Proper Cycling

[Guest]

picture showing the Nitrogen cycle

[Guest]

[J_Vansen_S]

Hi guys, ive got a question regarding cycling cured and uncured live rock.

I am just starting up

Apparently i bought some really nice live rock with coraline algae patches all over, from the LFS.

It has some mini crabs, tiny flowers n etc inside the rock, I am assuming that these are cured live rocks?

My question is; given that it is cured. Do i still need the time to let it sit and cycle the new tank?

Its been cycling for a week now, i still see little/no signs of ammonia spike. Nitrite is at ZERO still.

Nitrate is at 5.

Does this mean that i am ready to put in live stock?

Please advise

[Gouldian]

Hi guys, ive got a question regarding cycling cured and uncured live rock.

I am just starting up

Apparently i bought some really nice live rock with coraline algae patches all over, from the LFS.

It has some mini crabs, tiny flowers n etc inside the rock, I am assuming that these are cured live rocks?

My question is; given that it is cured. Do i still need the time to let it sit and cycle the new tank?

Its been cycling for a week now, i still see little/no signs of ammonia spike. Nitrite is at ZERO still.

Nitrate is at 5.

Does this mean that i am ready to put in live stock?

Please advise

Hi bro,

I would suggest you remove all hitch-hikers to ensure that you do not have 'questionable' livestocks that will plague your tank upon setting up as that would mean tearing down you entire tank.

Crabs - most hitch-hikers crabs will cause some form trouble to benthic invertebrates in your efforts create a low nutrients environment suitable to reef tank.

Flowers - if you positively ID them to be Aiptasia or Majano Anemones, removed them immediately! Pest anemones are hard to remove in a established system due to the fact that they will hide among hard to reach places that will leave the reefer with no choice but to tear down the entire tank.

Thus do check your LRs properly to ensure that there are no potential pest to ensure you will have an easier life as you go along.

HTH

Edited June 4, 2010 by Gouldian

[comycus]

It's sis

Let your tank cycle for another week and if you still dont' register ammonia or nitrites, then do a 50% water change to bring down your nitrates and start stocking up slowly.

I strongly suggest you to remove all crabs, and if the flowers are questionable, remove them as well.

You can also start a new thread so we can help u with further queries and not dilute this thread.

[Gouldian]

It's sis

Let your tank cycle for another week and if you still dont' register ammonia or nitrites, then do a 50% water change to bring down your nitrates and start stocking up slowly.

I strongly suggest you to remove all crabs, and if the flowers are questionable, remove them as well.

You can also start a new thread so we can help u with further queries and not dilute this thread.

Ok Sis I mean you are bro and she is sis.

[J_Vansen_S]

The flowers that you mentioned; i have not seen it on my rocks. Cross-fingers im safe~

As for the mini-crabs, yea i brushed and picked it all out from the rocks b4 putting in my tank

Thanks guys for the input.

Ill start a new thread if i have further doubts. Sorry to hijack

[kksg2000]

Decided to create this sticky to help new reefers get through this period. We all know about cycling, but do we all know exactly what to do? What exactly is cycling? How long? Why? This is a very important step in a successful marine set-up. Firstly, let's start with the basics.

What is Ammonia, Nitrite and nitrate? This is afterall, what we want to understand during our cycling process. Cycling a system is crucial in establishing the nitrogen cycle, and cultivating the important bacteria needed for the nitrogen cycle. Harmful ammonia (NH3) is converted to still harmful nitrite, (NO2), and is then eventually converted into harmless, but still harmful in high amounts, nitrates (NO3). In certain cases, NO3 is converted into harmless nitrogen gas (N2).

In the cycling process, ammonia accumulates and chemo-autotrophic bacteria will start utilize it. As these bacteria increases, NH3 drops, and NO2 increases. This spike in NO2 triggers the second group of bacteria to form. These then utilize the NO2 and NO3 is released as a by product. This marks the end of the Nitrogen cycling in most tanks. The final product, NO3, then accumulates to incredulous levels unless removed physically, i.e water change, or chemically, i.e AZ-NO3, denitrator, nutrient export i.e chaeto, fuge. In some cases, anaerobic bacteria convert the NO3 into harmless N2 gas. This is difficult to achieve in most aquarium as anaerobic sites are needed to provide refuge for these bacteria. Such sites include deep within liverocks, or a deep sand bed. (which will not be discussed here).

Cycling the tank is important in establishing these useful bacteria, for your tank. The longer you cycle, the more the bacteria population. This results in a stable tank with enough beneficial bacteria to maintain low NH3 and NO2 concentrations in your tank.

