Cycling pre-holiday

[tomboys]

Hi, we have recently got our first marine aquarium (Red Sea Reefer XL 300) and its currently sitting empty in our dining room until we have decorated the room. It will probably be a few months until the room gets decorated, and then we are (hopefully) going on our honeymoon for 3 weeks a couple of months after that.

It seems like going away for 3 weeks only a couple of months after starting the tank up is a bad idea, but what would you guys say about possibly cycling the tank (dry rock, live sand) after the decorating is finished, and then leaving it empty of life until we get back from our honeymoon? In theory in that time it would make the dry rock into live rock and we wouldn't have to necessarily go through the cycling process when we get back. We have a LFS that can do tank care whilst we are away (although if all it needs an RO top up, my parents can probably do that anyway)

 

[brandon429]

It will cycle free of charge


topoff only needed no feed no bottle bac. We track these kinds of cycles, writers for cycling charts tracked them too eighty ~ years ago

Most folks cannot sleep at night without a retail additive or at least a pinch of feed that shows how well marketing works, we are in the throes of anthropomorphism in reef tank cycling as a hobby. That works out coincidentally very very well for bottle bac sellers, for humans to think their offerings controls what water bacteria do in water after eons of adaptation.

your cycle won’t be weak or barely ready, it’s 100% ready, that kind of cycle we tracked to sixty days in duration so far.

 

[Azedenkae]

Hi, we have recently got our first marine aquarium (Red Sea Reefer XL 300) and its currently sitting empty in our dining room until we have decorated the room. It will probably be a few months until the room gets decorated, and then we are (hopefully) going on our honeymoon for 3 weeks a couple of months after that.

It seems like going away for 3 weeks only a couple of months after starting the tank up is a bad idea, but what would you guys say about possibly cycling the tank (dry rock, live sand) after the decorating is finished, and then leaving it empty of life until we get back from our honeymoon? In theory in that time it would make the dry rock into live rock and we wouldn't have to necessarily go through the cycling process when we get back. We have a LFS that can do tank care whilst we are away (although if all it needs an RO top up, my parents can probably do that anyway)

100% possible to do so.

While it may be possible that you'll just have heaps of nitrifiers by the time you come back, my suggestion given that you are starting with dry rock may be to dose some sort of bottled bacteria nonetheless. Even though you have live sand, since it seems like not everyone has successful 'establishing' their nitrifiers with live sand.

I imo would dose up to 8ppm ammonia, and then yeah leave it be until you come back. To simplify things, just have your parents do RO top ups.

Once you are back, you can check how things are progressing by the typical cycling checks, i.e. dose 2ppm ammonia and yeah, if your tank can process that in a day, sweet! It was cycled while you were away. If not, then at least you had a massive head start.