Cycling question

[blu11]

I started my cycling a couple of days ago. I have a 46 G and added 50lbs of Marshall Island live rock and 60lbs of new (not live) Caribsea aragonite reef sand. The live rock was fully cured but I had it shipped 2 day so there probably was some die off. The rock smelled "good" however & didn't really any dead matter to scrub offf...it was pretty clean. So far my ammonia is still at 0. Should I throw in a shrimp to help my cycle get going or just wait it out & let the rock do its job? Also I put a chunk of the rock in my Q tank (just has a sponge filter) ...same reading, 0. Should I throw a shrimp in there too or is the rock enough?

 

[isaac]

some will say that its better to wait, myself from day one I had 2 fish,damsels domino dam and 4 strip, my tank is 5 week old and yesterday I hade the cleanup crew in with one fireshrimp and cleaning shrimp, so far so good
Let me know

 

[sinner's girl]

throw in the raw dead shrimp, don't add anything alive till it's cycled.
If there isn't much dieoff from the lr, you don't have much to start the cycle. Adding the shrimp won't hurt anything.
Isaac-he means a dead shrimp to start the cycle, not a live one.

 

[birdy]

Another option is to feed the tank as if you had several fish in there if you levels stay stable for a couple of weeks then are are fine to start adding fish. Sometimes the shrimp can be overkill IMO, that is a lot of decaying matter.

 

[blu11]

I too was thinking that the shrimp might be overkill....I don't want the ammonia spike to be so great that it harms the live rock...if that's possible? So if I want to just "feed" the tank what would you suggest I use?
Thanks

 

[vlondi]

I would never trust water that I didn't know had a large ammonia spike. You need to have this spike in order to be assured that you have the proper bacteria colonies established. Even if you don't see one you can tell if you had one by testing nitrites which should also spike; if nothing there, look at nitrates and see if that reading is high. If you still see no nitrates (and I would look for 25ppm or higher) then I would assume that you have had no cycle.
If you had little or no die-off it is very possible that you had nothing to cycle with; worse yet, if you scrubbed the rock at all you have even less to start it with. I would throw in a shrimp just to be certain. Other than waiting there is no harm in being absolutely positive that you had a proper cycle.

 

[birdy]

blu11, that is exactly why I wouldn't do the shrimp with lots of good live rock, a Large ammonia spike could kill off some good stuff.
When you feed the tank, you can use flake foods or frozen, flake would be cheaper, frozen would seem to work better to me, I would do like one cube every other day or something like that.