The magic ingrediant to cycling is TIME, and PATIENCE. No matter WHAT you use, bacteria etc, time and patience is the key to a good cycling. It takes a few weeks for bacteria to be thoroughly established. BE PATIENT! <img src="http://www.sgreefclub.com/forum/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid="" border="0" alt="smile.gif" />

Take the time off to read up on livestock, corals and make a list of what you would like to get! The time will fly right pass, and you get a good cycled tank, plus a wealth of knowledge while waiting for the tank to cycle. Add liverock and livesand to your tank while cycling. This will allow a place and source of beneficial bacteria. Also, during cycling, your liverock will have time to mature and grow wonderful stuff, such as sponges, beneficial macroalgae, tunicates, feather worms and maybe even some hitchhiker corals!

Next step, is kicking off the cycling process. Of course, we need to start off with some ammonia, to get the cycling process started. There is plenty of ammonia in liverock when u first introduce it into your system. Ammonia from die-offs from the liverock will be a source. If you are afraid it might not be enough, adding in some fish food or a small piece of market prawn will work well. I do not advocate using livestock for cycling processes. Some people start off with damsels and other wildlife. please do not do this. Spare a thought for the poor fish. just because they are hardy enough to withstand the horrible conditions of cycling, it is not humane to put them through it. Why risk the life of the fish, or the fact that the fish could introduce a disease to your tank before you even start adding in real lifestock!? Damsels are also very aggressive, and if they survive the cycling, they will kill your future inhabitants and it will be a pain to remove them.

How are you going to test if your cycling is over? Test kits! <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/tongue.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid="" border="0" alt="tongue.gif" /> track the cycling process by using test kits. Ammonia will start spiking first, and when it drops to 0, NO2 will start increasing. When NO2 decreases, you will see an increase in NO3. cycling is complete when NH3, and NO2 drop to zero. the final product will be some/lots of NO3. Doing water changes to reduce the NO3 will be good before adding livestock. Your first inhabitants can be some clean up crews to clear off algae that might have grown during the cycling.

Congratulations. You have gone though your cycling process. Take care not to overstock your tank so soon. You might risk distrupting the delicate balance.

Add in new livestock slowly to allow more bacteria to recolonize to cope with the new increase in bioload.

Happy reefing, and hope this article is of use to the new reefers

Hi,

1. When my tank is fully cycled, with ammonia (NH3) and nitrite reading 0, is it necessary to do a e.g. 50% water change? My second question is if i do a water change, will this affect the ammonia and nitrite reading?

2. I know i have to slowly add fish a few e.g.1-2 at a time, what about adding corals? Can i add many corals at the same time?

Thank you.

[subxero]

Can we use liverocks to cycle our tank? When we introduce LR into our tank, there is going to be some animals dying off.

[CFOh]

Can we use liverocks to cycle our tank? When we introduce LR into our tank, there is going to be some animals dying off.

Yes.. you can..

http://saltaquarium.about.com/b/2008/01/23/cycling-a-new-tank-with-live-rock.htm

http://www.sgreefclub.com/allabt.html#abt7

Cheers and Happy Reefing...

[Goondoo]

Hi,

1. When my tank is fully cycled, with ammonia (NH3) and nitrite reading 0, is it necessary to do a e.g. 50% water change? My second question is if i do a water change, will this affect the ammonia and nitrite reading?

2. I know i have to slowly add fish a few e.g.1-2 at a time, what about adding corals? Can i add many corals at the same time?

Thank you.

Technically speaking, you do a 50% water change to remove 50% of the nitrates. So if your tank have 20ppm of Nitrates after cycling process, it should be 10 after the change.

But it depends on what you are adding back too, especially if you use NSW from bad source which might contain high amount of ANN. I heard some salt mixed do too.

The bacterias usually reside in the sand, live rocks or wool in the sump.

I ever consider using 50% salt required to start a cycle, and adjust the SG after the cycle is complete and 50% water change. I gave up the idea and use NSW for cycling instead, after I start using a algae scrubber.

Anything can give out ammonia when if they die off or excrete waste. I believe anemone do and some LPS should too.... even dead and live rocks

Its not about 1-2 at a time. I usually recommend to my friends 1-2 live stocks weekly or fortnightly depending on the waste it might generate.

[Milch_Tan]

here are some useful questions and postings that were posted by helpful reefers in my tank thread and I am privileged to be able to share them with other who are or were in the same plight as I was (with the poster's consent)

Q: Will bacteria starve to death when cycled for too long?

