Instacycle Challenge Thread Anyone?

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I have no idea lol. One would think going from a 29 biocube to a 180 and adding a ton of things all at once would be considered an insta cycle, but it was all done with KP rock and the old Fiji rock I have had wet forever. I did have big 3 consumption from day 1, but tested it often. Even added tons of fish right out of qt the same day it was full.

Now my brain is going to work non stop on what to call this lol.

Then you take my nieces tank I setup. Live rock from the macro grow out sump. Thrown into a 10 gallon with new water and a hob filter/small powerhead combo. It did fine since day 1. Fully stocked on day 1 as well. 2 clowns, rbta, gsp, pulsing Xenia and tons of zoas. All is still doing well. It was also 100% new water. Would that even be called an insta cycle, as the rock was already cycled and the macro grow out get doses pure ammonia hourly?

See now my brain hurts lol.
Exactly bro. When you said you weren't sure if you would call it Instacycle it made my brain hurt because I've been highly doubting shroom lagoon "cycled" at all. Def not your typical run down dragged out run of mill cycle.
If it did it was literally a few minor ammonia bumps for only a cpl hours after feeding for first few days lol. Only makes sense fully cured rock is going to hit water running and be able to process ammonia and nutrients like mature tank so idk man.

Did you ever experience typical new tank cloudy water bacterial bloom in any of upgrades and tanks you mentioned?
 

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Exactly bro. When you said you weren't sure if you would call it Instacycle it made my brain hurt because I've been highly doubting shroom lagoon "cycled" at all. Def not your typical run down dragged out run of mill cycle.
If it did it was literally a few minor ammonia bumps for only a cpl hours after feeding for first few days lol. Only makes sense fully cured rock is going to hit water running and be able to process ammonia and nutrients like mature tank so idk man.

Did you ever experience typical new tank cloudy water bacterial bloom in any of upgrades and tanks you mentioned?
I have not. The only thing I had happen with cloudy water was a goof up on the amount of alk to dose and it caused some nasty precip cloud the tank lol. My fault and easily fixed, as caught it in 10 minutes of it happening and had enough water for a 500% water change. Just pumped water in and used a bulkhead in my sump to hook a hose to and drained it until about out of water in my large container. Not ideal, but nothing appeared shocked or died.
 
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I did experience cloudy water bloom but I literally took my old system, split it in half, and doubled my water volume into 2 tanks.
Nothing UV sterilizer didn't handle in a few hours.
Nothing was harmed but maybe a few shrooms looked irritated.
 

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Did you record any kind of params setting it up? How fast did you get critters in and feeding?
No, I haven’t done any tests of params. Was only up a couple days before I scraped some Xenia out a different tank and tossed them in.
Only makes sense fully cured rock is going to hit water running and be able to process ammonia and nutrients like mature tank so idk man.
I agree, so technically no typical cycle involved. I’d say it was instantly cycled.


I moved my tank a few months ago. Was expecting my ALK use to go down. Tank was dry for about a 1/2 hr and figured the coralline was gonna die and stop taking so much ALK. The opposite happened, Alk use went up a few ML a day instead!
 

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. . . I moved my tank a few months ago. Was expecting my ALK use to go down. Tank was dry for about a 1/2 hr and figured the coralline was gonna die and stop taking so much ALK. The opposite happened, Alk use went up a few ML a day instead!

Or, the disruption reduced the dissolution of your substrate and aqauscaping requiring additional inputs to maintain alkalinity. :)
 

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I will be starting a new tank in less than 2 weeks. Going from a 125 display and 35g sump to a 240 gal set up. Here's my plan:
-New live sand
-New saltwater with maybe 30 gal old water
-Current rock in sump to new sump refugium to keep pods.
-Current rocks with corals growing on them--not that much
-New rock: caribsea and Real Reef. The piece for the zoa garden is already in the old tank seeding along with a few smaller pieces I glued coral to
-2 bottles of biospira, 1 Fritz 9, 1 dr tims and Microbacteria (brightwell). Also have prime once I add fish

Will add corals right away so I can see if I need more rock in the display. When tank is clear, will start moving fish over which requires removing old rock from tank. Next day or 2. Plan to rinse/swish those rocks in saltwater to get pods and clean up crew off as I have a lot of pods and then add that water to the sump. Might leave my mandarin in that tank a bit longer or until I can seed a big batch of pods into the tank.

