Cycling a new tank

C

Carissa

New member
Coming from an entirely freshwater background, I just have a few questions related to the cycling of nitrate to nitrogen gas which I've never attempted before.

I'm planning on having a deep sand bed to help with this, as well as reef rock seeded with live rock as the other part of my biological filtration. How long does it take, once you get the cycle from ammonia - > nitrite - > nitrate, to get the nitrate -> nitrogen gas cycle complete? Would it not speed up that part of it to start adding nitrate to the water at the same time as you start seeding it with ammonia to do a fishless cycle, so you don't have to wait the 4 - 6 weeks for nitrate to appear and for this process to start?
 
First off i would make the deep sand bed remote not in the display, due to if it ever chrashed you could take it off line if it remote. i would say if you buy live rock that is cured it would take bout 4 weeks to cycle all the way if you put in a dead uncooked shrimp to add decom to the tank. i do not know how you would add nitrates to the water to speed this proccess up. do you have an idea on how to add it?
 
Carissa, try real hard to forget much of what you learned keeping freshwater tanks, particularly when it comes to additives. It just doesn't apply here. Once your ammonia and nitrites have spiked and subsided, you'll get nitrates in small amounts. This is the end of your cycle. From here on you only concentrate on keeping your nitrates controlled with good husbandry. The term "crash" applies to usually sudden failure of the whole system, sometimes caused by a DSB becoming too saturated with detritus. This is why the new thinking regarding DSBs is to use them in a remote location where they can be changed out every few years. However, crashes occur in many different scenarios. This time of the year we're seeing problems with overheating, for instance, which kills livestock, with a resulting deadly chemistry. Have you read the top couple of threads in the "New to the Hobby" forum? This is essential reading for a newcomer. Good luck!

[welcome]
 
srry probibly should have explained "crashed" that alittle better...and yes as suz said that is the end result of a constant cycle that happens in the tank it isnt something that goes away, nor does the amonia cycle go away, but it happens at such a fast rate that amonia doesnt stay in the water collum long enought to detect it.
 
So is a deep sand bed in the tank a bad idea? Or does it just mean that I should think about maybe deep cleaning it in small amounts every so often? I've been told so many different things thus far about the way to do things that I think I'm ready to just give up asking and do it my own way, for better or worse. I thought that nitrates needed to be kept at very low levels, so a deep sand bed would help accomplish this without having to do lots of water changes. Thus far the major differences I have found between SW/FW (and I'm sure there are many more) are:

1. Nitrates are not tolerated by SW fish and must be removed - via live rock, deep sand bed, protein skimmer, macroalgae, or water changes
2. Copper is not tolerated at all so water must be 100% copper free
3. Stocking is stinkin' expensive :)
 
It's a 33g standard. Not a whole lot of bottom area, for the size of the tank, since it's 18" tall. However that allows for a deep sand bed without too much cut into the viewing area of the tank.

I guess what I don't understand, is why people are so concerned about nitrate export in SW tanks. Is it just to reduce water changes? On that site it says recommended levels are <0.2ppm, that's awfully low to maintain. I already went through almost all of those pages and nowhere does it provide a 'safe' level of nitrate...perhaps that's why I assumed that SW fish are much more sensitive. Or is it just corals/inverts? I've been trying to read up, but so many sites just say 'do this' and don't explain why, and they also don't differentiate between FO and reef tanks. That makes it hard to figure out what's important and what's not and more importantly, WHY something is important.

Back to the dsb, would it be recommended to clean it in very small amounts, over the course of time? Or would this make it worse? Would it be better for me to forget that idea and just use live rock and a protein skimmer? What about sucking up stuff sitting on the sand, running it through a particulate filter, then returning the water back to the tank? This should also help with nitrate export, right?
 
Obviously the lower the nitrate, the better. But how low it needs to be depends on the organisms you plan to keep. For example, I can keep fish, anemones, and soft corals in my tank with 40ppm nitrate. However, SPS don't do so well in my tank ... lol


<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=12716298#post12716298 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Carissa
It's a 33g standard. Not a whole lot of bottom area, for the size of the tank, since it's 18" tall. However that allows for a deep sand bed without too much cut into the viewing area of the tank.

I guess what I don't understand, is why people are so concerned about nitrate export in SW tanks. Is it just to reduce water changes? On that site it says recommended levels are <0.2ppm, that's awfully low to maintain. I already went through almost all of those pages and nowhere does it provide a 'safe' level of nitrate...perhaps that's why I assumed that SW fish are much more sensitive. Or is it just corals/inverts? I've been trying to read up, but so many sites just say 'do this' and don't explain why, and they also don't differentiate between FO and reef tanks. That makes it hard to figure out what's important and what's not and more importantly, WHY something is important.

Back to the dsb, would it be recommended to clean it in very small amounts, over the course of time? Or would this make it worse? Would it be better for me to forget that idea and just use live rock and a protein skimmer? What about sucking up stuff sitting on the sand, running it through a particulate filter, then returning the water back to the tank? This should also help with nitrate export, right?
Click to expand...
 
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