Lemonlemon:

bacteria population won't crash after weeks of cycling. you don't have to worry about that.

bacterial growth goes through a few phases. if you study microbiology you will know.

the lag phase, the log phase, stationary phase and the death phase.

when you first start your tank, introduce liverock etc, the bacteria is at lag phase. this means they don't do anything as they get used to the tank.

once gotten used to your tank, they being the log phase. where (by now your ammonia would have accumulated,), they drastically feed on your ammonia and population explodes exponentially or logarithmically. thus, log phase.

after log phase, bacteria growth will be same to nutrient export. thus a balance will be created. this is called stationary phase. where the number of death = number of growth.

death phase will only occur when the system is devoid of nutrients and the bacteria will start dying out 1 by 1.

in our taanks, a stable eco-system is established, there fore majority of the bacteria after cycling are at stationary phase.

when you add fish again and there's bioload produced, the bacteria momentarily enter log phase and then to stationary phase again.

you don't have to worry about food for the bacteria. there will always be living things in your liverocks and so long as there are living things, metabolic waste will be produced and your bacteria will feed on it.the amount however, will control which phase the bacteria is at, but never at death phase.

cycling for long time also increase pod count which is good.

Q: What means of survival and stages does bacteria goes through?

the phases of bacterial growth are not constant like as in the growth of a human.

hmm... we cannot say at month 3, the bacteria is in stationary phase, at month 1 the bacteria is in lag phase. doesn't work like this. there can be many cycles going on at any period of time. at month 3 there could be new lag phase starting as new bacteria are being introduced, could be from air could be from dust (oh yes, nitrosoma sp. can be found in air too). but at month 3 there could also be stationary phase existing from the previous bacterial batch.

this phases are also directly related to the growth of microfauna around the bacteria. i.e, whatever grows on your rocks is related to what the bacteria goes through. there are much more living things in a liverock than you can see. and it doesn't take much for a bacteria cell to survive. in reality, bacterial cells require very little sustenance to be kept alive. it is only when we culture them on nutrient rich media that they proliferate like crazy. death phase rarely occurs in nature or in our tanks, because there is always a continuous supply of food from the surrounding ecosystem. it's a matter of enough to grow or not. death phase is a term very commonly used in industrial bacterial growth. where you give them a fixed amount of nutrient you control and they just eat and grow until they expire all, and die. this is very unlikely to happen in our tanks

but in actual fact, they can stay alive with minimal nutrients. this is when they are in stationary phase. meaning their uptake of nutrients is just enough to keep them alive and they can go on like this, so long as the minimal nutrient requirement is met for every bacteria.

of course, many will die, but a large population will remain alive. a few weeks over the normal cycling isn't enough to completely decimate bacteria colony till death phase. that's why 8 week cycling (only 4 weeks above the normal cycling time), is still very young and will not harm bacterial colonies at all.

but if we talk about 1 year, or more, than yes, probably. i don't know too.

in a rock only tank, bacteria are just surviving on minimal fuel, thhus at stationary phase, when you add in livestock, ammonia build up, and the bacteria temporarily goes into log phase again. this is what i said in my previous post.

yes you are right. everytime you add in a livestock, it goes into a mini-cycle. but the reasoning behind it is wrong. no matter how long you cycle, be it 4 weeks, 6 weeks, 4 years, 10 years, you still have to slowly add in livestock, to slowly let the bacteria colonies handle your bioload wether they are established or not.

so then, it doesn't really matter if u cycle for 4 weeks or 8 weeks. at the end of the day, you still have to add in livestock slowly. but you have an added advantage at week 8 of cycling because you have pods there, and you have a good continuous supply of bacteria in the different phases

Q: Any difference for tank in respect of the length of time cycled?

got there's a difference of 2-4 months LOL!

ok jokes aside. i think it's personal preference how long you want to cycle. as long as you hit the minimum 4 week criteria you should be fine.

however long you want to cycle after that, up to you.

i like to cycle more because it gives chance for little things to grow on my rocks. like pods, algae, sponge, fanworms, tunicates, etc etc. the extra weeks will let the liverock recover from it's massive die off before cycling, and re-grow into good liverock with algae, etc.

this might seem rubbish to others but it's precious to me. why? simply coz the livestock i want to keep, love eating this. cycling extra time also give better water quality. in this few weeks you can tune your CR if you have not, etc, and let the equipment and water parameters stabalise abit first. then slowly add livestock 1 by 1.

as for wether or not there will be more bacteria after cycling longer, who knows? but the benefits are definitely there if you cycle longer. pod growth, liverock fauna growth, stable parameters etc.

patience is the key.

[braincoral]

very great details to share

[pravin_9124]

Everything here is very informativeee....Thanks

[dreamzenn]

Fantastic writeup on nitrogen cycle. It re-enforces whatever I have already known.

