No, if your ready the previous pages, I said how I cured out the hitchhikers as well as posting pictures of them.
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The absolutism of your statements is not correct. Under certain circumstances, live rock will certainly cause parameter measures that indicate what some call "mini cycle" and will have die-off. To state that it will not "ever" is just not correct.to be clear, since there are so many sources of rock called live
see that vat of rocks in a pet store? that's pure skip cycle rock.
you can move it to another state, put it in a reef, and it doesn't mini cycle or dieoff. that's the kind that surely does move tank to tank, home to home, pet store to home, and does not mini cycle.
I would not claim that ocean sourced rock will skip cycle every time.
petco rock will, or common lfs rock cured down to coralline like that above.
That is a good clarification that I did not make about my shipment:
YES! See any of my past builds.
I'm probably blurring the lines between two different things... a cycled tank and a mature tank. This is in response to those saying you can go balls to the wall and throw in anything you'd like because you just dropped in some live rock.
I've always used fresh harvested live rock out of our lagoon in the back yard here in Puerto Rico. I know 99% of people don't have that ability, but I've done 5-300gallon tanks and marine ponds with these rocks and instantly added fish to the setups. That being said these our highly covered Coraline algae rocks.
This looks to be in the Eunicidae world. I had plenty of them. Not saying it's a Bobbitt. It's unwelcome none the less.
The terminology I prefer is that a tank is cycling at a certain bioload on an ongoing basis rather than being "cycled" once upon startup (which seems to be industry standard terminology right now, but does not really seem to explain what is actually happening biologically). This assumes the following:
I think your differentiation between cycled and mature is inline with what I am saying. If an initial "cycle" is measured per the common dry-rock and bottle-bacteria start commonly used today, it does not directly verify that the maximum amount of bacteria and an equilibrated ecosystem has been reached (which is what I think would be considered a mature tank). A mature tank has a much more robust ecosystem dealing with more inputs, outputs, and quantity of factors in the transfers of the system than a newly "cycled" tank.
No, sorry, I did not get pictures or confirm certainly and may have misspoken the term "Bobbit", but I definitely pulled worms out that had 5 antennae on the head and certainly seemed to fit the Eunicid worm description enough for me to be concerned. I am generally familiar with bristleworm ID at this point, so I am quite certain that the ones I removed were not bristleworms.
I'm missing a close-up photo like yours, but this definitely looks the same as what I remember removing almost a year ago. At least one was lighter in color and more iridescent, similar to the photos I've seen of Bobbit worms, though I do not have conclusive ID.This looks to be in the Eunicidae world. I had plenty of them. Not saying it's a Bobbitt. It's unwelcome none the less.
From what I have read, I am fairly confident that your system had an overload of established bacteria on the live rock and sand, as well as the (arguably by some as unnecessary) introduction of bottled bacteria and the wait time for your 90g system volume and your limited stocking plan. There were not enough ammonia producers to ever exceed nitrification capabilities, so ammonia was immediately utilized by the significant bacteria. This is corroborated by the issue brining up nutrients: limited nutrient introduction due to minimal stocking (definitely not over-stocked) meant that all nitrates and phosphates were used before detection, possibly while some life forms were under-nourished in the system. This is one of the safest ways to start, since it is easier to add extra nutrients typically in a closed system than it is to deal with an imbalanced ecosystem with too much introduction of some specific nutrient due to demand of one or more life forms.
What I meant was have you ever put ocean live rock in a tank that hasn’t been cycled yet and had little die off or none at all? Also one more question do I have to add ammonia or anything to the water like what you would do with dead rock to make it cycle or does ocean live rock not need it?
Yes. Twice. Both times curing out in a backup biocube. Never registered north of .08 Ammonia at the worst and was quickly dropped back to undetectable. This cure includes aggressively blasting the rock with flow to and a stiff brush to clean out the pores of years of buildup. The rock handled it as I expected. It did the job I purchased it for.
