Cycling my tank

[Mr T]

Hi Guys

Thanks for responding... so two points to consider.

1. I cannot see the shrimp or the invader that took it, so I am now going to have to consider...how to get the invader out, any ideas?
2. I appreciate the shrimp may now give out loads of ammonia but.....

 

[Mr T]

Sorry sent too soon

but.....
a. It could have been eaten?
b. It could be part eaten and thus will still create ammonia?

If a. then I am concerned about the size of this thing! "We need a bigger boat"

If b. if the ammonia does kill the bacteria in the live rock then surely the cycling process will only create it again?? It will take longer but I am in no rush and to be honest I would like to see it happening whilst there is no livestock (except said invader) such that I know what to look for and how to deal with it when/if it happens at some point down the line.

Also, the ammonia might kill the invader? But if he has survived the journey this far followed by my 1st week cloudy tank then he sounds like a tough nut and I kinda respect his resiliance.

 

[brandon429]

if you will post a detailed pic of your rock we can pinpoint your cycle status.

the extra ammonia will not kill bacteria, its that you never needed the shrimp because the bacteria were already there, if indeed you were using real live rock.

if a crab or hitchhiking shrimp ate the coctail shrimp that doesn't mean he's bad, it means your rock was full of life and does not need cycling.

Remember from my linked thread the MACNA example. in that big marine trade show with hundreds of reefs, they didn't bring in those frag tanks and shrimp cycle them 4 weeks. They were instantly ready, like I suspect your tank to be pending pics, because they used all live rocks.

transporting already live rock home from the pet store never kills bacteria such that you have to start over.

Our linked thread clearly shows two kinds of rock, white rock with no life that needs shrimp cycling, and coralline covered rock that does not.

Let's see your rocks to know


There's a reason why these details are important to reefing, its not that double cycling will hurt your rocks ability to filter, since shrimp ammonia can't kill bacteria.

The reason its important to be able to command your reef at a given time is so you know how far you are allowed to act when things go wrong. By understanding the true nature of bacteria, for example, if something bad happened to your reef (say a child puts something bad in it, or nine months of food all at once) you will know that a 100% water change cannot kill your bacteria, so you are free to act. Contrast that against unsurety, and leaving the mess water in there for months trying to chemically adjust things to avoid killing the system with a full water change, slowly losing fish and coral and gaining algae.

Its not about rushing things, its about total command over your tank this is reef power

 

[Harold Green]

Kyle do yourself a favor and buy some decent test kits up front. You can have your water tested but owning the kits will allow you to test frequently and hopefully catch problems before they create other issues. By keeping track of nitrates and phosphates you can prevent most outbreaks of algae. You can keep ph and hardness at optimal levels to get better growth from your livestock.

 

[Mr T]

Hi Brandon429

Some photo's prior to water going in.

I really appreciate your input very insightful.

Cheers

 

[brandon429]

It appears live but not as home run as this for comparison

But the helpful part is learning on day one of reefkeeping how to spot the required proofs and never need a test kit. Never is an ammonia test kit required to build a reef tank, visual biology is 100% reliable. It has built a true online armada of pico reefs and nano reefs.

See how your rock isn't solid purple, but I do see some coralline and it came from the live rock bin at your lfs I can spot

Its not as barren as this, tho. You can see your rock is comparably aged much better than this bin, the rock that requires shrimp cycling

You precycled. So have the majority of new tank posters who are shrimp cycling at the current moment


If someone has rock thats in between, its ok to shrimp cycle if you want to and are in no hurry. All we are doing is making use or not making use of time options its ok both ways imo.
If your rock has any coralline, its ready.

Lots of coralline means really ready lol
One of the best tricks in visual biology is that coralline equals nitrifiers established.


Where there is coralline, full complement bacteria was there first unless someone sells you live rock they soaked in furan for a month to purposely rob you of all life while somehow having engineered a way to keep the coralline purple



By inextricable, I mean the link between coralline algae and full complement filtration bacteria establishment (enough for a reasonable bioload) is all you need to know if the shrimp cycling route is required.

