Cycling a tank with dryrock.

[Kinetic]

I'm using all reeferrock / marcorock for my display, and will be ordering tons of pods and such from ipfs. I will probably cook some of the rock I have, and then stick it into my fuge for awhile for bacteria.

It will be completely BB, even the fuge.

How long do you think I will need to cycle the tank? I'm doing this so I can minimize on nuisance algae.

Cycling would be basically the build up of NNR bacteria? And maybe get the pod population to bloom a bit more? So given I stock the tank full of these pods from IPFS, and use a little seed rock, would it be a month, 2 months? half a year?

 

[sfsuphysics]

get out the ammonia & nitrite kits and test.

The "cycling" process has nothing to do with pods. It's simply the build up of bacteria which breaks everything.

Problem is going from a "dead" tank with "dead" stuff is while yes you'll get a bit of a cylce, once you add organisms you'll throw off whatever balance there was of bacteria to waste. Personally I'd toss in a piece of dead shrimp/fish to give it a bit of a kick start and have some elevated "waste" production.

 

[Kinetic]

yeah that's what I thought. so basically I should build up my bacteria. I'll probably seed with cooked rock, and add fish food or something every day as if I was feeding a fully stocked tank of livestock, and check ammonia/nitrite/nitrate until it really goes away.

anyone do this before? does it take a long time going from all dry rock?

 

[jmc74]

I did it with my frag tank, I bought dry rock, and i had all new tank, sump, skimmer, etc. so I rinsed the rock, set it up on the sump, filled the tank, with clean RO water and mixed the salt, I also added Seachem "STABILITY" daily for 7 days, to introduce bacteria, then I performed a small water change (about 7gal) and I used the water from my main tank.... and I tested the water about 2 weeks after and I had no Ammonia, no Nitrites, and very low Nitrate, so I started heavy skimming for few days, unitl o got 0ppm on all, since I have introduced few small corals, and i have lost only 1 frag of acropora at the very beginin, my candy canes have doubled in about 1 month, from frags that had 2-3 heads to about 5-6 heads each...

 

[Kinetic]

that sounds pretty interesting!

I think also getting water from your main tank also contributed to the bacteria.

I actually want to avoid using any existing water as I'm trying to avoid any possible "seeds" or whatever from algae, like from popped bubble algae etc I'll look into Seachem Stability though, looks promising.

 

[sfsuphysics]

Hell if it were me, I'd ditched the whole cooked rock idea all together, put in nasty fresh out of the ocean, 18 hours in flight, 36 hours on a hot runway straight from Tonga type rock

Stick it right into your sump, or any tank that has water connected to the main tank, load up the "pretty" rocks in your display, wait out the cycle (couple to few weeks, buy cheapy test kits and test for ammonia), bacteria will form all over your "dead" rock in response to the huge bioload from the decaying matter on the sump rocks. Then you can remove the nasty rocks from the sump, clean up whatever the schloffed(??) off fairly easily by just draining the sump and washing it out, put your fish/pods/whatever into the tank so the bioload doesn't get too out of whack, and your nasty rocks, toss in a container and "cook" them after the fact.

Now you'll lose some bacteria from the "fresh" rocks that were providing the "food" for them, but the bacterial load should have grown to a "higher than fish" bioload in the whole system, including your dead rocks, so you should be good to go.

 

[bluenassarius]

art

why don't you soak the rock in water then torch it. i'm sure you won't have to deal w/ nuisance algae with this method. i did that for the dry rock i picked up . i put hella food etc to cause the ammonia to go up to see if any hair algae would form. i didn't see any nuisance algae at all even after 2 months of purposely trying to get hair algae to grow. "cooking" the rock doesn't remove the nuisance algae. it temporarily starves it but the algae is still in the rocks. all it takes is a nutrient spike and the algae will resurface.

 

[fishnfst]

I'm not sure but for a "dry" start with a fw setup a full nitrogen cycle takes approx 40 days.. I've never experienced a full cycle with any of my reef tanks.. I always seed from my old tank.. I don't think the actual water from the other tank will help much with kick starting the bacteria... The bacteria isn't really free floating in the water.. Now if you took sand, rock or filter media from your old tank that would definitely help seed the new..

I'd just let it run without seeding it.. Thats the whole idea of starting with dry rock right... I know I'm going to get flamed but I used to use fish pretty regularly to cycle a new tank.. SOmething hearty.. My fw tanks I wuold do it as well.. Sometimes the fish would make it sometimes they would not.. If the fish croaked in the newly cycling tank I would just leave it in the tank to help teh ammonia spike along..

Depending on how clean your dry rock is it might take a long time to cycle.. Some test till everything comes out at zero.. I'm not sure if thats the right way or not.. I wait till I start to see nitrates then start adding livestock.. IF you have 0 nitrates I still consider the tank uncycled.. Unless you are running a nitrate reactor, dsb or something of that nature..

 

[Kinetic]

mike: that's so hardcore, but I'm afraid that nuisance something will go from the rock into my system somehow =/

sam: what do you mean torch it? like literally set it on fire? cooking won't get rid of nuisance algae?

fishnfst: without seeding it with anything, it won't have any bacteria to help with biological filtration =/

 

[fishnfst]

You are creating your biological filtration with the cycle.. You are establishing a bacteria bed in your tank.. The nitrogen cycle starts with the ammonia spike..

