Adding fish and coral
- Thread starter mangelo
- Start date
Your live rock will have enough decaying matter to feed your bacteria. Cycling with live fish is an outdated practice that is pretty much considered just cruel these days. You're basically putting a fish in a toxic environment and hoping it survives the experience. Kind of like being told that you have to stay in your house while it's being fumigated.
Once your cycle is complete, you still want to add fish slowly. Your nitrifying bacteria will have to adjust to the higher bioload. If you suddenly introduce 5 fish into your tank, you're going to overload the system. Corals don't produce much of a bioload, so theoretically, you could fill your tank with corals and it wouldn't have any ill effect. The problem is, you have a new, untested tank. If it's not as ready for corals as you thought it was, now you have hundreds of dollars worth of dead corals. I'd suggest starting with one or two of your more forgiving corals (leathers, mushrooms, green star polyps, etc.) and give them at least a few weeks to see how they're doing. If everything looks good, then you can start adding some tougher corals or more of the same. Whatever you do, try to resist adding too much of anything all at once. If nothing else, should a problem arise, now you have no idea what caused it.
Hope that all makes sense. Good luck, and keep asking questions.
Oh, I also see that you have a canister filter listed among your equipment, but no protein skimmer. Canister filters are also rather outdated as a primary source of filtration. If you don't have a protein skimmer already, that would be a very good investment. I have a canister filter as well that I run from time to time for water polishing, so it's certainly not a worthless item.
Once your cycle is complete, you still want to add fish slowly. Your nitrifying bacteria will have to adjust to the higher bioload. If you suddenly introduce 5 fish into your tank, you're going to overload the system. Corals don't produce much of a bioload, so theoretically, you could fill your tank with corals and it wouldn't have any ill effect. The problem is, you have a new, untested tank. If it's not as ready for corals as you thought it was, now you have hundreds of dollars worth of dead corals. I'd suggest starting with one or two of your more forgiving corals (leathers, mushrooms, green star polyps, etc.) and give them at least a few weeks to see how they're doing. If everything looks good, then you can start adding some tougher corals or more of the same. Whatever you do, try to resist adding too much of anything all at once. If nothing else, should a problem arise, now you have no idea what caused it.
Hope that all makes sense. Good luck, and keep asking questions.
Oh, I also see that you have a canister filter listed among your equipment, but no protein skimmer. Canister filters are also rather outdated as a primary source of filtration. If you don't have a protein skimmer already, that would be a very good investment. I have a canister filter as well that I run from time to time for water polishing, so it's certainly not a worthless item.
atwinparadox2
New member
don't need fish to start a cycle, just add a small piece of live rock to get it rolling. Some people have also put in raw pieces of shrimp to get the cycle moving. Then you can add your cleanup crew which will help the cycle along.
mangelo
New member
I have been checking my water parameters daily. I watch pH (8.1), SG (1.025), no ammonia, nitrates and nitrites are zero.
In my canister filter I have the ceramic biological filter media, carbon, and an extra filter padding specifically for ammonia.
I hope I can weather the storm!!
In my canister filter I have the ceramic biological filter media, carbon, and an extra filter padding specifically for ammonia.
I hope I can weather the storm!!
