Cycling question

I've been building a 90 gallon and I have the progress posted under the "show off you tank" blog. But here's the jist of it all. I have had the tank up and running for a little over 5 weeks now, but I introduced live rock about 4-4.5 weeks ago. I have been using Brightwell aquatics microbacter solution to help boost the bacterial colonies. So far my pH has moved from 8.0 to 8.2 but the rest of my chemicals have read zero this whole time. I've added hardy fish/ more live rock, and have waited a week, no change, then added another two fish, still no change. I know you're supposed to cycle the tank before adding more and more so that the nitrogen cycle is in place. here's my question after that dissertation....if the initial cycle of the nitrogen cycle is used to build up sufficient amount of bacterial colonies to handle the biological load, is it possible to have live rock that already has sufficient amounts to keep up and the tank never "initially" cycle? (I know that every time a fish/ more live rock is added the tank does recycle itself to keep up with the bioload.) Just trying to figure out if my tank is good or if I'm a missing a vital piece of info.

 

its unlikely, but its possible...i've seen it before. I'd say give it another week of testing just to be positive, but it sounds like your cycle is done

 

Yes if you have enough live rock and you are not over feeding, with slower introduction of fish you should not see an ammonia spike. Add to that the fact that you use mb7 ( a product I love). You might check your values against another kit, but I suspect by your post you are right in track.

Live fully cured rock can have enough nutrifying bacteria to process the bi-products of metabolism, IMO.

 

+1 on above posts

the MB7 will have quickly compensated for any die off you experienced on the live rock
in addition to the fact living bacteria on the rock would have processed the nutrients created by the die off anyway ( may have taken longer depending on ratio of healty to decaying bacterias but it would have happened)

suggest you trial a few snails etc and if they go scootering about, you can consider adding your initial fish stock a week or 2 later (1 fish is ideal, 2 fish if you want something like clowns as they are best introduced at same time)

Steve

 

I actually started adding fish about two weeks ago. still the chemicals are reading zero. I started off with putting two clownfish in, after a week, there was no change in chemicals. Tested my water at the LFS (I watched them do it, so it wasn't like they took it to a backroom and came back with results.) Then I added a yellow tang and a randal's shrimp goby. After a week and half there is still no change in the chemicals and the fish are doing good. very active, no cloudiness in their eyes.