Next up: Cycling the QT tank

pdiehm · Mar 10, 2015

RODI set up, and running well. Not producing as much as I want, but I can't do anything about the water temps. Booster pump running well, about 100 psi now, and making about a gallon more per hour. Much thanks to AZ for his help on that.

Next up is cycling my 20 gallon long QT tank. Plan is to keep it up and running in a spare room in the house. Aquaclear 20 power filter, with the ceramic balls, and the sponge. 100W heater (all I had laying around at the moment). 2 pieces of 2" pvc elbows in there. Powerheads are 2 425 gph Koralia Nano's.

I started dosing with ACE pure ammonia. Someone recommended I put a piece of my dry rock in there, but I've read that you don't want anything in a QT tank but the pvc. Same person said that my filter will only produce anabolic bacteria and I want to also have aerobic, and that a piece of dry rock would provide enough for all bacteria.

All that will be in the QT is 2 (3 at most) small fish at a time. They won't even be in there until day 13 following 12 days of Tank Transfer Method.

Cycling my tank:

Correct me if I'm wrong here. dose with 2-3 ppm ammonia. Wait for ammonia to go down. Test for nitrites. Re-dose to 2-3 ppm. Keep doing this until Ammonia and Nitrites are at 0ppm. Dose once more, and if both are 0 after 24 hours, tank is cycled and ready for first inhabitants.

This is where I get confused then. With freshwater, you do a large water change to get nitrates down under 30. I haven't read anywhere that you need to do a large water at the end of a cycle.

Triggreef · Mar 10, 2015

There's always more than one way to skin a cat, and I'm all for using a cycled QT. Kudos for setting one up in the first place. Cycling it shouldn't be much different than any other tank but might take a bit longer without adding any rock with bacteria on it. There shouldn't be any issue with using live rock, if you aren't going to use copper. It sounds like it's your plan NOT to use copper since your talking about also doing TTM. Rock/sand shouldn't really interfere with meds other than copper, that I know about.

My established QT has sand and plenty of live rock, and will never see copper. I generally put fish straight into that tank, get them eating well and used to me, and dose with prazi and or metro. Then after I'm ready, I move them into TTM. I sometimes have issues getting fish to eat it I start right off with TTM.

hart24601 · Mar 10, 2015

What I do for my qt and hospital tanks is I don't keep them setup all the time, but I keep some filter foam in my sump, I have filter socks so the sump stays clean, but I do wash the foam from time to time. Anyway when I set up a qt I just cut the foam to fit the dedicated submersible filter I have for either qt or hospital (I have two and don't mix them). The foam has plenty of bacteria, and I can use more or less foam depending on the bioload coming into the qt tank. I toss the foam when done (no contamination especially if used for hospital) and put new foam back in the dt sump.

This way I can be ready and not have to keep a tank up and running all the time. It has worked well for me FWIW.

pdiehm · Mar 10, 2015

I think in the long run that may be what I do, but in the short term, I'm hoping to add 1-2 fish every 6 or so weeks. It makes sense to set it up, get it cycled right now.

So it sounds like my piece of dry pukani will be ok. It's not very big, it's maybe a little bigger than my hand, and is on the flat side, with a gap on the bottom so a small fish (ie: firefish) could get in there and hide if they don't want to use the pvc.

svogun · Mar 10, 2015

I usually keep my QT bare bottom for ease of cleaning and will use a foam filter pad that has been seeded by my main tank

saltyphish · Mar 10, 2015

Exactly what I did and now that my DT is full. It is still running right now. I decided I needed to set-up another tank so going to start the routine again.

pdiehm said:
I think in the long run that may be what I do, but in the short term, I'm hoping to add 1-2 fish every 6 or so weeks. It makes sense to set it up, get it cycled right now.

So it sounds like my piece of dry pukani will be ok. It's not very big, it's maybe a little bigger than my hand, and is on the flat side, with a gap on the bottom so a small fish (ie: firefish) could get in there and hide if they don't want to use the pvc.

Humblefish · Mar 11, 2015

hart24601 said:
What I do for my qt and hospital tanks is I don't keep them setup all the time, but I keep some filter foam in my sump, I have filter socks so the sump stays clean, but I do wash the foam from time to time. Anyway when I set up a qt I just cut the foam to fit the dedicated submersible filter I have for either qt or hospital (I have two and don't mix them). The foam has plenty of bacteria, and I can use more or less foam depending on the bioload coming into the qt tank. I toss the foam when done (no contamination especially if used for hospital) and put new foam back in the dt sump.

This way I can be ready and not have to keep a tank up and running all the time. It has worked well for me FWIW.

^^This is what I do as well. I let it seed for at least 1 month down in my DT's sump, and just buy replacement Aquaclear foam inserts (they are cheap) so I don't have to cut anything (I am lazy. :wink

A quick way of cycling an insert is to go buy one of those "bacteria in a bottle" products (exs. Bio-Spira, Seachem Stability, Dr Tim's Nitrifying Bacteria). Place the foam insert in your HOB and pour one of those over the foam. Leave the HOB off for an hour or so while you are doing this. This will allow time for the nitrifying bacteria to reach and "seed" the foam.

Thunderfan · Mar 11, 2015

If your going to cycle it i would recomend using Fritz zyme turbostart 900 with your ammonia dose. When i set my display up i used all dry rock, packaged live sand and the Fritz zyme. My tank fully cycle in 7 days. I waited another week and a half before adding my first fish but did my testing along the way and it has worked great. I'm getting ready to set up a qt also and i will use this process to cycle it. Several lfs use this method when setting up their tasks and take for their customers without any issue and I'm a believer.

pdiehm · Mar 12, 2015

I'm in no rush. Just waiting for the ammonia to drop, and then we're cooking!

pdiehm · Mar 13, 2015

Big day.

Tested today with my Red Sea test. Ammonia fell to 1.2ppm. We have a nice pink color for Nitrites. Redosed back to 3ppm ammonia.

We're cookin now!

pdiehm · Mar 20, 2015

Today's test:

Ammonia 0.4ppm
Nitrites: beyond 1ppm (took 90 seconds for it to go deeper than the card shows).

Do I keep dosing ammonia back up to 2ppm? This is the part that confuses me. Some say, wait for ammonia to get to 0, then re-dose...others say keep going up to 2-3ppm until ammonia and nitrites are 0.