This time around I have new equipment and more top of the line plus setting up apex, ato and awc

From what I've either been told or read, The old rock, plus rock with corals should be enough to avoid a cycle. I'm adding the bottle bac just in case as I want to tear the old tank down pretty quickly.
20210730_113914.jpg
 

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I will be starting a new tank in less than 2 weeks. Going from a 125 display and 35g sump to a 240 gal set up. Here's my plan:
-New live sand
-New saltwater with maybe 30 gal old water
-Current rock in sump to new sump refugium to keep pods.
-Current rocks with corals growing on them--not that much
-New rock: caribsea and Real Reef. The piece for the zoa garden is already in the old tank seeding along with a few smaller pieces I glued coral to
-2 bottles of biospira, 1 Fritz 9, 1 dr tims and Microbacteria (brightwell). Also have prime once I add fish

Will add corals right away so I can see if I need more rock in the display. When tank is clear, will start moving fish over which requires removing old rock from tank. Next day or 2. Plan to rinse/swish those rocks in saltwater to get pods and clean up crew off as I have a lot of pods and then add that water to the sump. Might leave my mandarin in that tank a bit longer or until I can seed a big batch of pods into the tank.

This time around I have new equipment and more top of the line plus setting up apex, ato and awc

From what I've either been told or read, The old rock, plus rock with corals should be enough to avoid a cycle. I'm adding the bottle bac just in case as I want to tear the old tank down pretty quickly.
20210730_113914.jpg
Sounds legit! With the live sand and everything else it looks like the majority of the surface area already has the good stuff on it. I think the biggest problem I have had with my tank is that I put dry sand in after the cycle… now I am having a second cycle because of it… honestly I think it has everything to do with the surface area and because sand has more surface area than my rock it started a bacteria bloom because they have too much unclaimed space.

any ways looks like a solid plan! Excited for the updates!
 

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Following along as I'm moving from a 210 to a new 300 and a frag tank, my brain hurt after reading it may be best not to use old water. The issue is I'm growing SPS fine in the 210, seems like would be one heck of a shock for the SPS to go in all-new water even with matching big 3. Every tank transfer I've done I've always used all the old water along with new.
 

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Following along as I'm moving from a 210 to a new 300 and a frag tank, my brain hurt after reading it may be best not to use old water. The issue is I'm growing SPS fine in the 210, seems like would be one heck of a shock for the SPS to go in all-new water even with matching big 3. Every tank transfer I've done I've always used all the old water along with new.
i was told on another thread that it''s not needed but also that it cant hurt. I won't be using a lot but some.. I'll also have 2 18w uv sterilizers.
 

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Sounds legit! With the live sand and everything else it looks like the majority of the surface area already has the good stuff on it. I think the biggest problem I have had with my tank is that I put dry sand in after the cycle… now I am having a second cycle because of it… honestly I think it has everything to do with the surface area and because sand has more surface area than my rock it started a bacteria bloom because they have too much unclaimed space.

any ways looks like a solid plan! Excited for the updates!
thanks. My fingers and toes are crossed
 
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I will be starting a new tank in less than 2 weeks. Going from a 125 display and 35g sump to a 240 gal set up. Here's my plan:
-New live sand
-New saltwater with maybe 30 gal old water
-Current rock in sump to new sump refugium to keep pods.
-Current rocks with corals growing on them--not that much
-New rock: caribsea and Real Reef. The piece for the zoa garden is already in the old tank seeding along with a few smaller pieces I glued coral to
-2 bottles of biospira, 1 Fritz 9, 1 dr tims and Microbacteria (brightwell). Also have prime once I add fish

Will add corals right away so I can see if I need more rock in the display. When tank is clear, will start moving fish over which requires removing old rock from tank. Next day or 2. Plan to rinse/swish those rocks in saltwater to get pods and clean up crew off as I have a lot of pods and then add that water to the sump. Might leave my mandarin in that tank a bit longer or until I can seed a big batch of pods into the tank.

