How long to cycle dry rock to upgrade aquascaping?

littlebeard · Jan 20, 2023

I have a 2-3 year old 125 gallon tank with mixed sps/lps (mostly sps).

I decided I just didn't have enough room for all those pretty corals. I measured out a space in my tank which will require me to remove about 15-20% of my rock. I've built the pieces that I want to replace it with and placed it in a brute garbage can with a powerhead, heater and piece of my liverock. I've been ghost feeding it for about a month now.

My question is, how long do I let it cycle in the brute? 1 month? 2? 3? more? Is there a good way to know when it's ready?

I'm willing to be patient as I don't want to kill off my corals, they're doing decent!

Advice appreciated.

OfficeReefer · Jan 20, 2023

I'd say cycle the rock with yours until you no longer are seeing rising phosphates that would leach from new base rock and a good biofilm built up from the existing rock. I generally allow about 12 weeks for this to occur.

brandon429 · Jan 20, 2023

It's done. We have multiple threads of ghost feed alone fully cycling dry tanks in a month.

Additionally: per updated cycling science you didn't need to do that, any reef here can ditch 40% of its live rock and still carry the same fish, we're all that far over on needed surface area

Setting the new dry rock in to replace ~30% of your current rock is the same safety as pre cycling it, though it doesn't seem that way i agree. It's the case though

If the live rocks are held midwater in the display, I estimate any reef here can reduce rocks by 75% and seneye still won't show a marked change in ammonia control.

littlebeard · Jan 20, 2023

I'm actually less concerned about the ammonia cycle than I am about white rocks becoming an algae/cyno farm. I really want to avoid any of those uglies to crop up and overwhelm the frags that I'd like to place on there. Do you think they have sufficent biofilm to prevent this?

brandon429 · Jan 20, 2023

that is a 100% well placed concern. ammonia control isn't an issue in reefing. I do not think they will reject invasions until purple coralline is covering the rock, or mouths of coral since coral flesh except leathers and zoantharia is largely bioexclusive to algae.

coralline itself is very helpful, look at GHA issue posts in old tanks, the coralline is largely algae free and the algae chooses/is allowed to anchor in the crevices where coralline doesn't cover. those are the coverings that reject algae/needs more than just a biofilm.

*you might like this read however. it shows someone masterfully (I could never pull this off) taking a transferred $10K reef put into all white rock, it outbreaking bigtime, then he fixes it all without scraping and by balancing nutrients with perfect documentation)

you can easily lift up rocks and scrape/guide off algae with a knife and not have to alter your entire water column around starving algae

or you can try and coax it this way, hands off/options:

Connecting Established Reef To New Tank

EDIT: In conclusion, if using the method I did - connecting an established reef to a new system with dry rock (clean), I recommend the following: 1. Dose your new tank prior to connecting to your old tank with NO3 and PO4 enough to raise to your established tank levels. 2. Take your skimmer...

www.reef2reef.com

littlebeard · Feb 3, 2023

So update on this... 1 month was not enough time for the rocks. I changed it on the 21st of Jan, since then I think there's some water quality issues. I'm not quite sure what's going on as nitrates/phosphates/alk/ca/mag have stayed relatively constant.

The issues I'm seeing are, lost 3 frags to rtn (I didn't even move them). Also it appears my tang picked up hlle, and now one of my anthias seems to have picked up Lymphocystis.

Nothing else has changed in my routine and nothing else was added to the tank. All inhabitants have been in the tank for at least 6 months or longer.

I'm going to run an icp test tomorrow and see if I can't figure something out.. ugh.

MarcosTacos · Feb 3, 2023

Sorry to hear that. Keep us posted on the ICP test results.

littlebeard · Feb 11, 2023

ICP test came back with little to note. Slightly elevated phos, which I've had for awhile now. Iodine was off the charts, but the test said this was related to elevated phosphate?

Noticed a creeping darkness starting on the sand, took out a bit examined under the microscope and it looks like dino's have re-emerged after me killing them over a year ago. Looks to be 2 different varieties.

