Cycled a tank for 5 months without a light.

[Joeganja]

From August 6th 2016

And on Thursday December 29th I finally added a light

Now the reason I did this was to sort of experiment if cycling a tank without a light will result in less algae growth due to reducing nitrates and a light source during the cycle. It also gave me chance to look at my options in what type of lighting I wanted to use. Hobbyists sometimes want to a cycle a tank with a light but will get an algae bloom due to having high nitrates and a lighting period that isn't really needed when you first set up a tank. Hopefully I won't get an algae bloom suddenly since this is the first time this tank is seeing light since I last tore it down to start fresh. I'll keep you posted with what happens next. Going to go towards a higher Kelvin because I like the bluish hue and I want to make sure that i can do whatever I can to reduce hair algae.

 

[brandon429]

i would care greatly to see a digestion test on that tank, a mere 1 ppm verified liquid ammonia dilution level in the water column sample, then checked 24 hours later. this is the stuff of legends for cycling threads, we claim you only have to hydrate for 5 mos to lay down a base cycle, no food additions needed. this is only valid if you added the substrate and water and waited...if theres been feeding it will confound the predictions. either way, great thread.

the counter claim is that without manual help, all the bac couldn't live to self cycle.

 

[Joeganja]

Well I have two damsels in there since the beginning I've fed frozen mysis and pellets. I'm not really checking on tests on ammonia and nitrite especially after I saw the decrease and that all detoxifying into nitrate. I do 5 gallon water changes every other weeks. Now yes I waited 5 months because I didn't have the funds to purchase a light but since I'm taking my 90 gallon down I'm using one of the lights so it works out. But I also like the idea that skipping the lighting period during a whole cycle reduces the chances of algae growing. Of course I'll probably get some but not as much as if i was to have the lights on in the cycle. I only test for salinity, pH with my apex, temp, and nitrate and will soon to test for calcium, alkalinity, and magnesium when I start to add coral.

 

[brandon429]

yep I agree for your ends those are the ideal tests and takeaways regarding nitrate. the dilution of the tank per that bioload is easily safe. it would 100% for sure pass a cycling test so no need to run one, I had thought it just sat there wet all that time and remembered about 10 nice large thread on cycling. I should just put some bricks in a wet sw bucket in my garage and check back in the summer and solidify my own ten threads lol.

 

[BlueCursor]

Interesting experiment. My next tank I am planning on doing the opposite. I'm going to fill it, crank the light 100%, and grow a ton of algae so it extracts excess PO4 from the rock. Then I'm going to stock with pods to get them going and mature the tank. After a month of great algae and pod growth, put in urchins to mow the algae down.

Even in my mature tank, when I add a new piece of rock I get algae growth on it for a month or so. Then it matures and no more algae on the rock. I figure why fight it in the beginning . . . encourage it and let it run the course.

 

[Joeganja]

said and done

 

[Joeganja]

so I had a diatom bloom for about 2 days and that went away. It looks amazing

 

[andrew james]

For the pas few years I've kept a trash can with about 100lbs of live rock in water. heater with a powerhead. Once a month I do a small water chance on it and dump in some dr. tims. I put new rock in when I take some out. The reason Im mentioning this is because I've been using this rock to setup my tank and friends tanks and the tanks never have to cycle and never go through bad ugly phases and rarely ever see algae.