Tank Cycling Questions

[yagerboy]

I have a 90g with 30 sump/fuge that has been cycling for about 2 weeks. I have live rock and new sand that has been seeded to get it started.

 

My memory has failed me since last time starting from scratch and hoping someone can chime in to help.

 

No trace of Ammonie but some brown algae is just beginning to appear - should I get a clean up crew now, or wait? Should I run my lights (new T5 8 bulb)

as I normally would if the tank was stocked, less, or not at all? Fuge light? Should I be running my skimmer? Or, should I not do anything until the cycle finishes?

 

Also, should I be testing, or is it a waste of time until after the cycle completes? Should I be doing normal weekly water changes?

 

Also, what type of light are most people using on their refugiums to get good results? I cannot find the light I used to use and have a F6 T5 daylight bulb I found

but have not turned it on yet. Should I replace with a grow light, or should this be ok.

 

Anything I missed that may be helpful in my efforts is appreciated.

 

Thanks!

[Coral Hind]

You could turn the lights on for a few hours and then when you start to add stuff to the tank increase it. Turn the skimmer on. I would hold off on the water changes unless the nitrates go up. Unless you really have enough of a need for a clean up crew I would hold off or just add a small amount. If the rock you added was good quality live rock you may not notice any cycle at all. Just slowly increase the bio-load and allow the tank time to adjust.

[firecrackerbob]

IMHO, I would start up your skimmer, and run your fuge light ( I am assuming you have cheto in there?) and keep your main light off. make sure you have good circulation around your rock and maybe blow it off manually every couple of days. I would keep your tank light off for now as its really just using up electricity. im sure there is a wide variety of opitions on cycling, but I believe it takes months. I would wait at least 4 more weeks before doing anything else, but thats just me...

 

as for fuge lighting, what you have would probably work. I have been trying different lights for about a year now and am currently using full specrtrum bulbs from depot with pretty good results.

Edited October 4, 2011 by firecrackerbob

[collegeman]

I agree with the above post but i would start running the main tank light now. As coral hind stated, start with a few hours and increase the length as time goes on.

[newtoreef]

I just got my 90 gallon running this past friday. I have also 30 gallon sump. I didn't buy my skimmer and light yet but I am planning to get a skimmer in about couple weeks. I got about 90 pounds of fiji rock and 80 lbs of live sand. The water still pretty cloudy can't see too much I am hoping in few days all the dust will settle down so I can move the rock around. Did you put rock or live sand on your sump? I have an energy efficient bulb on my sump but I didn't turn that on yet. how long did it take for the sand to settle down??

 

 

[yagerboy]

Thanks for the feedback. I have been running my lights for a few hours/day but wasn't sure it did any good or bad. The LR I got is good (except a few aptaisia) and have a few baby snails and stars. It did come with a nice feather duster and some red Monti that seems to be doing well. These two are the reasons for running light.

 

I have LR rubble in my sump with only the sand that was deposted during the initial sand storm when added. My sand cleared up in about a day but I ws careful not to make too much of a cloud when adding.

[Jon Lazar]

Letting the tank run for weeks with live rock and no predators (fish/crabs) is a good thing. It gives your pod and worm population time to grow and spread throughout the tank. They will be heavily preyed upon once you add crabs and fish.

 

If this is a new setup, I would run the lights only to make sure they work well with the rest of your system. If there's a mechanical problem, you want to find out now. Just as important, you want to make sure they work well as part of the ecosystem you're creating. Do the lights make the tank too hot? Do they light the tank evenly? Are they too bright or too dim? Do you like the color? I would run the skimmer for the same reason. If you already know the answers to all these questions, there's not much point in running the lights, as others have pointed out.

 

Keep in mind though that your tank will not "cycle" unless there's ammonia present. And unless you have fish in the tank or are adding something that decomposes (like food), there will be no ammonia and no cycle.

 

Cycling is the process of culturing nitrosomonas bacteria in your tank until the population is large enough to eat all the ammonia your fish and food create. If there's not enough bacteria present, there will be leftover ammonia until the bacteria population catches up and your fish will be in danger of ammonia toxicity. In practice, the amount of ammonia is always changing, and the bacteria population is growing and dying off as it reaches each new equilibrium.

 

So what does this mean to you? You don't have anything releasing ammonia into the tank, so there's no food for the bacteria to grow. You could add a shot of ammonia through a dead shrimp or whatever, but once the shrimp decomposes and the bacteria eat all the ammonia, they'll starve, the population will collapse, and you'll be back where you started.

 

One approach is to add the shot of ammonia and as soon as the detectable ammonia reaches zero, add a fish. This is when the nitrosomonas population is at it's peak and there's the least danger of ammonia toxicity. If you wait too long though the bacteria population will starve.

 

The approach I think most people use is to just add fish slowly. A single fish only poops so much, so while ammonia may be detectable, it doesn't get high enough to kill the fish. Besides, a reef tank with live rock always has at least a low level population of nitrosomonas present to process all the ammonia from dead bacteria, algae, worms, and pods. It's like an old car engine running at a really low idle...it will stall if you mash the pedal down, but you can get up to highway speed if you coax it along slowly at first.

[trockafella]

I thought running the lights for a shorter period would be beneficial due to begining the cycle with rocks/sand. Gets the algae going. Maybe not.?

[Coral Hind]

I thought running the lights for a shorter period would be beneficial due to begining the cycle with rocks/sand. Gets the algae going. Maybe not.?

I agree, you don't want the coralline algae or the inverts that live in the rocks that consume algae to die off.

[Hcuervo]

So I just started my 90g with a reef dynamics sump/refugium/skimmer. I used Marco rock..some spiffy aquascaping and a bunch of garf grunge. My cycle completed in three weeks. I just added my clowns that have been holding out in an old 10g. I run my fuge light opposite my actinics on the main tank...run the 400w MH for 4 hours a day. All is well...a little bit of brown diatoms showing up. But my cleaning crew shows up Tuesday (90 snails/45 hermits). So, everything is going well.

[LanglandJoshua]

Sounds great, although I would do two 250W lights.