I was not intentionally rushing to populate my new tank with sand critters before the cycle was done, but mismanaged the order/delivery timeline and am now receiving an order of sand critters with mud and copepods in 5 days when my cycle is not close to done and my nitrates/nitrites are high. Much like when I try to time my walk to public transportation perfectly so that I do not have to wait for it to arrive, and I end up missing my ride cause I didn't leave with enough time, I was trying to time my order to arrive as cycle finished and incorrectly thought it would be done in 14 days with seeded bacteria! I know this was poor planning on my part, and will eat the cost if some form of temporary storage won't work as I do not want to chance adding to tank prematurely and causing cycle delays or long term problems.
Not looking for cycle advice, but looking for help on how to keep the sand sifters alive in a sort of last minute temporary QT until DT cycle is complete and I can do a suitable and necessary water change. I am 7 days into cycle using seeded bacteria and ammonia in a tank started with dry rock and live sand, with ammonia still high and both nitrates and nitrites doing their jobs and going up exponentially which is good, but I do not forsee ammonia and nitrites dropping to zero and then handling another dose of ammonia to 2ppm in 24 or 48 hrs with enough time to change water in prep for this delivery in 5 days. Currently 2.4ppm ammonia, 4ppm nitrites and 20ppm nitrates after 7 days with only 1 dose of ammonia on day 1. Nitrites and nitrates are still on the rise, ammonia slowly going down.
I am hoping I can set up an emergency "tank" to store the sand critters and copepods in sw for the remaining time on my cycle so that I do not wipe out this whole order. Would it be wise to go to my LFS and pick up a decent sized live rock from them, then fill up a 5 gallon bucket with fresh sw the lFS live rock, heater and power head to dump this sand critter/mud order into and keep for the week or three remaining on my cycle? Assuming I would just need to do something like 50% water changes in the 5 gallon bucket every week or more?
Not looking for cycle advice, but looking for help on how to keep the sand sifters alive in a sort of last minute temporary QT until DT cycle is complete and I can do a suitable and necessary water change. I am 7 days into cycle using seeded bacteria and ammonia in a tank started with dry rock and live sand, with ammonia still high and both nitrates and nitrites doing their jobs and going up exponentially which is good, but I do not forsee ammonia and nitrites dropping to zero and then handling another dose of ammonia to 2ppm in 24 or 48 hrs with enough time to change water in prep for this delivery in 5 days. Currently 2.4ppm ammonia, 4ppm nitrites and 20ppm nitrates after 7 days with only 1 dose of ammonia on day 1. Nitrites and nitrates are still on the rise, ammonia slowly going down.
I am hoping I can set up an emergency "tank" to store the sand critters and copepods in sw for the remaining time on my cycle so that I do not wipe out this whole order. Would it be wise to go to my LFS and pick up a decent sized live rock from them, then fill up a 5 gallon bucket with fresh sw the lFS live rock, heater and power head to dump this sand critter/mud order into and keep for the week or three remaining on my cycle? Assuming I would just need to do something like 50% water changes in the 5 gallon bucket every week or more?