Cycle HELP

im getting a jbj nano tank for christmas how long do i need to what before i add my first coral/invert/cleaner crew???? tHANKS

 

Depends on what kind of coral/invert/cleaner. Can you be more specific?

 

zoas,torch (maybe), mushrooms. cleaner shrimp, star, feather duster ect. hermits and snails>

 

Every tank is different so it's tought to say.. Some will say 8-12 weeks while I have seen some report on here of tanks cycling in 2-3 weeks. Mine was a weird one and cycled in 4 weeks. This being said I would wait until you see the cycle nearing it's end point before you put in the cleaner crew. I added them at the tail end then by the time the cycle was done the tank was clean and I added my first fish.

 

It depends on how you set it up. Normally 2-12 weeks is the total range seen for cycling. We cycled in about 3 weeks because we used LFS water, precured rock, and added a bottle of nitrifying bacteria to help the clowns not get too stressed when we put them in. Our ammonias dropped to zero within the first week thanks to the LFS rock, but it took the nitrites 2 more weeks to catch up. Essentially it was invert save at 1-2 weeks, which is when we added our cleanup crew. Now 3 weeks in we have 2 clowns, several brittle stars (the 4 inch guy we bought, 2 quarter sized guys we didn't buy, not complaining though), and a decent CUC and our ammonia and nitrites are reading at zero. We had a tiny Ammonia spike after adding the CUC, which we predicted to happen anyways.

Let us know how you will be starting the tank and we can give you a pretty close estimate. Tank specs, LR precured or not, live sand, home mixed water or bought from LFS, etc. Also it depends on what you are cycling with.

I would add the CUC first to help keep the algae blooms down. You're going to go through 1-3 of them before the tank is fully cycled. We're still battling our hair algae boom, but the Skimmer we're getting this weekend should make all that stuff go bye bye. My Fuzzy Chiton is FAT after eating all of the algae on his rock though. He better not get used to it.

 

lol

i pretty sure this is a real stupid question but what is a cuc. i dont get that srry

 

Clean Up Crew

Your snails, shrimps, hermits, etc.

 

thanks!