 

[airinhere]

If youre starting out with sterile rock, I would think you would want a short bloom of green algae. Nothing out of control, but algae is a normal, natural part of the ocean enviroment we are all trying to replicate.

I use aragocrete in all my tanks and after the initial diatom bloom, I expect a little hair algae to start forming. Thats what a clean up crew is for.

After the algae starts showing up (around the third month) I wait until the white spiroid worms start showing up on everything and the coraline algae begins to kick in really good. Usually by the sixth month, I can't tell the difference between real live rock and the aragocrete.

I would stay away from putting any SPS corals or anemones in for at least six months, preferably a year. But I have softies, zoos, mushrooms and LPS in my tanks after the water reads 0 nitrite and ammonia.

I do not consider the rock useful for breaking down nitrate until at least six months to a year. (My tanks are 90 gal and 120 gal.) I supplement by dosing a spoonful of table sugar daily if my nitrate levels get above 20. Heavy, wet skimming gets the bacteria out and serves as an ad hoc nitrate reduction tool while the tank stabilizes.

 

[Elite]

Hey Art,
When I setup my 50G tank, which were 99% base rock and 100% dead sand, I waited until I see some coraline before I added live stock. I think it took about 1.5 month. I know it was a long time but I didn't want to lose anything .. So when are you going to setup your "new" tank?
-Phong

 

[Mr. Ugly]

I did a fish-less cycle with my arago-crete.

I dosed the tank with ammonium nitrate and had the temp turned up to about 90 or so.

Cycled in less than 2 weeks due to the elevated temps and ammonia levels. Much higher temps and ammonia than you can do with fish.

 

[Mr. Ugly]

[double post]

 

[jmc74]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=10406514#post10406514 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by fishnfst
The bacteria isn't really free floating in the water..

who told you that bacteria is not on the water column? everyone know that bacteria is also on the water, and if you use water from an established tank to fill a new tank, the cycle time is reduced, due to the increase on beneficial bacteria coming from the water removed from the established tank. why do you think Dr. Bao Lee (Aquatic Gallerie) sell the water from his tanks, not as a top off water or even as a sea water, but as a way to establish your tank faster.

 

[bluenassarius]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=10406616#post10406616 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Kinetic
mike: that's so hardcore, but I'm afraid that nuisance something will go from the rock into my system somehow =/

sam: what do you mean torch it? like literally set it on fire? cooking won't get rid of nuisance algae?

fishnfst: without seeding it with anything, it won't have any bacteria to help with biological filtration =/

art,

soak the rock in water and burn the surface of the rock with a mini torch. trust me dude, you'll definitely save yourself headaches if the rock does have hair algae on the rock. i got a bunch of dry rock from someone on RC a while back & put it in a tank. everything was OK until something died in the tank and caused the nutrient spike. needless to say there was a gang of hair algae growth on the rocks.
when i looked at the dry rock, there weren't any signs of hair algae.

i took the left over dry rock that was unused (soaked it in water) and and a few pieces of the ones from the tank that had hair algae... burned the surface all around it then recured it in another tank. i added various things to cause a nutrient spike. i put a light over the tank to see if hair algae would grow. no hair algae growth but a bunch of the brown diatoms did. i did this for over 2 months to see if the hair algae would return, which it didn't.

cooking doesn't permanently remove the hair algae. you just starve it of nutrients but it's still in the rock. it just takes a little bit of nutrients to get it to grow back.

 

[Mr. Ugly]

When Sam cooks his rocks, he really cooks his rocks

 

[fishnfst]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=10408296#post10408296 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by jmc74
who told you that bacteria is not on the water column? everyone know that bacteria is also on the water, and if you use water from an established tank to fill a new tank, the cycle time is reduced, due to the increase on beneficial bacteria coming from the water removed from the established tank. why do you think Dr. Bao Lee (Aquatic Gallerie) sell the water from his tanks, not as a top off water or even as a sea water, but as a way to establish your tank faster.

If there is a large amount of beneficial bacteria in the water column how do uv sterilizers work? Why would anyone want to kill all their beneficial bacteria in the water column by using a uv sterillizer? That film that you get on the inside of your tank that is slightly slippery, that is your bacteria bed.. The increased surface area of your LR or man made rock is your bacteria bed.. If you were to completely clean the inside of your tank in a bb setup and then scrubbed all your rock there would still be bacteria left on the rock and such but you wuold have to wait for it to reestablish itself to handle any sort of bioload.. You might even experience another mini cycle due to the bacteria die off from disturbing it from the rocks.. On the other hand you could change 90 percent of your water and as long as your parameters matched there would be no detrimental effect to your beneficial bacteria.....

Using water from an existing tank starts you off with water that already has dissolved nutrients in it.. This also would help with starting a new cycle by giving the bacteria something to start breaking down...

I'd try Normans method.. I like the idea of the elevated temps and artificially induced ammonia spike to jump start your nitrogen cycle... I'm going to try that on my next tank..

Good Luck Art... So are you setting up your 1" thick cube or did you end up with the new rimless tank?

 

[jmc74]

2nd opinion .... anyone?

 

[sfsuphysics]

ok, I'll chime in on bacteria.

There is bacteria in the water column, however the lions share of bacteria that does the work is on the surface area of everything in the tank.

There you're both right