Additionally, these new tank posters are by and large using caribsea wet pack sand which confers full ready as well, it is no longer debatable whether bacteria in a bottle, or a bag, are transferable and alive, formal DNA studies are done just google
Advanced aquarist magazine study on bottle bacteria instant cycling


That means many of the current threads up top/new tanks had pre ready sand, and rocks per coralline, and were ready, like how they pull it off at MACNA each year. Its such a rule breaking simplicity that its like trying to digest an apple having not chewed it, its near impossible to pry the dead shrimp out of their hands, eyes focused on the target they press for the tank regardless



If the rock is barren, shrimp it up. If its got life, get to reefin and go easy on the fish build up

Buy some zo's, turn the lights on and go to town via eye trust. Change your reefing forever. The final secret a thousand tanks paid the price for ignoring is as soon as you get the first spot of green hair algae don't ever act on your water, just hold course and directly kill the algae the first quarter inch spot you see. Why people farm large rocks of invasion is beyond me, optional, and many like to do it.


Opt out

Algae disallowed is algae not there

Has nothing to do with nutrients

Has to to do with intended farming, simply refuse algae. Before being shown the best method I used to lift out my rocks, fire burn algae, and this was optional because exposing live rocks to air is not particularly harmful at all. That w change reefing more than any trick I know

Of course we should have low dissolved nutrients and good grazers. That just has nothing to do with whether or not algae is in your tank. We either allow or disallow, so simple. Low nutrients and wastes only means you work less to none, it varies. What doesn't ever vary in any aquarium I own is whether or not bad algae is in the system. I have no idea what the nutrient levels are for any of them as I don't own any test kits other than salinity and temp.

 

[Harold Green]

Brandon we're talking beginners here. I've started a great many tanks, some with dead rock, some with live, some with live sand but for beginners there are too many people telling them they can throw some rocks in a tank and add fish and corals in two weeks. For a beginner to learn how to start and maintain good water quality the test kits make good insurance while learning to watch the animals and algaes to understand how well the tank is doing. Over the years I've had many successful tanks without using test kits. Do I use them today? Yes, so I can head off potential problems before the corals begin to look unhappy. So I know when to replace components in my ro filter. So I can adjust the water quality for the particular livestock I have in the tank. I can tell when the nitrate and phosphate levels rise by the amount of macro growth in the sump but I still monitor nitrates and phosphate to ensure the levels are the proper ratio to each other and not over a certain level.

 

[brandon429]

Edited below

 

[brandon429]

Should a new tank keeper opt to buy cured live rock and then wait an arbitrary period of time to ensure there's no dieoff that is fine and prudent as well, not trying to prevent that. Its the concept that is driving them to add dead shrimp worth addressing imo


We all need to know that we don't need to add ammonia to a cycling tank with cured live rock as an attempt to establish bacteria because the bacteria are already there, and this overage might kill pods, sponges, coralline species, all the reasons you paid for live rock. Add a spike up to 2 ppm if your intent on testing a 24 digestion period back to zero, but its not to be kept there, or you are undoing your live rock.

Dead rock is treated that way, not live rock. Any thread that teaches new reefers how to cycle needs a pic of what true live rock looks like and what true dead white rock looks like.


If someone chooses to put live rock into a system and wait to see if dieoff of worms caused a spike the inherent bacteria couldn't handle thats fine. If they want to spike the system to 2-3 ppm to see if the claimed ready bacteria can digest it to zero in 24 hrs thats ok.

But to shrimp cycle a tank of live rocks means one has no command over their tank, time periods or any action of bacteria and this is the right time to check that mode

 

[Mr T]

Brandon you saw the pictures of my rock and it does have some signs of life with mini critters and the large invader that stole the prawn. Incidently I caught him in a jam jar trap it was a crab the size of a ten pence piece. Anyway the shrimp (king prawn) has been in for three days it is starting to emit abit of a smell and my ammonia levels are 0.25ppm nitrite and nitrate are zero. What level should I let the ammonia go to?

