Day 3 of the cycle. New guy ;)

Would a frozen cube of mysis work?

 

Yep. Anything that can decay a bit and add ammonia to the system will work.

A chunk of shrimp works well because you can pull it out easily if you get too much decay and overwhelm the existing bacteria. You can stall the cycle if you get too much ammonia. I'm not sure what the upper limit is, but I wouldn't let it get over 1.0 ppm.

 

Actually the consensus seems to be that there is very little bacteria that stays in the water column, and so you would basically gain nothing from it. Better off use all of your own water to avoid any water chemistry issues with the water you would be getting IMO.

And agreed on that you may have a very quick cycle if you used all live rock.

 

Thanks for all the fast replies guys!

Do those levels i gave say anything about the progression of my cycle or is it too soon?

 

too soon, also watch your nitrites, don't let them get over 4 or your cycle can stall, just keep testing every day and keep a log of it and keep checking back as mentioned above, if truly using LR and LS and a bacteria aid, your cycle may go pretty quick But always be patient

 

If you had to guess, given my perimeters. How long would you guess my cucle will take

 

who knows, too many variables, temp, rock and what was on rock, etc. Not familiar witt the product. Sorry, but get used to waiting, being patient in this hobby is the best lesson you can learn. Once your trites drop to zero and ammonia is zero, add a fish or small cuc, and feed sparingly at first. Continue to watch your param's, then wait a few weeks to add anything else so your bacteria can catch up, then add one and wait

 

Thanks guys! Im very excited

 

the tank needed no cycling at all.

Live sand and live rock used since day one.


The ammonia test kit is wrong, neat huh. that test kit for ammonia is the most notorious mis reader. we get distilled water to register the same amounts! You are ready to reef. post pics of your live rock and we can discuss how there was no benthic life to die off. Then I w link you to a few threads where ammonia test kits were just wrong at the low level.

Your bacteria transferred without loss, the cycle wasn't needed. So, remove shrimp and put in your first animals. nobody is trying to argue with the masses, but there are threads about soft cycling we can link to read and you will see the practice has alternate approaches by thousands of people for years. Using a shrimp or a damsel is not needed.

Your tank can support the same bioload now that it will support in 3 months. The rock was fully and completely loaded with filter bacteria as you set it in your tank.

It didn't need a food source because lr is its own production and consumption substrate. It can self feed for years and years. Self feed for bacteria... as the upper layers of life die off.

If you will start feeding the tank and keeping a normal bioload you will cease killing off the higher order animals on the live rock as it sits in a poison environment with no feed.

You can never, never sterilize established filter bacteria from live rock simply by transferring tanks into clean saltwater. Ammonia is produced by all live rock all the time in the exact amounts needed by colonizing bacteria that continually die and replace themselves even if you switched tanks daily.

the type of cycling people are discussing here is for dry rock and sand cycling. this is not to argue, its to express biology that is very different from whats being discussed and its easily tested by anyone, so its valid discussion material.

the test: put in live rock from your lfs into a new tank. Put in some live sand if you want. Put in some simple corals. don't test for anything. begin the tank as normal, light it, feed it, change water on the weekend and the tank runs.

The only time you will get dieoff is from live rock that is knurled and twisted with benthic growth above normal, and you kept them emersed long enough to kill off a huge mass of worms and sponges that are clearly seen with pics. Im taking bets thats not the case here. This is normal live rock, stays wet on the inside even when you emerse it etc