Cycle tank with lights on or off.

My question is this..... I guess I'm curing the live rock in my main tank, should I do this with my lights on or off?

Ok I just everything together... Whew what allot of work... My live sand and rock came from the sea, so did my water. I chose to use the T5 6 bulb setup and a 75Gallon tank. For the filter I'm using bio balls and a miracle mud refugioum with calupra until I can get some cheto.

 

There's no need to run your lights while your cycling, however, if you've got blue actinic lights, you might want to run them for a few hours a day to encourage coralline algae growth.

 

I took all my rock from out of the sea and they had allot of coralline growth on them It's been 7 days now and all the coralline has lost color. My parameters are below. There are worms everywhere. Is this normal?

PH 8.2
Amonia 1.0
Nitrite 0
Nitrate 0

 

It's normal to have coralline die off during transport so no need to worry about it. As for your worms, since I have no idea what kind of worms they are, I have no idea whether they're normal or not. Can you post a pic of them?

 

When you say that coralline dies off in transport what do you mean. Cause I fished this stuff out of the sea.... They were out of water for about 2hours max. I put them in the tank and they were vibrant red, orange and pink. I woke up the next day and there completely white... Looking like toothpaste on the rock. I'll post a pic of the worms in a sec.

 

I live pretty close to the sea. My water comes from there, My rock and my sand. It's not a problem. If this is not a normal part of cycling live rock in a new aquarium I could start over. It would be a PITA but I guess it's not that big of a problem.

 

Coralline algae can be out of the tank for minutes and it will still bleach white. It will grow back in time so don't worry about it. It's completely normal

 

Ok thanks

 

If you fished the rock right from the open waters of the sea I'd suggest that you lay it all out on a plastic sheet and let all the crabs and other killers crawl on out.. Not to mention unwanted alga's and micro organisms You may be killing the tank before you start it.. Just be careful I have never been a fan or user of L/R of any type. the bacteria will come as will the bio diversity.

 

You can run them with or without lights. You will probably have less cyano, or minimal nuissance algal growth. I cycled mine with the lights on 8-10 hours a day. It's doing wonderfully.