obviously a noob.

[themetsblow]

Hello I am sure I am going to get some flack as this is my very first post and I am sure it's not in the right place lol. Ok I am in the process of setting up a 75 gallon reef tank. My stand is an open botton, so as much as i would like a sump it may have to wait. I plan on having lots of flow and a reef octopus bh2000 for now. I will eventually make a hang on back refugium when the coral will be introduced. My question right now is, is it possible to cycle my tank using only about a 1-2" live sandbed and add live or dry rock little by little. Or will i expect a mini cycle when the rock is added? I will have a light bio load in the tank. Thank you for your help in advance.

 

[peasofme]

yes you can cycle it. yes you will have mini cycles everytime you put something new in. you can only add things a little at a time.

 

[ReefsandGeeks]

The size of the cycle you get from your live rock depends on the amount of die off it has in transit. If you were to get it shipped in and it waited for a while before adding to your tank, the mini cycle will be much larger tan if you brought it home form a LFS and put it directly in the tank. I was very anal about my transportation when I bought my live rock. I brought a bucket with some tank water with me to my LFS and put the rock directly from the weighing basket to my bucket and then to the tank. I wouldn't say that's necessary, but I didn't notice any cycle from that. Any aditional ammonia from the rock die off was countered by existing bacteria.

 

[wooden_reefer]

Hello I am sure I am going to get some flack as this is my very first post and I am sure it's not in the right place lol. Ok I am in the process of setting up a 75 gallon reef tank. My stand is an open botton, so as much as i would like a sump it may have to wait. I plan on having lots of flow and a reef octopus bh2000 for now. I will eventually make a hang on back refugium when the coral will be introduced. My question right now is, is it possible to cycle my tank using only about a 1-2" live sandbed and add live or dry rock little by little. Or will i expect a mini cycle when the rock is added? I will have a light bio load in the tank. Thank you for your help in advance.

Every time you add new livestock there may be mini-cycling, except this can be prevented with extra procedure.

The recent history is also significant. Nitrification bacteria do not die quickly due lack of ammonia, so if there had been a great deal of ammonia some weeks ago and hence a lot of bacteria, you may still have them a few weeks later.

When you add new medium (rock) into a tank that already has significant amount of cycled medium, there has to be enough lingering ammonia to overload the existing bacteria so ammonia will linger on for reproduction of the bacteria. You cannot do so if you already have livestock because lingering ammonia will harm them.

The situation of low livestock in weakly cycled medium as is will not allow you to add sudden large amount of livestock no matter how long you wait.

If you want to add a lot of livestock all at once later, the new rock will have to be cycled in a separate container with enough ammonia and then added later.

 

[themetsblow]

Thank you all for your help! I will be updating as i go and i am sure i will be asking more questions if i cannot find them on searches.. Thanks again.