Made some base live rock have a few questions?

I think im on the final stretch of my tank build. All 3 tanks are drilled, I have my lights, skimmer, rocks, ro/di. All I need now is 2 pumps and a ballast as well as sand. Recently my mom lost her job so my tank build has kinda been on hold. As of now I have about 40 lbls of base rock I made sitting in a 55 cycling. I have no critters in it. When I dropped the salt in and made my water I ran out of salt this was about 2 weeks ago. My question is do you guys think I should set the salt level proper, use up my BRS 2 part and let it cycle with lights? or would the rock still cure without all of this that way I can save all my 2 part stuff for the actual set up. If the rock will cycle and be safe without salt that would be awesome that way I can get my salt when everything is ready. Money is really tight at the moment so I need to save everywhere I can. Oh, sorry and one more question how long do you think the rocks should sit before they are safe to use? I belive the only reason you have to wait is it brings the Ph up to like 9 right?

 

Hi Brian. A few things -

1) You need to bring up the salinity level of the water to something close to the final levels you hope to achieve. For example, in my reef tank I keep the SG at 1.026. You may not need to be that high. But if you cycle your rock at salinity that is too low and then bring up the salt level later, you will end up killing most of the micro-organisms that you are now so carefully culturing on your rocks. So salt is a bit of a priority right now.

2) You do not need the BRS 2 part solution at all right now. That is for much later, when you have corals and other critters that use up calcium and alkalinity. If all you have in your tank for now is a bunch of cycling rock, you do not need the 2 part solution at all.

3) You do not need to leave the lights on during cycling. It only fuels algae growth. I'd leave them off. You also don't need to run your protein skimmer during this time (if you have one, which I'd recommend)

4) The reason you are waiting for your rocks to cycle has nothing at all to do with pH. It has to do with letting helpful bacteria colonize on them so that they are useful for biological filtration. If all you have is base rock with no live rock or sand to seed it, this will take anywhere from 6-10 weeks. So just let things sit and stew for a while, but do get the salt level up. Oh, and you don't need to do any water changes until you see ammonia and nitrite levels dropping and nitrate levels starting to rise. That will tell you that your cycle is coming to an end.

 

Your info was very helpful, thank you I will set the salt level correctly and just keep it sittting for another couple weeks.