Can an older tank help cycle a newer one?

[EnemyAnenome]

Hello, I was wondering if my 10g (having been up for over a year) will help with the cycling process in my new 15 gallon sterile tank? I went ahead and put an overflow box on the 15 gallon which brings the water down and back up from the 10g. The tank on top of the table is fairly new (less than a month) and I started another cycle by adding in frozen shrimp along with dry rock and carib sea sand. The 10g tank has gone through multiple algae and diatom outbreaks so my guess was that by adding it under as a sump - it would cycle my 15g. Just wanted to see if my plan would work, I'll take any criticism.

 

[bradreef]

Absolutely, add rock or sand from the old tank and you will introduce pods, bacteria, ect. Speed up the cycle a ton

 

[Stephen8169301]

Me being very inexperienced I would think if you can get at least 50% of your tanks water essentially your doing a 50% water change maybe swap over some type of filter into it that’s how I would try and do it but I’m not sure

 

[jherms7]

I seeded my 90 gallon with my 10 gallon, bristle worms and all!

 

[bushdoc]

It will help cycling your tank, but I hope that there is no fish or invertebrates in your old tank.
I would transfer piece of rock from old tank to speed process up.
BTW your rock in a new tank looks like a dry rock to me. If it’s a live rock, your tank basically would be already cycled.

 

[Tired]

If the two tanks are sharing the same water, that's essentially one tank, and is cycled. Don't put decaying shrimp in there, particularly if anything lives in the 10gal.

That looks like dry rock, not live. Live rock should be some color other than white.

 

[EnemyAnenome]

If the two tanks are sharing the same water, that's essentially one tank, and is cycled. Don't put decaying shrimp in there, particularly if anything lives in the 10gal.

That looks like dry rock, not live. Live rock should be some color other than white.

It will help cycling your tank, but I hope that there is no fish or invertebrates in your old tank.
I would transfer piece of rock from old tank to speed process up.
BTW your rock in a new tank looks like a dry rock to me. If it’s a live rock, your tank basically would be already cycled.

I don't have any livestock yet, and yes its dry rock sorry I'll change the first post.

 

[Tired]

If the sump is cycled, the tank is cycled. Though the sump doesn't look to be mature either- has the light been off? I see white rock there, too.

In the interest of figuring out the algae blooms:

What water are you using? Tap? RODI?

What are your nitrate and phosphate levels?

Has the older tank ever had anything living in it?

When you do water changes, are you scrubbing anything?

 

[vetteguy53081]

Hello, I was wondering if my 10g (having been up for over a year) will help with the cycling process in my new 15 gallon sterile tank? I went ahead and put an overflow box on the 15 gallon which brings the water down and back up from the 10g. The tank on top of the table is fairly new (less than a month) and I started another cycle by adding in frozen shrimp along with dry rock and carib sea sand. The 10g tank has gone through multiple algae and diatom outbreaks so my guess was that by adding it under as a sump - it would cycle my 15g. Just wanted to see if my plan would work, I'll take any criticism.

Any seeded live rock and bacteria such as sponge, biomedia sure will.

 

[EnemyAnenome]

If the sump is cycled, the tank is cycled. Though the sump doesn't look to be mature either- has the light been off? I see white rock there, too.

In the interest of figuring out the algae blooms:

What water are you using? Tap? RODI?

What are your nitrate and phosphate levels?

Has the older tank ever had anything living in it?

When you do water changes, are you scrubbing anything?

Currently I use RODI water and my nitrate levels are pretty low. Ordered salifert test for both because I think my current levels are inaccurate.

(>1 ppm for both PO4 and NO3 with API reef master kit)

The older tank had a coral that died half a year ago (took it out)

and I only scrub the top 15 gallon tank, I assumed it was better to leave the algae on the walls of my sump since it's no longer a display tank.

I'll honestly take your word for it my 10g probably isn't matured but I've seen it go from the ugly stage back to normal multiple times.

 

[Tired]

The thing is, the ugly stage should only happen once. There should be a big surge of algae, then it should settle into the non-pest algaes covering the rocks, not back into bare rock. I'd guess maybe the tank hasn't had enough nutrients to progress? But even then, this seems odd.

That being said, it's definitely cycled enough to begin lightly stocking, though obviously you'll need to hold off on snails until you have some algae for them to eat.

 

[BeanAnimal]

If the sump is cycled, the tank is cycled. ?

Not really… I mean sure, enough to support the sump. Adding any significant volume of dry anything and the associated livestock will kick off another ‘cycle’. Your system is never done ‘cycling’ as long as the organic load is not at some relative steady state. Yes, as the base colonies of bacteria become larger and more stable, the system can tolerate larger inputs without huge spikes.

I took a 10 year break from forum posting… I come back and it seems that all everyone talks about is the ‘cycle’ — wondering when this became such an overwhelming topic that is not all that complicated or mysterious.

 

[Tired]

Well, yeah, you can't just dump a whole extra tank worth of fish in at once, but that doesn't mean the tank isn't cycled. That just means it's not a good idea to add a load of fish at once. For the purposes of "can I add the first few critters to this tank", a tank plumbed to a cycled sump is cycled.

