Cycling time for a nano ?

[Lou in Bklyn]

Hey all,

I had a 75 gallon tank a few years ago with all the goodies. I had to break it down and sell it off due to the fact i was moving. So i recently moved into an apartment that stiplulated NO PETS in my lease ( yes, aquariums were specially mentioned ). I decided to pick up a nanocube, figuring it was small enough not to cause any headaches or even be noticed by my super, or what not. Question is this, it a 12gallon. i bought about 10lbs of live rock. I was wondering how long i should expect it to cycle for. 3weeks ? Thanks

 

[marrone]

It matter on the quality of the rock. Some people, that have used cured rock, have had their tank cycle right away and were able to add corals almost day one. If you bough rock that had alot of plant or animal life your going to have some die off which will cause your tank to take longer to cycle.

Every tank will be different, depending on the bio-load, you just have to check your reading in the beginning and do some water changes if your reading are high.

 

[pecan2phat]

For my Nano-Cube, I used 18lbs of fresh Florida Gulf rock, 10 lbs of live sand (overnighted and not cured), water from an establish reef tank and it took exactly 13 days to fully cycle. (I kept a log )

Since this pic, I removed about another 4-6 lbs of LR to make room for all the inhabitants, so what you see is about 10-12 lbs in the tank and 2 lbs of rock rubble in the first back chamber compartment where the foam filters would have gone:

[ January 05, 2005, 10:48 PM: Message edited by: pecan2phat ]

 

[samksy]

Very nice tank.....

On average, is about 2-3 weeks, but as marrone said....really depends on what type of rocks you use, sand, bioload and etc. Good luck...patient will pay off.

 

[FRY]

peacan2phat

what did you put in second and third back chamber compartment and are uyou useing filter media on top of rubble rock

 

[pecan2phat]

Hi FRY,
1st chamber is filled to the top with LR rubble pieces, 2nd chamber houses a Won heater, 3rd chamber has a bag of Chemi-Pure and the last chamber has the Mini-Jet 606. I did not use any of the media that JBJ supplied with the Nano Cube.
When I first set it up, I did leave one sponge block in the 3rd chamber but I felt this was contributing to my cyno problem so I stopped using any type of mechanical filtration media. HTH

 

[nanotank]

Just don't rush things. In a nano, water quality is critial simply because there isn't a lot of it. Definitely don't rush things.

If you didn't buy live sand and your rock is semi-cured, I'd wait at least 2-3 weeks and then test for ammonia, nitrates and nitrates. If all read at zero then its off to the races.

Also, remember to add slowly to avoid another spike and thus cause another aglae bloom.

[ January 14, 2005, 12:57 AM: Message edited by: nanotank ]

 

[JNTLOVEAB]

Nice cube, i hope mine looks like that one day!