Nitrate cycle

[Goose91]

Hey guys, new to reefing. Just got my 30g tank setup up. My salesmen was very informative, but i have reached a road block at the shrimp thing to start my nitrate cycles. Am i supposed to add a live salt water shrimp on any old dead one to decompose, take it out in a week and that kicks off the cycles?

 

[brandon429]

https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/the-microbiology-of-reef-tank-cycling.214618/

That’ll fix ya up, takes 20 mins to read the first few pages that is one way to discern when to use shrimp or not

We cycle tanks using primarily two different kinds of rocks. One kind gets shrimp. The other kind doesn’t, that’s the heart of the thread

 

[BadFish619]

Welcome to R2R! You'll want to use dead shrimp if that's the route you want to take.

 

[ScottR]

Welcome to R2R!

You’ll get a million opinions on cycling. Whatever route you take, just know that it’s not as daunting as it seems. Just use a good test kit to check that ammonia, nitrites and nitrates are at acceptable levels. Typically 0 ammonia 0 nitrites and about <10 nitrates are what most people aim for.

 

[Goose91]

Thxs for the info, i bought live rock, so if im reading correctly, i dont need to add a booster (dead shrimp) to kickstart the cycle, it should just natural go and be done in 30 days?

 

[Salty Lemon]

I love this thread -- it is a good one to read. I hope it helps. https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/cycling-an-aquarium.306554/
Welcome to R2R!

 

[Taxus812]

Thxs for the info, i bought live rock, so if im reading correctly, i dont need to add a booster (dead shrimp) to kickstart the cycle, it should just natural go and be done in 30 days?

I went the same route with live sand as well. Your on the money. It took about Three to four weeks .

 

[ScottR]

Thxs for the info, i bought live rock, so if im reading correctly, i dont need to add a booster (dead shrimp) to kickstart the cycle, it should just natural go and be done in 30 days?

If your live rock is indeed live rock, it should have enough life to kickstart the cycle. I always cycle with live rock and add some bottled bacteria.

 

[Goose91]

Awesome, thanks again for the quick responses, youve pretty well cleared up and resolved my question!

 

[brandon429]

Post pics of your rocks

If they turn out to be clearly group B and we w discuss visual proofs of that, then we will use your thread here as an updated example of 2019 accurate cycling.

 

[brandon429]

hey can you post pics here so we can tie it all together

 

[Goose91]

Here they are, just had a longer day at work. Tanks been running for about 36 hours now

 

[brandon429]

Just perfect thank you! We are using your thread as a guide for others in our cycling thread to discern skip cycle rocks vs cycle ones

 

[Goose91]

Hey no worries. Anything else you need?

 

[brandon429]

No that was really good documentation we like those kinds of pics because it shows the visual markers on live rocks we can associate with bacteria even though we can't see the bac

 

[Goose91]

Awesome. Well glad i could help!