Their real job is to eat and poo into the sandbed for four weeks while you're quarantining your first fish. You can add coral along with the CUC but coral must be dipped for pests and your phosphate must be low enough that massive growth of hair algae will not overwhelm the coral. Test your phosphate just after cycle if you plan to add corals. If there's not enough food for your CUC to eat in there (you can watch them feed) give them some fish food, and continue testing to be sure the sandbed is handling the result.
Main thing, give that sandbed and rock time to develop while being fed. If you stress it too far too fast, your fish may overpower the toilet system, so to speak, and downgrade living conditions in your new tank faster than the system can handle it.
Nothing good happens fast for new folk on the ice rink---or in marine tanks.
Main thing, give that sandbed and rock time to develop while being fed. If you stress it too far too fast, your fish may overpower the toilet system, so to speak, and downgrade living conditions in your new tank faster than the system can handle it.
Nothing good happens fast for new folk on the ice rink---or in marine tanks.
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There's no need to turn your tank into a toxic soup of ammonia and rot to get it to cycle. Daily micro-pinches of fishfood do quite nicely (sinking pellet equivalent to 1 fair-sized flake of flake food per ten gallons) and won't upset the household. Once you think it's cycled, just do it a couple more days, then try a snail and a crab and see if they're happy. If they are, add others, and pat yourself on the back: step one achieved.
