Fast cycle in jarquarium?

[davidcalgary29]

I started a 2g jar build about ten days ago with live sand substrate, a couple of chunks of "seiryu" rock, and a couple of days later, three strands of halimeda (I wanted this to primarily be a macroalgae jar) and a DOA frag that didn't survive shipping. I've been testing parameters daily, and ammonia spiked at about 1.2 I didn't test nitrites and nitrates until today, as I thought there wasn't any point. Today's reading: ammonia and nitrites: 0; nitrates: 2. I'm suspicious, as I've never had anything cycle this quickly. Could the halimeda have disrupted the nitrogen cycle? Do I need to yank it out, or just keep testing? I suppose that I'll have to go to the market to pick up some shrimp, as I don't want to pee in the jar and don't have any ammonium chloride lying around. Is fast cycling possible without adding nitrifying bacteria?

 

[Kehy]

Add ammonia until you get a measurable reading. If it's gone in 24 hours (or 12 hours of its an especially small amount), I'd call it cycled. Personally I wouldn't do the most delicate stuff first, I'd do a few hardy things to really make sure it's solid

 

[davidcalgary29]

I don't have access to ammonium chloride locally, but I did get a mushroom rock yesterday that had died in transit (three days! in unheated storage!). Even though the stench made me gag, I washed off the melted polyps with tapwater and threw the rock in the jar because I thought that it was pretty. The rock had been sitting in a cloud of slimy water and I didn't scrub the rock off -- when I put it in, some slime drifted off for awhile. The ammonia did go up to -- maybe -- 0.2 when I tested last night after about four hours in the jar. This morning: 0. Maybe my test is bad. Maybe I have too much halimeda in the jar!

 

[Kehy]

Personally I'm of the opinion that, assuming 100% of your hardscape and substrate came from another tank, you can cycle in a week. I've done less with freshwater, and tossed cherry shrimp in. Turns out it's a lot harder to catch the resulting 50+ cherry shrimp babies in a 1/2 gallon bowl than it was to put the parents in.

 

[brandon429]

on this tank here above

change 100% of the water out its cycled, the things you've done to it have imported bacteria but aren't enough to sterilize them. for example, you couldn't take that cloudy water and rub down a steel operating table with it, millions of bacteria would move with the fluid.

its got literally millions too much bac if the water is cloudy

changing all that out leaves the cycle in place stuck to surfaces. even tap rinsing brieflywont kill your cycle.

 

[davidcalgary29]

I added that rock to see if I could get an ammonia spike with the leftovers of the rotten mushrooms. Nope! I don't have anything in that jar but halimeda, so really had nothing to lose with this "experiment" by throwing the rock in the jar to see what would happen. BTW, it was the shipping bag that was cloudy and gross, and not my jar after I dropped the rock into it. There's still a faint, nauseating stench coming from that rock today. Nonetheless, latest test results this PM show NH3 at 0.

Next up: raw shrimp.

 

[davidcalgary29]

I finally got an ammonia spike with the slimy rock! I did have to move to it to another jar build without the halimeda, though, as levels were still undetectable in the halimeda jar. The new jar has agardhiella in it. I'll have to see if it's as efficient in removing waste products as is the halimeda.