Scarily fast tank cycle?

[brandon429]

Agreed that will skip cycle. Meaning the tank handles as much bioload now as it will in a year, the extra bacteria on new rocks won’t matter because you cant carry enough fish in a five gallon to overcome six pounds of already live in rock right in the middle of the water flow contact area. It’d be different if your display was all dry, and the six pounds live was tucked away in a sump where only some water contacts it, while the display whorls around with waste and no filtration.


Your rock is in the middle of the waste contact area and six pounds carries the max fish that tank can already carry physically anyway. It’s not like when the dry parts activate we can suddenly carry ten fish in it

 

[Mp.]

Agreed that will skip cycle. Meaning the tank handles as much bioload now as it will in a year, the extra bacteria on new rocks won’t matter because you cant carry enough fish in a five gallon to overcome six pounds of already live in rock right in the middle of the water flow contact area. It’d be different if your display was all dry, and the six pounds live was tucked away in a sump where only some water contacts it, while the display whorls around with waste and no filtration.


Your rock is in the middle of the waste contact area and six pounds carries the max fish that tank can already carry physically anyway. It’s not like when the dry parts activate we can suddenly carry ten fish in it

Even better seeing as i just plan to have inverts and coral in here so the bioload should never be large anyways

 

[brandon429]

We really do have to see the total picture to assess cycles nowadays there are about 4 opposing types and they each do opposite things with ammonia being added or not: total dry starts vs. live skip cycles vs blended setups like yours vs uncured ocean rocks full of life certain to die off and generate its own ammonia.

the other day a poster listed 25 days wait which meets a cycling chart time, their common api readings where ammonia showed .25 and I told them the cycle was done without seeing pics


and then they mentioned having no rocks or sand in the tank, they were literally there for a month testing a glass aquarium with water waiting for a cycle. Occasional burns help me remember pics and origin history of substrate in question, those are first details in any cycle assessment.

 

[brandon429]

One last case study

look how no pics lead in one direction, and validated an ammonia reading, but when pics were provided the outcome and context changed 180

cycling with uncured live rock

ok so i had no clue what this was and it has been in my tank for about 5 days now the ammonia is off the F charts even half rodi half tank water it is still off the charts (red sea test 2ppm) i have a api test coming today seems better goes up to 8ppm what should i do water change? let it be and...

www.reef2reef.com

that one will be fun to watch because he’s about to add some life and we don’t know if it will die yet. We applied the visual cycling rules from the microbiology of cycling thread to this cycle assess, so I guess time will tell.

 

[Alphawolfxz3]

The only way I could see it being cycled in a 2 to 3 day span is strait ammonia added to the tank and bacteria starter

 

[Mp.]

The only way I could see it being cycled in a 2 to 3 day span is strait ammonia added to the tank and bacteria starter

Well taking the word of brandon i got a rockflower anemone and so far its been thriving as far as i can tell, and i did not add anything to cycle the tank

 

[ThePurple12]

If you didn't add anything, there's not much food for the bacteria and therefore not much ammonia yet. What is your ammonia at? Do you have any nitrite or nitrate?

I think your tank will be fine as 1/3 of your rock is live (more by now), and that should be enough to handle a single rock flower anemone.

 

[Alphawolfxz3]

Well taking the word of brandon i got a rockflower anemone and so far its been thriving as far as i can tell, and i did not add anything to cycle the tank

It will stay alive because it doesn’t have as high demands for trace elements like no3. The problem with only having coral in a tank is you don’t have the fish to produce the waist to keep up the nitrites. Every coral will benefit from it. In my pico tank I was feeding and just letting the food decompose. Over time I got a reading of 0 no3 and a reading of 0.25 of phosphates. So I added strait ammonia and bacteria starter to re boost the tanks immune system in a way. But the coral are loaning more because now I am supplying those trace elements they were lacking.

 

[Mp.]

It will stay alive because it doesn’t have as high demands for trace elements like no3. The problem with only having coral in a tank is you don’t have the fish to produce the waist to keep up the nitrites. Every coral will benefit from it. In my pico tank I was feeding and just letting the food decompose. Over time I got a reading of 0 no3 and a reading of 0.25 of phosphates. So I added strait ammonia and bacteria starter to re boost the tanks immune system in a way. But the coral are loaning more because now I am supplying those trace elements they were lacking.

So what your saying is i should add a fish if i want my corals to thrive ?

 

[brandon429]

thousands of pico reefs are coral only, just feed some reef food occasionally then do a water change just after.

having a fish has nothing to do with coral success since replacement feed is available from pet store

what % of your rock was the live vs dry

 

[brandon429]

post update pic if you can Mp, closer up so we can see the rock differences between live vs dry ones

 

[ThePurple12]

@Mp. - do you have detectable ammonia, nitrite, or nitrate? This will tell us if your tank is cycled or not. If you haven't ammonia or nitrite, but some nitrate, your tank is cycled. If you have any ammonia or nitrite, it's still cycling.

 

[Alphawolfxz3]

So what your saying is i should add a fish if i want my corals to thrive ?

Yes. They are a critical part of the ecosystem if you don’t want to dose more things into your tank.

 

[Alphawolfxz3]

So what your saying is i should add a fish if i want my corals to thrive ?

If you go with a fish it will take the food and it will poop it and then turn into ammonia and then nitrate. If you just feed and let the food break down it will turn into ammonia and then nitrate with high content of phosphate.

 

[brandon429]

Not if the tests misread. We linked a thread with ten misread threads sub linked...we need meters that don’t rely on kits known to show .25 or .5


if it happens to be zero ammonia that’s fine too. Before the anemone was added, its possible to add ammonia and watch levels go up then down

but not once the reefing has started, the anemone will die soon if the tank isn’t cycled. And before it dies, the water will smell bad and go fully cloudy.

but if every day is open coral, no bloom no stench no loss, that’s cycled from the live rock component.

Mp can’t wait to see close up pic of setup with anemone, and showing which portion of rocks is the live portion.

wasnt this the setup using six pounds of live rock I can’t recall. We’ve done many lately