cycling new tank...

[albionpo]

Just wondering what anyone thought about the cocktail shrimp method for cycling new tanks? I have a 55 gallon with NO LR ( as I cannot get it here in Hawaii ), an Emperor 400, 2 maxi jet 1200 power heads and what I'm hoping is a live sand bed ( got it from the ocean ) Anyway, been up & running for a few days now & I needed a source of ammonia so I put in a couple little green chromis. Do you think I'd be hurting anything to also put in a couple of cocktail shrimp just to speed things up a bit? I'm just afraid this cycle will take forever with just the two little fish in there. Are there any other suggestions to help me speed this process up a bit? Thanks in advance for any information you can give!

 

[jimi]

Dont put the shrimp in now it may cause too high of an ammonia spike killing your chromis. If you obtained a good amount of live sand say 4" or so you may not see an ammonia spike at all because you will already have the bacteria needed in the sand. This is the advantage to using live rock and/or sand for new tanks sometimes you are able to miss the cycle all together.

 

[fender]

I cycled with a piece of LR and 3 damsels in my 90g and it took 3 weeks.
I would say with the LS and the two chromis you should be fine. BE PATIENT - the best things in life take time.

 

[albionpo]

Thanks for the advice...I'll wait & see what happens Actually, one of the chromis isn't doing so well all of the sudden. I checked the ammonia & nitrites...got a reading of 0 free ammonia and .2 total ammonia. Can anyone explain the difference between the two & what it means to my fish? and to my cycle? My test kit doesn't do a very good job of explaining this. Thanks in advance...