Cycle a tank with dry rocks

[chinatown]

Make sure it all ro water.. This may mean starting all over again though..

yea, it is RO/DI water, starting over is fine, its only been a week or so.

edit.

 

[Bob 1000]

Great do it right the first time and it saves you a lot in the long run..

 

[SevTT]

Tossing someone else's tank water in is not going to add any bacteria because the bacteria is not held in the water column it's found on the objects in the tank, sandbed, LR, walls of the tank, filter media, ornaments etc....

Most of the bacterial mass in your system is as a film on substrates, yes, but they're always present in the water column, too. Sand gets stirred up, hermit crabs scratch at the rock, bacterial colonies get too large and start losing chunks in the water stream -- there's always going to be a good amount of bacteria in the water -- along with diatoms, phytoplankton, and zooplankton.

The Dry rock will become live over time as will the sand (It doesn't pay to buy live sand as most of, if not all of it's live qualities are dead from sitting on the shelf, just buy regular sand or aragonite).

It doesn't pay to buy bagged LS; however, -real- live sand that's being run actively in someone's system is a wonderful thing, generally full of pods and worms and all kindsa other stuff.

If you want to seed the tank get a piece or two of live rock from your LFS or some sand & filter material from someone with an established tank you trust has good water quality (Do not ask LFS for sand or filter material).

Depends on the LFS. Those which sell live sand generally seem to sell pretty good product -- again, so long as they have a tank of the stuff, and it's not pre-bagged.

However is you just put the shrimp in and cycle your tank with your base rock and sand it will become live with the colonies of nitrifying bacteria you're after. It would be beneficial to get a piece of live rock with some coralline algae on it and toss it in, coralline algae doesn't develop in the tank, it has to be brought into the tank, once in the tank it will begin to spread.

Keep in mind that -everything- has to be brought into the tank. It just so happens that there're some types of nitrifying bacteria that are found everywhere, including as encysted spores floating on the air. (Same thing with cyanobacteria, and even, potentially, diatoms, if you live near-ish to the shore.) However, this method is slow as hell and doesn't provide all of the allied organisms that help clean up your tank, or additional clades of nitrifying bacteria.

Of course, it depends on your reefkeeping philosophy. I'm one of those who believes that increased biodiversity is a good thing, and did his best to contaminate his tank with every kinda microcritter I could, so long as it wasn't actively detrimental to the tank. Sure, I have to nuke the occasional aptasia (which are -much- less of a reason to stress out about that most reefkeepers make them seem, unless you've got a big tank you can't easily reach places,) but by filling up all the ecological niches as deliberately as is possible with the scattershot way you tend to acquire things in this hobby, you can create a much more bulletproof system much more quickly than if you start off with dead rock and no innoculants of any kind.

 

[InfernoST]

Most of the bacterial mass in your system is as a film on substrates, yes, but they're always present in the water column, too. Sand gets stirred up, hermit crabs scratch at the rock, bacterial colonies get too large and start losing chunks in the water stream -- there's always going to be a good amount of bacteria in the water -- along with diatoms, phytoplankton, and zooplankton.

The Dry rock will become live over time as will the sand (It doesn't pay to buy live sand as most of, if not all of it's live qualities are dead from sitting on the shelf, just buy regular sand or aragonite).

It doesn't pay to buy bagged LS; however, -real- live sand that's being run actively in someone's system is a wonderful thing, generally full of pods and worms and all kindsa other stuff.



Depends on the LFS. Those which sell live sand generally seem to sell pretty good product -- again, so long as they have a tank of the stuff, and it's not pre-bagged.



Keep in mind that -everything- has to be brought into the tank. It just so happens that there're some types of nitrifying bacteria that are found everywhere, including as encysted spores floating on the air. (Same thing with cyanobacteria, and even, potentially, diatoms, if you live near-ish to the shore.) However, this method is slow as hell and doesn't provide all of the allied organisms that help clean up your tank, or additional clades of nitrifying bacteria.

Of course, it depends on your reefkeeping philosophy. I'm one of those who believes that increased biodiversity is a good thing, and did his best to contaminate his tank with every kinda microcritter I could, so long as it wasn't actively detrimental to the tank. Sure, I have to nuke the occasional aptasia (which are -much- less of a reason to stress out about that most reefkeepers make them seem, unless you've got a big tank you can't easily reach places,) but by filling up all the ecological niches as deliberately as is possible with the scattershot way you tend to acquire things in this hobby, you can create a much more bulletproof system much more quickly than if you start off with dead rock and no innoculants of any kind.

I'm not quite sure what your point is. You're basically saying throw anything and everything you can get your hands on and throw it in the tank. That's great, but it's not the way i choose to do things, 1st of all this hobby gets expensive quickly and even more so with your approach. Now that you recommended the above what do you tell the person you're trying to help when his tank explodes with all of the possible problems of the universe? If you take it one step at a time as safely as one possibly can your chance of success are much greater. The one thing you shouldn't do in this hobby is rush anything and if you don't have the patience required you shouldn't be in the hobby to begin with.

 

[SevTT]

The Dry rock will become live over time as will the sand (It doesn't pay to buy live sand as most of, if not all of it's live qualities are dead from sitting on the shelf, just buy regular sand or aragonite).

Depends on what you mean by 'live sand'. If you mean 'sand coated with a population of nitrifying bacteria,' sure. If you mean 'sand coated with a population of nitrifying bacteria and teeming with worms, pods, foramanifera, and all sorts of other critters that make up the -real- background of a cleanup crew,' when no. My definition of 'quality live sand' is the latter.

