Speed Cycling Methods?

[squall7733]

Hello, I'm soon to set up a 120G. species only tank tomorow. Octopus!

It needs a mature tank but I'm hoping to get my octo in there by christmas. So I'd like to cycle it as fast as possible. Here's what I plan on doing, I would love to hear suggestions or critisism on my methods

-Do water changes on all my existing tanks and putting all the old water in the new 120G. tank. (should put in 40-50gallons at a minimum I am estimating) I'll make new water to fill the tank up.

-For substrate I'm going to use 50% live sand from two of my cycled coral grow out tanks, the other 50% will be new live sand from LFS

-Fill up the tank with 50% agrocrete(just rock nothing live on it, must be seeded), 50% live rock, hopefully uncured so that the bio load will jump. I'll most likely get it cured though.

-Will not skim for 2-3 weeks.

So here are a few other methods I was thinking about but was unsure if they would be effective.

~Leave lights on 24/7 for a couple weeks. Or at least more then 12 hours. Reasoning behind it that leaving lights on will increase algea and bacteria growth.

~Leave algea growth untouched. Not scraping it off the glass for about 4 weeks.

~I was also thinking about just throwing food in there , although there are no fish it would break down and cause ammonia to spike, feeding the bacteria process. Not sure if this would help at all, but I've heard of people spiking ammonia to speed cycle.


I dont plan on using fish to cycle, but I do have a few extra damsels floating around my tanks that I might toss in around the end of the cycle.

^.^; Anyone have any ideas I didnt think of!?



Ah I almost forgot!

final water Params

PH 8.3
Salinity needs to be 1.026 - 1.027 , octos need strong sea water
Ammonia and Nitrite are tolerable near 0

Nitrate can be rather high without affecting the octo, although growth may suffer.

 

[CTS]

-Do water changes on all my existing tanks and putting all the old water in the new 120G. tank. (should put in 40-50gallons at a minimum I am estimating) I'll make new water to fill the tank up.

This I would not do, for a couple reasons. One, the "good" bacteria is not located in the water but in the filter media, sand/coral, and LR. Two, this might bring some disease from the other tank. Best to just start off with fresh/clean water.

-For substrate I'm going to use 50% live sand from two of my cycled coral grow out tanks, the other 50% will be new live sand from LFS

-Fill up the tank with 50% agrocrete(just rock nothing live on it, must be seeded), 50% live rock, hopefully uncured so that the bio load will jump. I'll most likely get it cured though.

From my understanding if you have enough LR there is no need to cycle the tank, due to the LR taking care of the Bio load. All the "good" bacteria will be in the rock already. Also if you have LR you will not need Live sand, it is a waste of money to buy.

-Will not skim for 2-3 weeks.

I am not too familiar with this yet. (i have a nano)

~Leave lights on 24/7 for a couple weeks. Or at least more then 12 hours. Reasoning behind it that leaving lights on will increase algea and bacteria growth.

~Leave algea growth untouched. Not scraping it off the glass for about 4 weeks.

As far as i know algae does nothing for the cycle of a tank. I might be wrong on this!!

~I was also thinking about just throwing food in there , although there are no fish it would break down and cause ammonia to spike, feeding the bacteria process. Not sure if this would help at all, but I've heard of people spiking ammonia to speed cycle.


I dont plan on using fish to cycle, but I do have a few extra damsels floating around my tanks that I might toss in around the end of the cycle.

The food idea is good. Also i would put the fish in the tank right off the bat. They can only help the cycle. After the cycle you could take them out if they might be food or just leave them in. If you put in enough live rock there should be none to very little stress on the fish due to there being hardly no cycle at all.

Hope this helps, Good luck!!

CTS

 

[Tiggs]

why not buy your rock 2nd hand from a set up being sold off....i purchased mine that way 6 weeks ago to set up my tank from scratch. Once the rock was in i added fish and corals pretty fast.

tank at 6 wks:

ammo, No2 and No3 all Zero with decent stock of fish.

 

[Lynden]

Your speed cycling methods sound good, with the suggestions these two have made make it nearly flawless. Anything that turns into ammonia at any time will be fed opon by bacteria. So the food idea is good. Also, its true, LS is a scam. The LR will seed it anyways. I put fish into my tank after 1 day, with no LR or anything and they survived the cycle and helped it out too. Also, only with full-fledged reefs are you supposed to have skimming very soon.

I would definetly plan on the octopus at christmas.


P.S., Tiggs, thats beautiful! And it even has black onyx perculas! Excellent job!

 

[Tiggs]

P.S., Tiggs, thats beautiful! And it even has black onyx perculas! Excellent job!

i sent my dealer to the main importer of fish over here to get a couple of clowns.....he phones me and says "they have a wild caught pair but they are a bit black" i say get them anyway....then nearly faint at the price! well worth it though! they were the first fish in 6 weeks ago and set the tank off great.