Do you guys use bio-media like biohome or ceramic rings to increase the area for the beneficial beterial to cultivate?

[nicreef]

Hi,

Newb question here

i have just begin cycling my tank. today is the 4th day or so. just got a test kit (salifert). the reading i get is:

nh4 is less than 0.25 (murky white colour,

NO2 should be 0.5ppm (very light purple colour) and

NO3 should be ard 100 9very dark purple).

Just wondering if i did mess up? as from what i read, high level of NO3 should appear only towards the end of the cycling which should last ard 4 weeks.

Should i do a 50% water change? at the same time as i had bought lifestock before reading this forum, they are currently in the pail. so i do have some water with fish waste within =x should i add that to the tank to boost the growth of NO2 eating bacteria?

[iskay]

It's unfortunate but you shouldn't have bought livestock before your tank completes the cycle. Let's nature take it's course and allow the beneficial bacteria to colonize your media. Cycling for as long as you can - normally 4-6 weeks. Longer the better. Change water only after ammonia and nitrite levels are down.

Hi,

Newb question here

i have just begin cycling my tank. today is the 4th day or so. just got a test kit (salifert). the reading i get is:

nh4 is less than 0.25 (murky white colour,

NO2 should be 0.5ppm (very light purple colour) and

NO3 should be ard 100 9very dark purple).

Just wondering if i did mess up? as from what i read, high level of NO3 should appear only towards the end of the cycling which should last ard 4 weeks.

Should i do a 50% water change? at the same time as i had bought lifestock before reading this forum, they are currently in the pail. so i do have some water with fish waste within =x should i add that to the tank to boost the growth of NO2 eating bacteria?

[resser]

Hi,

Newb question here

i have just begin cycling my tank. today is the 4th day or so. just got a test kit (salifert). the reading i get is:

nh4 is less than 0.25 (murky white colour,

NO2 should be 0.5ppm (very light purple colour) and

NO3 should be ard 100 9very dark purple).

Just wondering if i did mess up? as from what i read, high level of NO3 should appear only towards the end of the cycling which should last ard 4 weeks.

Should i do a 50% water change? at the same time as i had bought lifestock before reading this forum, they are currently in the pail. so i do have some water with fish waste within =x should i add that to the tank to boost the growth of NO2 eating bacteria?

50% water change, then put your fishies in. A single dose of bacteria (Prodibio or Bacterlife etc., overdose of bacteria makes you fishies prone to infection and you get cloudy water). Feed VERY lightly, with small daily water changes. Then VERY slowly (real slow) ramp up to normal feeding paradigm. And pray...

You already have bacteria, just not enough.

[kohwhl]

Ups for very clear explanation. One more thing to cycling is the longer the better. After the cycle, put in fish in small amounts at a time, I usually start with the most precious(expensive) fish so that he can establish his territory.

[phuakl]

Hi,

Just a few questions about the cycling process.

First, if the water evaporated during the process, do i need in the distilled water or sea water?

Second, do i have to change the water with mixed sea water weekly?

Lastly, do i need to add in the bacteria (from the bottle) weekly when i changed the sea walter?

Thank you,

[KELVINx3]

water change is determine your tank size. somepeople change once every 2weeks. evaporated you can do both. i normally mix salt water overnight and fill the next day. bacteria is weekly must. for me i once i changed water i'll start adding supplements. hope this helps you

[bubblefish000]

hi i bought bacteria tats has pic of both fresh water and salt water

is it posible tat same

bacteria product can b use for both fresh and salt water

[zico]

Tank Migration : Qn on Cycling

Ihave an elementary question.

I already have an existing 2 feet tank with me >1 year. Am upgrading to a 3 footer.

Its will be a straight migration (from old to new tank) on Day One upon delivery of new tank.

-----------------------

For my new tank

--> I will use NSW + mixing in a little of my current tank water

--> I will be moving my old rocks into the new tank

--> will seed the new sand with some sand from my old tank.

Question: Is my new tank then, considered semi-cycled? Since except for the glass tank, everything in there is "seasoned"?

Is it safe to add in zoas after 1 week of the new tank (provided the parameters are alright)? Or must I cycle the tank as thought its a brand new set up (with market prawn and let the ammonia spike and turn to nitrate etc)?

Another issue is that I have 4 "hardy" fishes (3 damsel + 1 cardinal) to migrate too... wondering if I should just sell them away instead of putting these 4 fishes through the stress of a cycling in new tank.

[danccy]

I am currently cycling my 3ft tank . What will be a good method to stock without overloading the bio load and have the "new tank syndrome"?

[captainaquarium]

market prawn will kick start the cycling.