NEW TANK CYCLING QUESTIONS!!!

[ASWoodsy]

I am currently cycling my 32.5 gal (10 gal sump) LPS/Softie reef tank, and I don’t see anything happening (it has been 2 1/2 weeks). I have my light off, I have 3 fish in it (I know it isn’t the best to do it, but it was my only option, if I could have kept them in a quarantine tank I would have), and I added nitrifying bacteria. There have been no signs of spiking ammonia or nitrate and I don’t know what to do. Should I turn the light on? Is it bad that I have filter media (like nitrate and ammonia remover) in my sump? Should I be running my protein skimmer? I have so many questions, so whatever tips you have would be great!

 

[Jekyl]

I am currently cycling my 32.5 gal (10 gal sump) LPS/Softie reef tank, and I don’t see anything happening (it has been 2 1/2 weeks). I have my light off, I have 3 fish in it (I know it isn’t the best to do it, but it was my only option, if I could have kept them in a quarantine tank I would have), and I added nitrifying bacteria. There have been no signs of spiking ammonia or nitrate and I don’t know what to do. Should I turn the light on? Is it bad that I have filter media (like nitrate and ammonia remover) in my sump? Should I be running my protein skimmer? I have so many questions, so whatever tips you have would be great!

Not sure I understand what the problem is?

 

[brandon429]

congrats, your bottle bac was live and it skip cycled you. this is completely common and recurring.

by day 3, the bac you dosed adhered to all surfaces and no degree of water change could remove them, that's locked-in cycled. concern no more over the cycle/waves jedi hand then vanishes.

 

[Gtinnel]

How long have the fish been in the tank? What kind of media are you running?
I suspect your tank is probably already cycled if you don’t have ammonia building up. I would personally turn the lights on and keep running the skimmer? I would possibly remove the media depending on what it is.

 

[ASWoodsy]

congrats, your bottle bac was live and it skip cycled you. this is completely common and recurring.

by day 3, the bac you dosed adhered to all surfaces and no degree of water change could remove them, that's locked-in cycled. concern no more over the cycle/waves jedi hand then vanishes.

Should I move on then to adding fish and coral?

 

[brandon429]

lets see pic of tank, a clean pic of the tank is always needed in cycle shore-ups and stocking assessments. you're likely to get uglies invasion outbreaks soon, dealing with those + coral is rough. new tank= rough for a while.

 

[Susan Edwards]

Go slow. Give your bacteria time to grow. Add fish 1 at a time for that size tank and give it a few weeks, to allow the bacteria to again, grow. Start good husbandry by testing NO3 and PO4 as well as alk/ca/mg. You want low no3 and po4 to add corals, except softies. Turn lights and skimmer on.

post a pic, and some of your numbers.

And start a build thread

 

[dcsorrell]

You mentioned ammonia and nitrate, but not nitrite - what does that measure? With 3 fish, I would expect to see at least a low reading of nitrate. Hard to say whether your tank has gotten through the nitrogen cycle, yet.

Also, the nitrogen cycle is only one part of cycling and maturing a tank. The next thing is the algae cycle, which would begin once the nitrogen cycle is complete, and you have some nitrate. It's often called the ugly cycle. Helpful hint: diatoms are snail candy, and once they get their fill, they sleep it off!

Have fun observing and learning, and try not to sweat it too much.

 

[Gtinnel]

Rushing to add livestock quickly is a recipe for failure in this hobby.

 

[ReefDreamz]

Rushing to add livestock quickly is a recipe for failure in this hobby.

Is it though? I feel like if you don't add some bioload early on your more likely to get dinos from too low nutrients and not enough biological diversity.

 

[brandon429]

the risk is not a filter crash it's disease outbreaks in fish

*we have threads like Ike's reef where he stocks about 6 fish, medium sized not clowns, plus a $300 huge anemone and several corals on day one of a biospira bottle bac cycle, in dry rock. it's the most extreme form of skip cycling from a bottle I've seen, below.


no filter issues, not even coral keeping issues

by year 1/fish disease challenges and the disease forum is full of folks who waited out the normal cycle and still got disease, his skip cycle isn't implicated at all in the disease delay. it's about the need for quarantine and fallow of all added items/biosecurity like Jays article says.

Bio-spira works great

I just started a new tank a little over a week ago. I started with all dry rock and new sand. I added a bottle of Bio-Spira and put fish and coral the same day. Never saw any ammonia and fish and coral seem healthy.

www.reef2reef.com

 

[Gtinnel]

Is it though? I feel like if you don't add some bioload early on your more likely to get dinos from too low nutrients and not enough biological diversity.

That has been my experience. I do agree that adding some bio load is necessary and slowly increasing bio load is good. However from what I’ve learned is that adding too much too fast is not good.
Years ago with my current tank I started adding fish faster than I should have been and ended up with a bacterial bloom that killed all of my fish. If I understand correctly (and I very likely could be wrong) but when you add in new fish (nutrient sources) it causes a bloom in hetertrophic bacteria. Too much too quick and it can allow the bacteria to strip too much oxygen from the water. There is a balancing act in our aquariums that I won’t pretend to understand (I don’t just mean with the nitrogen cycle) and it takes time for our aquariums to adjust to changes including adding livestock.

 

[Susan Edwards]

I made the newbie mistake in a new tank of adding a bunch of fish at once and even though it had been 2-3 months since starting, that many gave me velvet. Lost 9 out of 13 fish.... Slow is better--less stress on all fish