First cycle

[New2reef37]

water and new live sand went in New Year's Eve with about half of the live rock that I have in it, a week Later i put 20 more pounds alive rock and the fritz turbo start 900 in last Saturday 1/8/21. The first description says for instant addition of fish. Still don't have any ammonia or nitrites. Should I be waiting on a true cycle or is it safe to add some small invertebrates.

 

[brandon429]

welcome


read this whole thread/answers match yours perfectly. post a pic of your tank too

you *may* have a skip cycle reef, we expect no params to spike above.

Cycling a new tank- am I doing this correctly?????

I started a new tank on New Year's eve- 70 gallon with built in overflow that goes into a 20 gallon trigger emerald sump. I added about 65 lbs of live rock (15 lbs already established from my LFS) and 50 lbs of live CarribSea aragonite sand. We purchased RODI water and mixed it at home. The...

www.reef2reef.com

 

[brandon429]

one element of confusion may exist here: when we say live rocks in forums, that means actual wet already cycled rock from another running reef, which makes the reef its moved to skip the cycle.


in some cases when people say live rock they mean just any rock, including dry, which isn't cycled.


in that case the above link doesnt apply (they used actual live rock)

* but as you can see the Turbo start/cycle from a bottle has near instant abilities. so pending pics of your tank we can see which way to go. its either thank link above or if you have all dry rocks, and added bottle bac, what most people do is toss in a pinch of fish food and wait 10 days before starting with animals, that bottle bac will fix it just fine in that time.

 

[New2reef37]

approximately 30 lb of dry purple rock.

 

[brandon429]

nice. thats an easy one. take two pinches of fish food, ground into powder, and add into the water along with that fritz you added. wait ten days, you're cycled, and none of the testing matters its a testless cycle. bottle bac is this good.

your non digital cycling tests aren't super helpful, they provide doubt more than they provide resolve. a time-based wait cycle is often the simplest mode.

the main issue for keeping fish alive isn't the cycle, they'd live if you put some in now (waiting ten days after the food trick allows total seating) the main way to keep fish alive is by reading the fish disease forum and seeing what they do to keep disease out of the tank. in your case, a dry start, there's no disease brought in by wet items from a pet store so you're already fallowed (these terms are discussed in the fish disease forum stickies up top)

so if you can secure pre quarantined fish, you're off to the lowest disease start you can have in reefing. nice setup.

fish food is better than blasting in raw ammonia to 2ppm as you've read, don't use that way this one above is better.

 

[brandon429]

you can easily add some easy inverts now, and they'll eat that feed too. don't blast in too much feed just a fat pinch all ground up into powder is fine. this mix of carbon, protein, vitamins feeds the types of bacteria in those bottles better than just liquid ammonia.

they're correct that fish can go in immediately, their waste is small and won't overcome the system, plus the daily feed accomplishes what we are doing above. waiting on fish though gives ten days to study disease vectoring from the disease forum, and instant fish on day one breaks that chain of option.

 

[New2reef37]

nice. thats an easy one. take two pinches of fish food, ground into powder, and add into the water along with that fritz you added. wait ten days, you're cycled, and none of the testing matters its a testless cycle. bottle bac is this good.

your non digital cycling tests aren't super helpful, they provide doubt more than they provide resolve. a time-based wait cycle is often the simplest mode.

the main issue for keeping fish alive isn't the cycle, they'd live if you put some in now (waiting ten days after the food trick allows total seating) the main way to keep fish alive is by reading the fish disease forum and seeing what they do to keep disease out of the tank. in your case, a dry start, there's no disease brought in by wet items from a pet store so you're already fallowed (these terms are discussed in the fish disease forum stickies up top)

so if you can secure pre quarantined fish, you're off to the lowest disease start you can have in reefing. nice setup.

fish food is better than blasting in raw ammonia to 2ppm as you've read, don't use that way this one above is better.

Man dang I love this app, you people are amazing. Just added the crushed up fish food. We'll start counting the days. Are you also saying that there's digital readers for ammonia nitrate and nitrite?

 

[brandon429]

for sure, and they seem to work great in pattern testing.

seneye is the #1 ammonia reader device in the hobby. *caveat, ammonia (toxicity) is also the easiest param to predict in reefing so I'm not sure why we'd spend $190 on a device we just didn't use to predict your ammonia will be fine by day ten of a bottle bac cycle. but some people like that system because it uses alerts for spikes etc/text and email alerts when subbed.


hanna makes nitrite and nitrate checkers. * disclaimer: nitrite doesn't need to be factored in a reef tank display cycle. all other cycles: freshwater, planted, goldfish setups, low salinity quarantine tanks need nitrite factored. just not a display like you have above, for reasons of salt chemistry which we run high levels of in display reef tanks (those other setups requiring nitrite are low salt level setups)

http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2005-06/rhf/index.php

that leaves only nitrate. hanna makes good ones it seems/digital but don't think they're perfect. just the other day a chemistry friend with one was reporting all his reagent powder was bad/he found that because he's a chemist/even before the company had time to issue a recall or warning for those reagent lots.

you'll see in nitrate test kit posts that hanna digital nitrate is winning pretty much though.