amonia dosing?

im preparing for my bigish tank build and i have my live rock in a garbage can with a heater,skimmer,powerheads and saltwater. i was adding raw shrimp then i thought "why not add ammonia?".... can i add a cup or so a week of ammonia to cycle it and build bacteria to handle a bigger bio load faster? im thinking i can, but im playing it safe for once lol.

 

Ah dood, your playing with fire.....literally. Why you gotta skimmer in there? All you need is a heater & powerhead and a nice chunk of raw shrimp or fish. Keep the water level topped off. If you put 'ammonia' in there, whadda you think will happen to all the good bugs?

Take parameters before and in a week, take them again. Your NH3 will drop, when it stay there for a few days, your rock is cured.

 

its cured rock already just trying to increase bacteria

 

mabe increased temp?

 

Just let it ride. The bacteria will grow along with the bioload in your tank. If its cured, drop it you tank.

 

He can't drop it in his tank yet because his tank isn't built yet.

You wouldn't want to use Ammonia. As stated previously, many of the worms, pods, etc will die (and then you'll have too much Ammonia). One could use a pinch of AmmoniUM Chloride a day to keep the bacteria you have alive but then you're having to purchase a chemical from a Chemical Supply House. All you really have to do is what people do to keep their QT tanks in cycle....a pinch of fish food every week or so.

There's no need to increase your bacteria population. Their population is based on the bioload. If you artificially increase their population and then their "food" goes away, they will go into stasis and eventually die. The next time there is Ammonia and Nitrite, their population will increase rapidly. (This is the reason they recommend not adding a whole bunch of fish at a time. If one adds 1 or 2 small fish at a time, then the bacteria population grows. Wait a week and add another fish, bacterial population grows, and so on). The only time you would want an artificially high bacterial population is if you had a need to add a whole bunch of fish in the same day.

 

Your correct inwall....my issue is ill be needing to add 4 tangs,2 fox faces,and 2 wrasses unless I drain their current tanks remove contents(rock and sand) and refill and put the fish back in. The new set up will be roughly 300 gallon total water volume system.

 

For clarification, let me see if I have this correct.

You have a running tank.
You have LR handling the bioload in that tank
You are getting a bigger tank
You bought more LR because you need more for the bigger tank
You want to follow the pounds of LR per gallon rules
You want to start the aquascaping in the new tank with new LR that has enough bacteria to handle the bioload
Move the fish over
Then later, move the old live rock over

If this is wrong, please lay it out like above so I understand the goals and steps

 

For the most part...

I have 5 running tanks

Im combining the tanks to 1 larger tank

ill be using all the LR and sand(rinsed very well in sw) from 1 oof the tankswich has the majority of the fish.

I have roughly 90lbs ill be reusing and roughly 320lbs of new rock(new to me,came from other ppls tank)

yes trying to stick to the lbs per gallon rule.

I was plannin to add all of the rock(new and old) at once.

My original plan was to move the livestock to my gfs tank till the nnew set up is ready but she bought a fish and its got ich so that plan is out the window.

 

I have an idea that might be a lot easier but it will take me time to write it up and explain it.....make sure you check back on this thread so you can ask questions, if any.