Little confused about cycle....Please Help!

[bigal0221]

I have had my tank running for 2 weeks now, I added cured LR and had a very small spike of ammonia/nitrites within the first couple of days.
My question has the tank cycled due to the LR or do I need to add some raw shrimp?
Thanks!

 

[joe____17]

just leave the live rock it should be good enough.

 

[tank a holic]

add the shrimp! it may be ok but are you willing to kill a fish to find out?

 

[chaoticdamsel]

I'm of the opinion that your tank will be a lot more stable starting out if you let it go through a full blown cycle. That way, you KNOW that you've got adequate bacterial growth to handle the bioload of fish.
I bought cured live rock when I started my 14 gallon nano, but I still tossed a piece of raw shrimp in there to cause an ammonia spike. Even with the cured live rock, it still took a month for the ammonia to drop to zero. If I hadn't done that and had assumed that the cured rock had enough bacteria to handle a fish, it would have likely spelled death for whatever fish I put in there. Better to be safe than sorry.

 

[markiezzi]

Hello,
I am cycling my 55 gallon now. It's been up for about 3 weeks just added a few more pieces of cured rock 4 days ago. I had a raw shrimp in there for about 4 days before adding more rock. How long are you suppose to leave the shrimp in their for? It started to grow fuzzy and the water started to smell bad so I removed it after 4 days. Should I have left it in?
Thanks
Mark

 

[bigal0221]

Thanks for the responses, I will definitely take the safe route and use raw shrimp.
I have 125g DT so how many shrimp and how long do I leave them in before removing them?

 

[reifermadness]

I didn't go the shrimp route and it took almost a month for mine to finally cycle. Two weeks is a pretty short spike even with cured LR. I think you're doing the right thing with the shrimp but I don't know how many shrimp per gallon...
Throw up some pics when you get a chance!

 

[tank a holic]

Leave the shrimp in during the cycle, watch ammonia rise and fall to 0ppm
watch the trItes rise and fall to 0ppm
leave the shrimp for another day or 2 and remove it