Start cycle in temporary tank? (new to sw)

foodshape

foodshape

Member
Hi folks, I am a longtime FW keeper (25+ yrs) and have finally decided to try a foray over to the salty side. This project won’t take off in earnest until the new year due to other priorities, and that’s fine. I still have two african cichlid tanks running and don’t foresee shutting those down anytime soon.
The DT will be either a 75g, 90g, or 120g 4-footer. Of course I am leaning towards the 120g because of the extra back-to-front depth, but once I’ve got a better handle on the overall costs we’ll see. This will be a reef setup.
Step 1 of course will be getting the tank and buying or building a stand for it (I’ve done a fairly competent job on a few stands already and will likely go that route). After that will come a period of doing further research on sumps, fuges, plumbing and the related equipment and actually getting the basic configuration built and working. Then we get to the cycling part, and that is where I have a question for you at this point:
I have some equipment currently sitting empty & unused, including a 40g breeder and a cannister or two. It occurred to me that if I loaded up a cannister full of base rock rubble, plus a decent quantity of it in the 40g itself, and throw on a powerhead for extra circulation, I could fishless cycle it. Then perhaps even get a clean up crew going in there with a view to migrating water, rock and CUC over to the DT when it’s ready… (And not lost on me is the fact that having that ready will likely give me a kick in the butt to keep moving on the whole build. J) Would it make sense to start cycling some base rock now using that equipment? If so how would you go about it? Any issues with maintaining that mini-environment over a period of a couple of months? I am assuming this would then greatly cut down on the cycle time in the DT but I recognize that I might be misapplying my FW experience there - so do let me know if I am mistaken about it.
I welcome your views, thoughts and suggestions on this approach.
 
snakeblitz33

snakeblitz33

Well-Known Member
Cycling is basically letting everything dead on a piece of live rock die off and produce ammonia. Ammonia and nitrite are used by different sets of bacteria for their energy. Nitrate is the end product of the cycle.
Base rock is - dead. There is no bacteria that is on base rock. saltwater bacteria has to be added to your tank in some form or fashion - either through live rock (preferable) or some bottled potion that claims the bacteria is alive (hearsay, IMHO.) So, your goal is to build up bacteria on all surfaces of the rock in order to process ammonia and nitrite into a much, much less harmful form of nitrate. (freshwater has this concept as well.) Although, with saltwater aquariums, a proper cycle can last anywhere from seven to thirty days or more - depending on the amount of decaying material.
Personally, I believe that you would be jumping the gun doing it like that. The ability of using base rock as a starter is so that you won't have to worry about letting it dry out too much while you are trying to aquascape it. Base rock can be drilled, zip tied, puttied, epoxied, rodded, and so on and so forth in whatever manner of aquascape that you like - that is its benefit. Some amount of live rock should be added to your system, regardless.
I would put more time into planning and research than worrying about letting a bunch of dead rocks sit in a tub of saltwater.
Welcome to the forums! I hope you enjoy your stay!
 
foodshape

foodshape

Member
Thanks for your insight Snake, I appreciate it. Will shelve that idea and focus on other things...
Interesting point you raise though - with an fw tank the nitriying and denitrifying bacteria will almost always occur in a tank (given a supply of amonia) even without seeding (although seeding is obviously a faster way to go about it) - I guess it makes sense that their marine equivalents are not so likely to just 'drop in'...
 
snakeblitz33

snakeblitz33

Well-Known Member
Quote:
Originally Posted by foodshape http:///t/393617/start-cycle-in-temporary-tank-new-to-sw#post_3502353
Thanks for your insight Snake, I appreciate it. Will shelve that idea and focus on other things...
Interesting point you raise though - with an fw tank the nitriying and denitrifying bacteria will almost always occur in a tank (given a supply of amonia) even without seeding (although seeding is obviously a faster way to go about it) - I guess it makes sense that their marine equivalents are not so likely to just 'drop in'...
yup.
Saltwater live rock also had an abundance of other forums of life that also need to "build up" to help stabilize an aquarium. Polychates (worms) filter feeders, sponges, copepods, rotifers, amphipods, various good (and bad) algaes, and so on and so forth also populate the rest of the rocks and even the sandbed - and by feeding the tank, you feed the microfauna in the tank which keeps the system biologically stable.
A problem that most people run across, especially new hobbyists - is how to balance equipment and nutrition, with biology and chemistry. Your tank should be looked at as a closed system - kind of like our own bodies - with all it's complexity (and plumbing). Throw one chemical off balance - decimate an entire population of bacteria - and there are definite consequences. The best thing is to take it slow and let your tanks personality develop. This hobby is a hurry up and wait game, and if you aren't prepared for that then it can be very frustrating as a new hobbyist who expects to have a full blown reef in a month if they just throw money at it.
I think you are going about it the right way so far.
 
florida joe

florida joe

Well-Known Member
Quote:
Cycling is basically letting everything dead on a piece of live rock die off
Don’t you just hate it when those dead things just won’t die?
 
bang guy

bang guy

Moderator
I slightly disagree Snake. Cycling is building colonies of bacteria. Nothing actually has to die to accomplish that but allowing the die off from live rock feed the bacteria is an excellent way to cycle a tank.
 
snakeblitz33

snakeblitz33

Well-Known Member
And i agree with you bang.
I posted late when i was really tired. I got finals next week and im stressing. Sorry for the previous short and ambiguous reply earlier.
 
al&burke

al&burke

Active Member
If I were you I would fill the 40B with live rock and use your canister filters for flow add a heater and get the live rock or base rock going it won't hurt IMHO. You can even do this in a rubbermaid tote. Add a little floss in your canister filters to protect debre from getting in the pumps.
 
sweatervest13

sweatervest13

Active Member
Quote:
Originally Posted by Al&Burke http:///t/393617/start-cycle-in-temporary-tank-new-to-sw#post_3502435
If I were you I would fill the 40B with live rock and use your canister filters for flow add a heater and get the live rock or base rock going it won't hurt IMHO. You can even do this in a rubbermaid tote. Add a little floss in your canister filters to protect debre from getting in the pumps.
+1
Would not hurt, then you could add some dry base rock and let the LR seed the base rock. It will give you a lot more LR when you set up the DT. Save a few bucks at least. And it gives you a head start on cycling the big tank. Transfer over the rock when you are ready to do the big DT. No need to transfer the water very little beneficial bacteria in the water, it clings to surfaces.
Making Live Rock!! ===Said in the voice of Rob Snyder from the SNL skit: Making copies====
 
beaslbob

beaslbob

Well-Known Member
Food shape
During the initial "cycling" of a tank IMHO and IME algaes either macros, or corraline on live rock, or even turf algaes on an algae turf scrubber make all the difference.
Given the worse possible senerio of a completely barren tank with no bacteria, the algaes will consume ammonia immediately preventing the dangerous spikes. While consuming carbon dioxide and returning oxygen as well. So at most you get a temporary nitrate spike instead of the ammonia spike. Then as bacteria build up there is less ammonia for the algae so the algae uses the resluting nitrates for nitrogen.
And to help the process out as well, the macros or other algae added also have the aerobic bacteria to help seed the system.
So what I do is simply start the tank with a refugium (could even just be a tank partition) full of macro algaes and then do the rest.
To make matters easier I wait a week then add a male molly. Kinda like the canary in the coal mine. Once he lives for a few weeks then tank sould be ready for slowly building up the rest of the bioload.
While this doesn't negate all the needs of say sps corals, it does work for FO and easier corals with very little else done. At any rate it sure makes things easier to operate and forgiving of my type errors anyway.
but that's just my .02
 
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