This time around I have new equipment and more top of the line plus setting up apex, ato and awc

From what I've either been told or read, The old rock, plus rock with corals should be enough to avoid a cycle. I'm adding the bottle bac just in case as I want to tear the old tank down pretty quickly.
20210730_113914.jpg
Hi Susan sounds like you have done your research and have a solid game plan.
How old is 125 your going to be upgrading?
How many lbs of live rock/media are you transferring over?
Is your 125 a dry or live ocean rock tank?
Types of coral?
How many fish?
How much do you currently feed your fish daily if you had to guess # of frozen cubes?
Looks like your going to be close doubling your water volume in system. Thats pretty much what I did. I basicly took my old system, split it up into 2 independent tanks.
Doubled total water volume in new tanks.
I'm on the fence on whether or not you will need bottle bacteria. In my tank 2 I used bottle bac and had a super hard time getting my PH to stabilize and may have done more harm than good to my already established bacteria. Matter of fact I'm still seeing weird fluctuations in tank 2.
Anyhow its going to be cool to see what you end up doing as well as follow transfer progression.
 
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Following along as I'm moving from a 210 to a new 300 and a frag tank, my brain hurt after reading it may be best not to use old water. The issue is I'm growing SPS fine in the 210, seems like would be one heck of a shock for the SPS to go in all-new water even with matching big 3. Every tank transfer I've done I've always used all the old water along with new.
I dont see anything wrong with using your old system water if system is healthy and dialed that is probably the best way for you to transfer tbh.
If you dont use old water. You will have to replenish nutrients in water column and that may cause issues for you and more variables you have to control.
I opted not to use old water because I was running low on certain nutrients and trace elements and made alot of mistakes in old system that I didn't want to carry over. It made more sense for me to use new water.
Nothing wrong with transferring a perfectly healthy, dialed, established system over 100% Rock and water column and all. For me I'd just make sure to not disturb much and siphon as close as possible to substrate without kicking up nasties and pulling them over.
 

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I dont see anything wrong with using your old system water if system is healthy and dialed that is probably the best way for you to transfer tbh.
If you dont use old water. You will have to replenish nutrients in water column and that may cause issues for you and more variables you have to control.
I opted not to use old water because I was running low on certain nutrients and trace elements and made alot of mistakes in old system that I didn't want to carry over. It made more sense for me to use new water.
Nothing wrong with transferring a perfectly healthy, dialed, established system over 100% Rock and water column and all. For me I'd just make sure to not disturb much and siphon as close as possible to substrate without kicking up nasties and pulling them over.

OK, that makes sense. The good news is I like my bottoms bare and have very little detritus in the tank. I'll come back and document how it goes here.
 

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Following along as I'm moving from a 210 to a new 300 and a frag tank, my brain hurt after reading it may be best not to use old water. The issue is I'm growing SPS fine in the 210, seems like would be one heck of a shock for the SPS to go in all-new water even with matching big 3. Every tank transfer I've done I've always used all the old water along with new.

FWIW I would use most of the old water if the corals are doing well and there's not a lot of nuisance algae of any kind. The microbial stuff going with the bacterioplankton is very complex and there are times based on what I see happening in a system I'd be tempted to use as little of the old water as possible. But if things are going well I'm going to put my faith in the corals and use a significant amount of an existing system when upgrading. You might find these papers informative:




 

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FWIW I would use most of the old water if the corals are doing well and there's not a lot of nuisance algae of any kind. The microbial stuff going with the bacterioplankton is very complex and there are times based on what I see happening in a system I'd be tempted to use as little of the old water as possible. But if things are going well I'm going to put my faith in the corals and use a significant amount of an existing system when upgrading. You might find these papers informative:





I have had bubble algae on my live rock from the ocean from day 1, it never really spreads Interestingly enough due to my fox face eating what he can reach. I have thought about just restarting the tank but a few bubble algae and some pest anemone haven't killed anything yet to my knowledge after 2 years. I just can't bring myself to kill off all of the sponges and crazy growth on that rock due to a couple of pests.