I'm not quite sure what your point is. You're basically saying throw anything and everything you can get your hands on and throw it in the tank. That's great, but it's not the way i choose to do things, 1st of all this hobby gets expensive quickly and even more so with your approach.

Naw, I'm saying that -I- did that. I just advocated he get a few cups of tank water and a bit of really good live sand. And I was a bit more selective than that, as I'll explain below.

Now that you recommended the above what do you tell the person you're trying to help when his tank explodes with all of the possible problems of the universe? If you take it one step at a time as safely as one possibly can your chance of success are much greater. The one thing you shouldn't do in this hobby is rush anything and if you don't have the patience required you shouldn't be in the hobby to begin with.

Here's a more complete explanation of my tank-establishment philosophy:

A successful reef tank is successful based on two things: its husbandry and its ecosystem. The reason that tanks can take so long to break in is because their ecosystems tend to be seriously deficient in several niches. Time doesn't just magically make things better; it allows for beneficial organisms to reproduce in your tank, until such a point that they allow it to attain stability, with your particular inputs of food and additives and your outputs (skimmer, WCs, etc.) This is all. Given decent circulation, and food, bacteria will populate your LR and sandbed rapidly. That takes maybe a few weeks. However, if you don't have any plankton or algae, you're missing a HUGE chunk of your ecosystem. Phytoplankton's both useful as a food for filter-feeding worms and clams, and as a nutrient conversion medium; it's a sponge for ammonia, nitrites, nitrates, and phosphates that you can skim it off constantly, exporting nitrogenous materials.) Almost all the zooplankton eats the phytoplankton, along with lost bits of food in crevices, feces, and dead things small and large -- and provide food for everything in your tank from the corals to the fish. Worms help keep your sandbed and LR clean, and provide food for certain fish. A population of mini-brittles ensures that nothing much will remain in your tank to rot without being eaten for long.

The more of the ecosystem you can drop in-place at once, the faster your tank can be established. Otherwise, you have to rely on hitchikers that you get with your frags -- which, if you're smart, you're dipping to eliminate -really- evil critters like the various foo-eating-flatworms. Of course, this also reduces the amount of pods and such that will make it into your tank.

Now, you need to balance your need to acquire an ecosystem with your ability to spend money and your ability to tolerate invasive critters in your tank. A large tank necessitates more care since it's more of a PITA to break it down to deal with something, but if you're running a smaller tank that has easy access to all parts of it, you can be a little more footloose, since you can take direct action to kill things like Aptasia and Mojano anemones quite easily.

When I started my tank, I bought some really nice LR off a fellow MR member, bought about five pounds of LS from a LFS, about 30 lbs of dry argonite sand, and I was off. There was a kenya tree and some palys attached to some of the LR; they had no problems from the start. There never was an ammonia spike or a nitrite spike; my nitrates got up to about 50ppm after I added fish but they came down rapidly as my nitrifying bacteria populations adjusted to the increased load. I've had to deal with the traditional bloom of GHA (a week or so after getting the tank, before the sand bed was anything close to populated) and Cyano (started about three months after I got the tank/a month ago, but is dying down now,) but I view those as generally-good things unless they're exploding so bad they're causing problems with overgrowth or shading of the corals in your tank. They're -sponges- for ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate, and insurance for husbandry screwups or unnoticed deaths.

Anyway, over the next few weeks I got some more LS from another store, more LR from a store to fill things out, and I bought a zoanthid frag 'cause it was lousy with mysid shrimp, which are now well-established in my tank and sump. The only casualties in my tank have been from carpet-surfing (2 fish, problem now fixed,) or fatal encounters with powerheads (1 unfortunate sea-hare got his head into a Koralia during a power outage,) or hermit crabs. (Problem slowly solving itself as the blue-legged hermits annihilate eachother, but it's just been snails and hermits.) I've had brown aceole flatworms (solved in less than a week by adding a six-line wrasse,) and Aptasia (which I kill when I notice them with kalk slurry, but two or three aptasia every month or doesn't count as much of a problem,) but nothing's actually gone wrong with the inhabitants.

In short: 'Sterile' systems are great, but are nearly impossible to keep so, and they don't have the insurance of other, desirable organisms competing against the undesirable ones, as well as generally filling in as biological and mechanical filtration too. Starting off with nothing but dry rocks and sand may save you some headaches, but I don't think that having to wait two months before you can introduce basic fish into your tank is worth not having to kill some aptasia every once in a while. Having a good population of algae gives you insurance against nitrogenous spikes and phosphate spikes. And, of course, having lots of itty-bitty critters means lots of food for corals and fish, in addition to getting your rockwork cleaned of bits of food and poo. Also, by starting dirty, you can gain most of your microbiological population without worrying about most of the problems -- except for aptasia, brown flatworms, and bubble algae, most of the major reef pests, like AEFWs, MEFWs, ZEFWs, red bugs, etc -- just won't be problems, because they'll die off in the month or so before you started adding corals. During the first few weeks/months, it's relatively easy to scrabble around in your tank and kill aptasia and bubble algae, and even after that, if you have a smaller tank, it's generally easy to keep control of. More care with these pests is needed with larger tanks, of course, since it can be very hard to reach that aptasia-laced rock with your syringe-o-death in the back of a 200 gallon tank.