 

[superman]

There are some things about your speed cycling that are definitely going to hamper your cycling process. You are confusing the bacteria growth with algae growth. Lighting your tank 24/7 will not help your bacterial bed grow but will actually creat competition between an algae based filtration system and a bacterial based filtration system. You would actually do better to not have any light on the tank for a while, this will create minimal competition between your photosynthetic "filters" and your bacterial filters. The biggest thing that will help in making the cycling process quicker is to put as much live rock in the tank that is from an already successful matured system. Definitely either feed the tank as if fish were in it, or place a fish or two in the tank, this will ensure a constant source of wast to be processed by your bacterial filtration. So in the end, keep algae to a minimum, seed with matured live rock (not to be confused with just cooked or cured live rock) and place food or tough inhabitants in the tank.

 

[squall7733]

Well I finaly got the 120G today, set it up... I'm going to call it

Day 0
There is a very slight layer of sand in the tank at the moment, seeded sand taken from my current tanks, a very thin layer about 1/2" maybe 1/4".

The tank is full of sea water at a specific gravity of 1.021 , have more salt to add of course to get it up to 1.026 .

I imagine the temperature is around 60-65 at the moment, the majority of the water I used was rather cold. I'm starting to heat it up to 82 for the cyclying, then when I'm done I'll drop it down to 70

Currently there is no live rock, just about 30-40 lbs of non seeded agrocrete, there should be some bacteria and algea growing on about half of those rocks.

The water is really cloudy at the moment, and I'm only running powerheads and lights so I dont see it clearing up any time soon, maybe over night I guess I'll just have to find out.

I plan to goto the lfs tomorow and buy some live rock, probly half cured, so thatl give me some good bacteria die off and really help cycle the tank. Also have to buy a few bags of live sand(live because I HATE having to wash the other stuff out). Leaving lights on for a few days just to get it started then I'll put them on a 10hr timer.

Going to start doing vodka shots tomorow I expect it to move fast once I get going! I'll keep you guys posted weekly if your still interested, I would still appreciate tips and suggestions!

 

[Tiggs]

what exactly are you trying to do??? the tank will only hold as much bacterial colonies as is needed to deal with the bio load as soon as theres enough the cycle is complete.

why put half cured in when fully cured will have little or no die off and still be full of bacteria...ie. ready cycled?

you seem to be planning to have as much dead stuff in there as possible as a result of die off and algae - not the same as cycling a tank.

 

[Navarre]

I put fish into my tank after 1 day, with no LR or anything and they survived the cycle and helped it out too.

Possibly the very worst way to cycle a tank. Cruel and completely unecessary.

 

[Tiggs]

I put fish into my tank after 1 day, with no LR or anything and they survived the cycle and helped it out too.

Possibly the very worst way to cycle a tank. Cruel and completely unecessary.

agree lol...nuts! Im not sure what sort of cycle that achives! Fish living in their own waste while insufficient surface area for bacteria to colonise means not a lot happens....nice cycle!

 

[squall7733]

The idea is to purposely spike the ammonia high for the bacteria to feed off. The though process being "excess of food = faster growth"

Anyways the place I bought it from, it was sitting in this pool of dead water, not circulating at all. They may have just been cleaning it at the time but it smelled pretty bad, assuming it needs to cure. Which is fine with me I have the time.

- The no skimming method during first few weeks - well the idea behind that is you wouldnt want to pull out the bacteria and things floating in the water columb before they have a change to find their places in new rocks. It doesnt create the cleanest water but you might allow some bacteria colonies to set up shop before you clean out the water columb. I dont know how true this is but I've heard of some people having success, so why the heck not I'll give it a shot. The worst it could do is slow me down

I've also been dosing the tank slowly with vodka, heres the post a fella named Feelers made on www.tonmo.com to help me out.

The vodka thing doesnt need much - 1ml per 100L per dayto start with.
What happens is there is a large amount of freely available carbon and bacterial numbers increase, taking phosphate and nitrates into their systems. These can then be skimmed out, totally removing them from the tank.
One of the reefers who was using this actually had to add nitrates as corals need No's - not very much obviously.

What I would do is dose vodka for a period until you start up your protein skimming. Maybe 2 weeks worth of vodka, making a big bacterial population, - fast cycling. Then stop dosing and chuck on your skimmer.
This will suck out all the phosphrous and excess nitrates that often lead to algae. Hopefully you can aviod the new tank cyano problems lots of people get after cycling.
Vodka is often used in already matured tanks to make the water free of algae. The reason you dont hear much about it is that noone can make any money off it - its actually very similar to how zeovit works.

start with 1 ml per 100L per day slowly increasing to 10 ml per 100L per day on the second week. Not very much but it will still do the business!!!
Then skim away. After a week of skimming it should be sweet!!!
After starting using vodka the tank may go cloudy as the bacterial population increases. (dont worry it will all get skimmed)

Vodka is like adding food, but without any nitrate or phospherous content - pure carbohydrate. So the nitrates ect that are needed for biological processes have to come from whats already in the tank.


Oh i forgot this is with 40% vodka- 80 proof

Alot of these methods are new to me and I probly dont do a good job explaining them. Its the first time I've tried to cycle fast like this, so its all trial and error.

Right now my water is still very cloudy, from what I think is just unsettled sand, it didnt settle after a day so I broke down and hooked up TWO skimmers to clean up the water columb, then I'll take them off and attach them again after 2 weeks.