Live Rock Cycling Pt 2
Live Rock Cycling Pt 2
10/20/07
Ok, where did I leave off. A lot of the live rock pictures you have seen are ones that were taken after the rock was thoroughly examined for any unwanted critters, brushed off of any detritus, and then rinsed several times before adding it to the tank.Here is a pic of my live rock cleaning station.
I have done it this way for 12 years. Each time I clean live rock ,I pull out my old box containing my nylon brushes, an old metal probe that I have had since I started reefkeeping, long nose pliers, short nose pliers, 3 buckets of water from the tank, some tote tub lids, a desk lamp, and of course my geeky head lamp(probably the most important item as it allows me to look in the rock for unwanted crabs, worms, or shrimp.
I wanted to do something different to test exactly how much water is lost to the addition of the live rock and to really know how many total gallons this system holds. I purchased 150lbs of uncured rock if you remember. So what I did was fill up 2.5 gallon buckets with water from the display as it was running full of water with nothing in the display. I first took out 7.5 gallons thinking that I was going to at least need to do this 1 or 2 times more. The water was used to rinse the rock out of detritus:
Surprisingly, after cleaning all of the rock and adding it to the tank, 7.5 gallons is all I needed to take out to get the water level back to where it was with all of the live rock in the display and sump. Wow was I shocked. I really thought this amount of live rock would at least take out 15-20 gallons of water. Just proved another point to myself that this rock is highly porous, filled with holes which did not require much water to be taken out. I now have a pretty good estimate of a 180 gallon system with water in the pipes, sump, skimmer, and display. This will allow me to accurately measure out any additives that I use in my reef systems. After all of the rock is cleaned and thoroughly inspected I placed approximately 120lbs in the display and 30lbs in the sump to free up display space for swimming room and coral growth.
Here are some shots of the first aquascapes of the tank on its first day fo cycle:
You will notice no sand on the bottom of the display. This is my preffered method for cycling. Reason being is I can clean the rocks off with a strong powerhead(mjmod), blowing off all of the loose detritus that I can easily vacuum off the bottom of the aquarium. I will have certainly blown sand all over the place if I added the sand while cycling. This method also keeps detritus out of the sand bed which I feel is a major cause for sand bed problems that people face. I really feel that if you can blow off as much detritus as possible during the cycle, your sand bed will be much more manageable down the road. As stated in the previous posts, the ammonia level never went above 0.5 and was completely cycled in 3 weeks time. I did weekly water changes of 30 gallons during this process. No livestock was added during this time as well.
While the system was cycling, I had time to work on finishing up the stand and canopy for lights/fans. I do not run lights myself during the curing/cycling until the cycle is complete. I did run 2 daisy chained Phosban Reactors filled with carbon in the first chamber and Phosban in the second. This is the first time I have used Phosban during a cycle thinking it may prevent a brown diatom bloom. The brown diatom bloom came as usual, so my thoughts on this are it is a necessary step of the cycle that is unavoidable. I have heard people say they have cycled tanks without a bloom. I have never seen this myself, especially when cycling with uncured rock. So there you have it, cycling inside the display using uncured live rock with no apparant problems noted to date. During this time I also tested levels and made additions to get the system where it needed to be. I as well as most reefkeepers are rarely satisfied with the first, second, or even third aquascape that is attempted. I will show some other pics of different aquascapes I attempted in the following posts...
