Question about cycling my 55 gallon...

[AUfishguy]

I am upgrading from a 30 gallon to a 55. I bought all of the sand and live rock from a guy on craigslist. It was in a 70 gallon that had been running for a little over a year. I added 10 gallon of the packaged ocean water from my lfs, 5 gallons from my 30 gallon and the rest was RO saltwater from my lfs. I did all of this on Saturday the 9th. Wondering about how long it might take to cycle the tank? Im sure someone else has started a tank in similar fashion, please share your experience. I tested my water tonight and my parameters were as follows:

Ammonia - .25 ppm
Nitrite - 0 ppm
Nitrate - between 0 and 5 ppm

 

[vic67]

The only way you can know is by testing. After an ammonia spike the nitrites will go up and then drop to 0. You'll then get a rise in the nitrates and it'll be time for a WC. There is no benefit to transferring the old water; it doesn't have the good bacteria in it. The LR will give you the beneficial nitrifying bacteria. A little live sand from someone's running tank will help too.

 

[AUfishguy]

I added the water in hopes of adding some waste to start the cycly. As of this evening my psrameters are .25 ppm, 0 nitrite and 0 nitrate. I guess what I want to know is will the tank cycle without a source of waste to produce ammonia? Will the live rock start the cycle by itself?

 

[KorD]

I'm not sure what you have done on your last tanks, but I like to give all my fresh tanks a min of two weeks to cycle... or longer if I can just to be on the safe side of it.

 

[vic67]

You still would need a good source of ammonia to build on whatever good bacteria was already on your LR.

 

[AUfishguy]

You still would need a good source of ammonia to build on whatever good bacteria was already on your LR.

So what would be the best way to do that withought adding fish?

 

[vic67]

I use ground up raw shrimp. You could also use ammonia from the hardware store (no additives) or grind up some fish food so it breaks down faster.

 

[saltyfish]

You will have die of from the live sand and live rock when putting it on the new tank. You should be able to complete the cycle without adding anything else. Just go slow with adding fish. I would wait two weeks for the cycle to complete and then add one fish, wait two weeks and then add more fish.

 

[AUfishguy]

Thanks for the replies. I just wanted to update the thread for future use. I added some fish food a few days ago and as of this morning I have both ammonia and nitrite levels at zero and my nitrates have spiked. It took right around 15 days for the tank to cycle. Thanks again.

 

[mrcoffee2]

Yeah you can just feed it fish food. I personally throw in some cheap $2-5 fish to kick it off. They always seem to make it and then I have to take them back to the LFS :). There is also some water chemical you can buy that cycles your tank in 24hrs. I used it when setting up my 14g. I was surprised, it worked well.