 

[brandon429]

The best summary of the posts is the shrimp was never needed and the hitchhiking micro animals are showing amazing resiliency in being alive


There was no need for cycling this tank.


I'm not implying build a reef on the first day

I'm saying you had full bacteria ready from day 1 no different than shrimp cycling for nine additional weeks.

The right course of action is to perform a giant water change and treat the tank as it its aged, the rock is.
All you do is start with some easy corals and go

Wait to add fish

Not because the rocks need anything, or more time, but due to practice conserving tank balances the zoanthids w be more forgiving.

 

[Pete polyp]

He reported ammonia present in this tank so cycling was very much needed.

There is no specific number of days for any tank to cycle. Each tank will take its own time and have its own personality. Personally I have had tanks take 6 weeks to cycle down to 6 days. One of the tanks I have now took 6 days, and on the seventh it got its first fish and first coral. That fish and coral are still in the tank nearly 3 years later. The tank will be completely cycled once the ammonia is undetectable and the nitrite starts to fall. In my experience the nitrite cycle usually is very quick compared to the ammonia cycle, usually lasting a few days.

Please don't rush to throw in livestock and set yourself up for disaster. This hobby is all about patience and it will continue to test your patience for as long as you have it.

 

[Harold Green]

Well I have to disagree some. For beginners especially it's difficult to know whether a tank needs cycling or not. A lot depends on the rock. Even cured rock that's been in a holding tank for long periods of time may not have enough bacteria to handle much in the way of livestock. And if you're using fresh live rock then you have to expect some dieoff and in a new tank that will probably lead to a spike in ammonia. The best technique would be to add an ammonia source and monitor the tank water for several days looking for an ammonia spike. If it happens rapidly and then nitrite goes up and down while nitrate rises then the tank has some level of cycling although it still may not be enough to add much in the way of fish at that time. If the ammonia and nitrite stay at zero after adding an ammonia source and the tank shows an increase in nitrates then the tank has cycled to some degree and is likely to be ready for adding a small bio-load while you continue to monitor for ammonia and nitrates.

 

[brandon429]

Pete

Mr T wasnt posting about free ammonia pls reread. it was lack thereof



when rock is loaded with life you can see, you don't spike ammonia. its the heart of my posts. You paid for live rock, and are questioning if its live after having paid more than base rock and can see stuff moving on it.


Mr T

these debates are healthy and give you perspective to choose from. anywhere a crab and friends live, and coralline, that's where simple corals can live.

Anyone can see my posts are advising him to preserve, not kill off his live rock and to wait on fish and remove that stinky shrimp.


up until recently, nobody had began discussing when and when not to cycle with ammonia.

You should keep your tank to zero ammonia so the animals will thrive and reproduce, your rock came in fully loaded with bacteria.








if you were to remove your dead shrimp and change the water to clean, you can see how the current life might appreciate that.


The only time we add ammonia to aged rocks is to simply test if they are ready, in case nine forms of macro verification won't suffice.

it involves using an accurate test kit, 2 ppm ammonia one time not sustained, and seeing if the tank processes it in 24 hours.

treating 100% of all rock as in need of shrimp cycling means these MACNA conventions would be tanks that were there 4 weeks before the show.

no magic is being used at MACNA, its all people just relocating a bunch of live rocks around different addresses.

You should not rush

and you should not rely on arbitrary times to guess when reefing begins


you should simply start when the time is right, using metrics that are clear. There is a specifc test that removes all cycling guesswork, the 24 hr 2 ppm digestion test, that test is missing here and we are making opinions about the missing data.


again, I think you should not run that test since your rock has life on it but that's just my opinion

also, don't be surprised if you test and find no ammonia even with the rotting shrimp, you have so much bacteria its likely just digesting it, as live rock does.

With all the details so far I think a simple question is which now is more likely, that this rock was well aged before you got it, or that it might be missing some bacteria such that waiting approx three more weeks will make a vital difference? It would be different if you posted all white rocks barren of life. Our ammonia discussion would literally be 180 reverse.