This.  👍

 

And cut back on your lighting.  Anything more than 12 hours and you are asking for an algae bloom.  

[j.falk]

15 hours ago, david_n said:

...instead of everyone else in my life who just looks at me like I am crazy.

 

LOL  If I start talking about fish or aquariums to my wife, her eyes just glaze over.  I know she doesn't care but I still go ahead and tell her anyway.  😛

 

The best response I got from her to date was when showing her the Peppermint Angel that sold for $24,999.99 on LiveAquaria.  She thought it was stupid for someone to pay so much for a fish.  😄