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Quick question on cycling a frag tank.


Tommy

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Hey guys, im thinking about setting up a small frag tank with no sand or rocks, do I still need to cycle it or i can just put in water and be good?  Thanks.

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What are you using for filtration? Corals produce nitrogenous waste. WIthout adequate filtration, you may see high ammonia.

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Just mechanical filtration, skimmer, socks, maybe carbon.  The reason I am asking because most frag tanks i see doesn't  have any rocks or sand in it.  Thanks Tom.

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Many frag tanks that I see are plumbed into another system with live rock filtration. Are the systems that you see standalone? 

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With live rock, marinepure, or some other means of filtration suitable for processing ammonia, nitrites and nitrates. Or a lot of water changes. You need some way of dealing with nitrogenous waste.

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Ok, for example, the frag tanks at Wamas meetings and vendors that constantly travel with their frags to shows and such.  Thanks 

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Marinepure leaches high levels of aluminum.

It does leach aluminum but what levels do you consider high? The stuff I've seen is in the tens of ppb range. Toxicity seems to be in the hundreds of ppb. It does remind me a little of the old Seachem Phosguard reports where (without surprise) the product was leaching aluminum in levels . In addition, reports early on cited aluminum levels in salt mixes such as Instant Ocean of between 6 and 50 ppm, right in the range of what's being seen from Marinepure. 

 

Still, live rock is the better choice.

 

 

Ok, for example, the frag tanks at Wamas meetings and vendors that constantly travel with their frags to shows and such.  Thanks 

 

Those examples are temporary setups intended to cover a few hours or even a few days, with water changes for longer periods to manage nutrients. They are not set up for weeks on end this way.

 

If you only want to put a few frags into a large volume of water, the surface area available may support enough to perform nitrification (that is, to oxidize ammonia - resulting from decomposition of organic waste - to nitrate) but you're unlikely to see much denitrification (conversion of nitrate to nitrogen gas) because the environment will be largely aerobic. That can be managed with water changes to mitigate the accumulation of nitrate.

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