Algae starting in vacant tank during shrimp cycle

[chris89861]

I just pulled together a 72 gallon tank with a small sump and am beginning to see what looks like a dino algae (small brown splotches with tiny air bubbles, hairs just starting to protrude) popping up in isolated pods about 1/4 the size of my pinky nail all over the glass and sand bed. I'm curious since the tank is still empty if I've done something wrong, or if this should be expected since the water was so nutrient (?) / NO3 & NO2 rich. I've had the scrubber running so I can dial it in, and the lights on because I'm super excited about having a saltwater tank (been waiting ~10 years). Just took measurements, ammonia was near zero, NO3 above 80ppm, NO2 around 5ppm.

I'm trying to determine if I should drain the tank and start anew... my live rock should be arriving this weekend, so I'm going to have another full water swap to do in a few weeks anyway once that curing process is done. Do I need to kill this algae off (drain the tank, blackout, & scrub?) before I put the rock in?

Would a turf scrubber help keep this algae out of the main tank?

 

[chris89861]

By the way, what bio media do you have right now to seed beneficial bacteria?

How long are you doing the cycle?

I have a 1" x 1"x 8" block of MarinePure in place of rock right now. Is that enough to seed the bacteria?

I had one chopped up shrimp in a suspended media bag for about a week and added a 200g bag of carbon a couple days after because my better half threatened my project if it kept smelling like that :fun4: Ammonia has already dropped off and the others are slowly coming down... I'm assuming I'm going to go through this whole cycle again when I add the rock, so I'm not going to waste any more test media!

Will this process help the new dry live rock cycle more quickly?

 

[mcgyvr]

You should have been doing water changes to not let nitrates get that high..
Good luck getting them back down...

Dump live rock in tank.. Come back in 4 weeks...and start reefing..

 

[homer1475]

You should have been doing water changes to not let nitrates get that high..
Good luck getting them back down...

Dump live rock in tank.. Come back in 4 weeks...and start reefing..

80 to 90% WC after the cycle completes is all that's needed to knock back those nitrates.

WC's during a cycle is pointless as it just stalls the cycle, and wastes salt. IMO

 

[chris89861]

You should have been doing water changes to not let nitrates get that high..

Everything I read said not to bother doing water changes if I was going to cure the live rock in the tank... I guess I kind of messed up because I'm effectively double cycling the tank, once with the shrimp, and once with the rock. :deadhorse1:

You will need live rock as 8 1 1 plate won't do denitrification as live rocks do...

It was my understanding that you could effectively replace live rock with marinepure, and that an 8 1 1 plate has the surface area of about 200lbs of live rock. Sounds like I need to do more research there.

 

[CarrieB]

You will need live rock as 8 1 1 plate won't do denitrification as live rocks do.

What's the basis of this statement? Is there some data available to this effect?


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[mcgyvr]

WC's during a cycle is pointless as it just stalls the cycle, and wastes salt. IMO

Not pointless as most of the bacteria is on the surfaces of rock/sand,etc.. and very little is free floating in the water..
It should not stall the cycle one bit..

A couple 10-20% weekly changes is sufficient during the cycle..
You stated 80-90% water change.. Doing water changes during the cycle of 3 weeks is only 30-60% water replacement.. Which = less salt used vs needing to do an 80-90% change at the end of those 3 weeks..
And nitrate levels stay low and you don't need to go crazy to get them down again...

 

[homer1475]

The problem with doing WC's during your cycle, your removing the source of food for the bacteria your trying to grow(ammonia, and/or nitrites). Hence stalling the cycle, or making it take longer then it should. Dose ammonia once, let it convert to nitrates, redose to stress test the bacteria load, large WC, done.

It has nothing to do with removing the bacteria from the water column, as very little live in it, as you stated.

Either way its a debatable topic, along with quite a few other topics in reefing.