Bare bottom cycle

[Emery]

Whats up everyone? Looks like I should be plumbing my 120 this week and finally be able to fill her up. My question about the cycle is which do you prefer? The old school table shrimp cycle, or some kind of bacteria in a bottle cycle. If you prefer bacteria, which one and why?

I contacted Dr Tims about their bacteria and how it would perform in a bare bottom reef with dry rock. Basically they said that I would need to dose almost double, and it would take forever since I don't have a substrate for the bacteria to breed in. If that's the case, wouldn't it benefit my wallet to just do a table shrimp cycle?

 

[Cory]

Whats up everyone? Looks like I should be plumbing my 120 this week and finally be able to fill her up. My question about the cycle is which do you prefer? The old school table shrimp cycle, or some kind of bacteria in a bottle cycle. If you prefer bacteria, which one and why?

I contacted Dr Tims about their bacteria and how it would perform in a bare bottom reef with dry rock. Basically they said that I would need to dose almost double, and it would take forever since I don't have a substrate for the bacteria to breed in. If that's the case, wouldn't it benefit my wallet to just do a table shrimp cycle?

You going to have any dry rock in there? That rock will provide lots of surface area. I seriously doubt it would take long in a bb tank. They probably thought of an empty tank.

Id use any of the bacteria in a bottle.

 

[Emery]

Yea I have dry rock. Just finished a bleach bath, dechlorinator bath, and it's sat in the sun for a week now. Debating a muriatic bath, but that a whole different issue

 

[SpikesReef]

Hey I think I was in contact with you on CT facebook about the rock process. Anyway I used almost every bacterial supplement and the only one that I got results from (personally) was Fritz turbo start. It can't be purchased online for some reason but I got it from Sean at Fritz when I went to reef-a-palooza. Ammonia went from 10+ to undetectable overnight. Good luck

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

The bacteria are a good way to speed the process, but I'd still add a source of ammonia, either inorganic ammonia or decaying food of some sort, to cycle the tank.

 

[ylreefer]

I know this is an old thread but hey I'm here so I thought others may still be looking and this might still be useful information

So I started cycling my 110g bare bottom reef tank with dry ceramic rock 50 days ago now, I have the seachem ammonia alert badge (2 actually) in there and started with Mb7 at the recommended amount plus Dr tim's ammonium chloride.

I dosed ammonia upto 2ppm and it took about 3 weeks to come down to 0.05. Still not In the safe zone but not bad. However it stuck there for another week.

I redosed ammonia up to 1.5ppm at abouy day 45 and it has still yet to return to zero.

Bare in mind this is according to the alert badge, only test kit we have out here for ammonia is salifert, which cannot read very well in saltwater so not very helpful.

As of day 50 I'm still seeing 0.05 so the bottom line is bare bottom tanks do take longer to cycle, I could do a big waterchange and that is next on the list but forcing the process will make for a less stable system in the long run so I'm waiting until the 2 month mark before I take any action.

Hopefully this can be of some help to others in deciding bare bottom or not. I think the extra wait will be worth long term result in ease of upkeep though.