will skimmer juice make my new tank cycle faster?

[boboyo]

I started the hobby 2 months ago, 55g tank is fully cycled with 12 fish and easy corals

The tank started leaking so I hurried up and bought a 125g tank and ddi the plumbing and everything. Lights are not ready and will be ready in about a week or 2.

I was planning on transferring the fish and all the rocks that dont have any coral on them then add the rocks with coral once the lights are ready but im scared I might not have enough bacteria... I have more dry rock which im setting up right now in my new tank. I also have a new bottle of microbacter7. Is using skimmer juice from my current tank to feed the bacteria for a few days recommended or should I avoid it? I also bought a marinepure block which is sitting in my current tank to accelerate the process on the new one

 

[Alexreefer]

Bump!

 

[boboyo]

Bump!

youre bumping a thread that was posted a minute ago ;Woot

 

[jradishness]

I would avoid reusing skimmate. If you’re not adding any livestock, your current rock should have enough bacteria to support them. Throw in a bottle of turbo start during the move and you should be fine. I just upgraded from a 180 to a 310 without adding any rock, and I didn’t bring over any of the sand (I’m rinsing it at the moment before it goes back in) and didn’t lose anything, or have any ammonia spikes.

 

[boboyo]

I would avoid that. If you’re not adding any livestock, your current rock should have enough bacteria to support them. Throw in a bottle of turbo start during the move and you should be fine. I just upgraded from a 180 to a 310 without adding any rock, and I didn’t bring over any of the sand (I’m rinsing it at the moment before it goes back in) and didn’t lose anything, or have any ammonia spikes.

ok thanks. The only issue is that im only using 3/4 of the rocks and 0 sand (i did the rookie mistake of using super fine sand which is the worst thing ever) My new sand is regular aragonite now

 

[StlSalt]

I'm no expert but I've always heard you can use skimmate to help cycle a tank. I always dump some in any new tanks I'm cycling instead of adding ammonia. I suppose there's a risk of transferring any kind of free floating nuisance over, but I've never worried about that. Interested to hear more thoughts on this as I haven't seen it discussed very often.

 

[Alexreefer]

Hey man, no need to come for my head the more the merrier

 

[jradishness]

I’m also no expert, so I too would be interested to hear from someone who is. In my head, I just imagine skimmate to contain far more negative than positive, given that most beneficial bacteria lives on surfaces, not in the column. Maybe empty the skimmate and transfer the bacteria-covered skimmer body?

Again, I’m not sure, only hypothesizing.

When you bring the rocks over, make sure to rinse them in the old tank water so you’re bringing over as little waste as possible. There are actually a lot of good “sand rinse” and “skip-cycle” threads on the forum here that while not applying directly to your situation, can provide a lot of helpful insight. Basically, look for anything written by brandon429.

 

[StlSalt]

I’m also no expert, so I too would be interested to hear from someone who is. In my head, I just imagine skimmate to contain far more negative than positive, given that most beneficial bacteria lives on surfaces, not in the column. Maybe empty the skimmate and transfer the bacteria-covered skimmer body?

Again, I’m not sure, only hypothesizing.

When you bring the rocks over, make sure to rinse them in the old tank water so you’re bringing over as little waste as possible. There are actually a lot of good “sand rinse” and “skip-cycle” threads on the forum here that while not applying directly to your situation, can provide a lot of helpful insight. Basically, look for anything written by brandon429.

My belief is that useful bacteria are everywhere, it just resides in much greater quantities on the sufaces inside the tank and into the deep porous rock we use to aquascape and filter. The surface bacteria do the heavy lifting simple because they have numbers over the amount free floating in the water column.