Interestingly under the microscope many of the dino's appeared dead while others did their circle. I can only assume that it's another microscopic battle in the fish bowl. I've started to slowly dose some silica to tip the favor towards the diatoms since that's what got me out of the dino battle last time.

brandon429 · Feb 11, 2023

ammonia control can be ruled out in your issue

the challenges associated with stripping out the entire supportive biome for a reef system and replacing it with rock only able to command ammonia can be ruled in

post a clear picture of your tank so we can see details, such as whether or not fish are alive in a system, side proof of ammonia control. you are having the known issues involved with biome startovers.

brandon429 · Feb 11, 2023

Tuffloud's tank above got an invasion he chemically corrected then it became a perfect reef. this was a total startover of all rock, and it was set up after the tank was barely able to carry ammonia loading.

It takes true artistry to pull that off in a 200 gallon setup or any size setup

it's not about how long you wait past cycling, it's how you reef live time/biome resets are hard things to pull off

we never got pics, can you post some pics of your setup to compare to the stages of challenge and timelines found in Tuffloud's thread

littlebeard · Feb 11, 2023

I don't have any before pictures. In retrospect, I probably should have taken some, but I currently just don't have the time, equipment, skill to take great photos. Below are the current pictures

FTS:

Dino area: On sand bed below monti.

brandon429 · Feb 11, 2023

that is the best coralline I've seen in about ten years here I'm so jealous

that small degree of changeout was nothing like the degree Tuff had to go through

If someone offered me ten thousand dollars I could not produce that much coralline in any tank I run or consult. dang, man.

that coralline seems to be a viable strain. you need to seriously scape some of it, pestle it up, and sell or give it to your friends in little vials to try to see if it actually seeds their systems. if it does, sell it for real. I'm not saying this as a gimmick that may be an especially selected strain for reefing that you got somehow on a surface transfer addition

its transmitting to areas on your substrate, on the snail shells nearly opaque, it's especially selected or you reef in a rare way that selects for it. I wish my own reef had some of that.

are your lights LED? those are known to suppress coralline. if that's halide quality coralline pressing through on LED, it could be a powerful strain everybody wants.

brandon429 · Feb 11, 2023

I do not recall better home production of coralline deep color than that. amazing what we find occasionally on full tank pics, I was expecting a bone sterile all white setup blinding me with whiteness in the picture covered in brown diatoms.

X-37B · Feb 11, 2023

I cycle dead live rock in my 45 frag system. It takes about 6 months to a year before it colors up.
I have more coralline than needed in this system.
Third pic is 4 pieces I just put from sump to main along the left front.

brandon429 · Feb 11, 2023

Little beard if your tank was mine I'd buy a very high quality uv sterilizer, hand-remove all dinos/diatom growths on the sand (yet to be verified but ID doesn't matter, still remove them) so there are none and they can't build up or amass, then install the UV in the clean condition. I wouldnt take a chance with dinos in a setup like that, I just wouldn't. I would disallow it at every stage.

littlebeard · Feb 11, 2023

@brandon429 any suggested UV units?

brandon429 · Feb 11, 2023

the truth is this

on amazon a pond sterilizer ridiculously oversized as in 5000 gallon pond costs like $114 or so

you dont have to run them forever, they're for battle phasing then you offline em

but they're cheap plastic, they only last maybe a year or so. if you go that route I give it a 90% chance of helping and that you won't take a year to beat dinos unless you're stocking frags and animals without using a fallow holding tank to assess what hitchhikes in on them...this is 96% of any reef tank on the board

alternatively, there are expensive pro UVs for reef tanks, $900 that will do about the same quality job but last ten years/with bulb and proper housing cleaning and maintenance

what I would specifically not do is pay money for a quality UV correctly sized for your system. go big or don't do it is my recommend, either as a cheap jebao job off amazon or if your tank is already being supported by $900 gear one more added won't hurt, something from emperor aquatics or pentair etc might be a ferrari for ferrari-type tanks.

UV doesnt pull up mats for us, pre cleaning always comes first, install UV in clean condition reefs to catch only suspended items, reduce target mass -99% before even installing one for the boosted most likely win.