New Tank + 2 week vacation.

Hi all,

My new 110 gallon, corner overflow, system has been up and running for all of 36 hours now.

In six days I will be leaving on a two week vacation. I have a house sitter coming in daily to look after the cats, and I will have her top up the sump when needed. I plan on leaving the lights and skimmer turned off (the skimmer is only on now to verify that it works) while I am away.

There is nothing but live rock and sand in the tank.

Is there anything else I could/should do that might ease the cycling process? Or, is leaving it totally alone the best thing that I can do? ;-)

When I get back, can I basically just estimate where I am in the cycling process based on water test results? I had hoped to track it daily for the first couple of months, but asking my house sitter to do it while I am away is out of the question. She is nervous enough about topping off the sump.

Cheers!

 

toss a piece of raw shrimp in there. it will kick start your cycle. and let it be. theres nothing to do now but wait. topoffs will be all you need. nice to get away while cycling. miss the boring stuff of not much happening.

guy

 

+1 agree, I wouldn't do anything else but throw in something to decay and be a source of ammonia.

 

totally agree with the previous posts above... also daily tests for the first few months are way overkill and expensive in the end, I would test once a week till you see the cycle coming to an end, then you can test as needed to confirm when the cycle has completed.

good luck, and remember pics are mandatory

 

ditto with the other guys,2 weeks-sweeet.

 

Add some sand from a seperate (ie frag tank) system from your lfs.

 

Might be good to tell your house sitter not to remove the shrimp or do any other favors such as cleaning the glass.

 

Thanks for all the advice!

I will try to keep up with the pics. They would actually be nice to have to track the progress of my tank.

My house sitter is actually terrified of doing damage to the tank. She'd never do something like try to remove something (ie shrimp) from the tank, but she may try to clean the glass. That's a good point that I will remind her of.

Luckily, there's no live stock for her to feed! The last time we went on vacation, the automatic feeder on my freshwater tank ran out of food (my fault for being in such a rush to go on vacation and not double checking it). She overfed them, which ended up triggering a bacterial bloom in my tank.

 

In your case, I would put a piece of raw shrimp in there, but keep it small, I wouldn't use a whole piece, just enough to keep the bacteria fed. Have fun.