 

[BeanAnimal]

To that end - (the cycle police will cringe) after 7-10 days (bottlebac or not) any decent size setup can have a small fish added safely "cycle" 'complete' or not unless you have done something crazy or placed something in the system that has generated a huge nitrite spike.

In the same fashion - any huge addition is likely to cause that same spike, even to a well established system

 

[brandon429]

@BeanAnimal

when you took the break, about 80% of tank setups were using cured live rock from holding vats in pet stores

in 2005, it was 99.99%

now that's shifted to 5% in 2023, it's all dry rock and bottle bac-based now and our hobby is barely getting past the yearslong training that ammonia must be 100% zero to be safe/not stalled

cured live rock from a pet store transferred to a tank via skip cycle means is now 5% of any setup. marco won lol. lack of the truly cured stuff won

a fair small portion of today's cycles are uncured ocean rocks shipped to the tank, where massive stands of tunicates and barnacles and algae and all manner of things a home reef won't support die off (cure) to produce ammonia in excess of what the bacteria can contain, depending on the test kit used to discern ammonia of course

the sheer combination of old cycling science telling anyone with api .25 ammonia they aren't cycled, plus the sheer takeover of sterile dry starts, is what you see today for cycle concerns. it gives cycle umpires lots of free jobs to work/like chewing on a rawhide bone that never goes away.

the answer to all of them is: you're already cycled.

and then we spend 15 pages discussing why all their training was bad and designed to lead them to doubt-based bottle bac purchases.

 

[brandon429]

all reefers have read/been told that reef tank water doesn't carry cycling bacteria (that it's on surfaces only)

not true, and stated by bottle bac sellers

truth: high shear environments (all reef tanks) coupled with live rocks of massive surface area that are always casting off detritus and waste, macro and micro level, are creating rafts that hitchhike in suspension little floc bits which include nitrifying strains formerly attached to the live rock before they were sloughed or sheared. nitrifying strains of bac get a free a ride all over the place as the planktors we know all saltwater reefs to contain. any microscope view of one drop shows rafts a plenty.

but if we know that, we'd buy less bac.

cycle madness is designed to sell bottle bac says mel gibson from the movie conspiracy theory but its true lol.

 

[EnemyAnenome]

The thing is, the ugly stage should only happen once. There should be a big surge of algae, then it should settle into the non-pest algaes covering the rocks, not back into bare rock. I'd guess maybe the tank hasn't had enough nutrients to progress? But even then, this seems odd.

That being said, it's definitely cycled enough to begin lightly stocking, though obviously you'll need to hold off on snails until you have some algae for them to eat.

Yeah I stopped feeding the tank for awhile after it became cloudy due to the death of my coral. I started feeding again once the cloudiness went away after 2 months. Maybe that's what made it go back to bare rock. Above all else though I'm glad for all of the input, I'm cycled!

 

[Tired]

Certainly wouldn't help anything. I'd suggest not doing that; starving the tank isn't a good solution to any potential causes of cloudiness.

 

[EnemyAnenome]

Certainly wouldn't help anything. I'd suggest not doing that; starving the tank isn't a good solution to any potential causes of cloudiness.

Thats on my part whoops, but ill definitely refrain from doing so in the future thank you.

 

[BeanAnimal]

@BeanAnimal

when you took the break, about 80% of tank setups were using cured live rock from holding vats in pet stores

in 2005, it was 99.99%

now that's shifted to 5% in 2023, it's all dry rock and bottle bac-based now and our hobby is barely getting past the yearslong training that ammonia must be 100% zero to be safe/not stalled

cured live rock from a pet store transferred to a tank via skip cycle means is now 5% of any setup. marco won lol. lack of the truly cured stuff won

a fair small portion of today's cycles are uncured ocean rocks shipped to the tank, where massive stands of tunicates and barnacles and algae and all manner of things a home reef won't support die off (cure) to produce ammonia in excess of what the bacteria can contain, depending on the test kit used to discern ammonia of course

the sheer combination of old cycling science telling anyone with api .25 ammonia they aren't cycled, plus the sheer takeover of sterile dry starts, is what you see today for cycle concerns. it gives cycle umpires lots of free jobs to work/like chewing on a rawhide bone that never goes away.

the answer to all of them is: you're already cycled.

and then we spend 15 pages discussing why all their training was bad and designed to lead them to doubt-based bottle bac purchases.

There were still a LOT of "dry" rock guys back then - The live stuff was super expensive 3x 10x as much per pound and the thought of "curing" it or "cooking it" turned a lot of people off. I started with dry rock for that very reason back in 2001 or whatever it was. Sounds like now that it is not really even an option!

To be fair - I don't have anything against the bottle bac method (at all) - but I don't have a problem with the sterile start and a a cup of sand from the LFS or a friend or a damsel and giving it 2 weeks before you add anything else either.

Most folks who run a hospital tank put water in - throw the fish in and it is a bare bottom with nothing but an airstone or floss filter. I don't know anybody who has had a nitrite disaster unless they setup the tank and stocked it with fish and coral day one... like they saw on tanked.