I can stomach a few losses but not a complete nuke of my sps, I'm generally a person who rolls with a high-risk-high reward mentality. This tank move makes me nauseous just thinking about it.

I'll give them all a read.
 
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FWIW I would use most of the old water if the corals are doing well and there's not a lot of nuisance algae of any kind. The microbial stuff going with the bacterioplankton is very complex and there are times based on what I see happening in a system I'd be tempted to use as little of the old water as possible. But if things are going well I'm going to put my faith in the corals and use a significant amount of an existing system when upgrading. You might find these papers informative:




I love this man thank you. It will probably take me years to fully digest and understand but its awesome lol.
I was just thinking about something you said in one of your posts about "needing to make another thread" for you know who's. Then thought about how yours is probably one of the nicest, simplest, most well thought out reefs i think I've seen. I remember popping into your journal and getting the exact impression when I read through the 3 pages of folks telling you that you can't reef your way. Anyhow I cant wait to see what you do here its going to be interesting for sure.
 

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When i started my 75 gallon, i added water and live sand, waited for it to clear up for a day or 2, added a large filter sponge from my other tank and a bottle of biospira, and threw in fish the next day. Everything was fine never had any large ammonia, nitrite or nitrate spikes.
 
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When i started my 75 gallon, i added water and live sand, waited for it to clear up for a day or 2, added a large filter sponge from my other tank and a bottle of biospira, and threw in fish the next day. Everything was fine never had any large ammonia, nitrite or nitrate spikes.
After seeing the Nitrite thread and discussion I will be closely monitoring nitrite for the challenge. I assumed I'd be fine with the tiny .006 bumps in ammonia I got after first few feedings.
Never bothered to check nitrites in either tank through transfer but Nitrates where 5ppm day after stocking tank 1 and then bottomed out and had to start dosing. Didnt bother testing anything first 24 hrs as didnt feel id get true params.
I could be entirely wrong in my thinking here but figured my fully cured, established ocean rock would be entirely sufficient to process these things going from one system to another. I definitely found it was able to handle regular feedings for livestock as far as ammonia is concerned.
 

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After seeing the Nitrite thread and discussion I will be closely monitoring nitrite for the challenge. I assumed I'd be fine with the tiny .006 bumps in ammonia I got after first few feedings.
Never bothered to check nitrites in either tank through transfer but Nitrates where 5ppm day after stocking tank 1 and then bottomed out and had to start dosing. Didnt bother testing anything first 24 hrs as didnt feel id get true params.
I could be entirely wrong in my thinking here but figured my fully cured, established ocean rock would be entirely sufficient to process these things going from one system to another. I definitely found it was able to handle regular feedings for livestock as far as ammonia is concerned.
Yeah if youre adding a lot of live rock you should be fine and rarely need to wait out for a cycle. I just dont recommend adding a ton of live stock i always start with a single fish or 2 and let the bacteria populations increase slowly over time.
 
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Yeah if youre adding a lot of live rock you should be fine and rarely need to wait out for a cycle. I just dont recommend adding a ton of live stock i always start with a single fish or 2 and let the bacteria populations increase slowly over time.
For sure. I may have taken some unnecessary risks. House was torn apart with tanks delayed at Port. Corals already in dark period for 5 days. Didnt see anything with my monitoring and testing telling me it wouldn't be safe so I made the call and went for it.
All our systems and tanks are different.

I would not advise someone do same thing with dry rock, bottle bac and a sponge.


Both of my tanks where stocked with at least 1lb/gallon of 18-25 yr old gulf live rock and fully capable of meeting bioload demands from system it came out of.
 
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