starting a 72 gallon?

hi all, getting my RO/DI unit today and was wondering about the live sand i would like to add, i am assuming if i add it right away the cycle will kill everything live in it? so should i just put the salt water and a damsel in and add everything else live after it cycles, or should i just get regular sand or dead sand to start with and later add the live sand to the fuge after the cycle,,,thanks for your time with this newbe?

 

I'm confused, are you starting from scratch? I.E. nothing in the tank now?

 

sorry, yes just starting the tank up brand new

 

your best info may be to read through some of the other build threads, but to put it quick and simply

setup the tank, level it, put in a thin layer of sand, 1/4" or so, then put in your rock, build it up the way you like it, but mainly worry about getting a solid footprint down, then put in the rest of your sand, this is done to keep fish/inverts like gobies and nassarius snails from getting under the rockwork and causing it to fall

once that is done if you have a fuge fill it with sand to the level that you want

then you can start adding water, fill the tank with ro/di or pre-mixed sw, if you use ro/di then add salt when it is filled and bring the salinity to 1.024-1.026

after this let the tank sit, pumps running, skimmer running, heater running, no lights!

do not add any fish for at least a week, the way I cycled my tank was I put in a peice of minced krill in the rock work and watched it till it was totally gone, this took about 7 days, at that point I checked water parameters and had ammonia present, I at that point added a single small damsel fish and fed it sparingly, the fish survived the remainder of the cycle and is still in my tank and very healthy, at this point you just sit on the tank for about a month, no water changes. after 30 days check your parameters, you should have 0 ammonia, 0 nitrite and have nitrates detectable

 

thanks for the reply Iraf, so you would use live sand and the cycle period will not kill what is living in the sand?

 

not really, there is always some die-off when moving it but the idea of the cycle is to build up more of the beneficial bacterias in the sand and rock

the last tank i built I used dead sand and base rock, saved a ton of $ that way and it doesn't add a terrible amount of time to the cycle period

 

cool thanks for your time, i will do just as stated above,,,