New tank from dry rock

[bobens18]

Hello everyone,

I am new to this site and just getting back into the hobby. I had a saltwater aquarium about 10 years ago and while it was a successful tank I’m sure being young I didn’t do everything right. About 2 months ago I set up a new tank with dry rock, live sand , and the real ready to use saltwater sold in about 5 gallon jugs. I made the mistake of not testing periodically for the only purpose of trying to keep myself from getting to impatient. I tested the water today and all the levels are good but since I have no way of knowing for sure if it actually went through the cycle I am hesitant on moving forward with fish. My question is if the way I set it up will it have cycled without adding anything else to it in the course of 2 months or should I be doing something additional to cycle it? My assumption was that the natural saltwater and the live sand would be enough to create the live rock and cycle. Am I wrong with that assumption?

Thank you in advance.

 

[ISpeakForTheSeas]

Welcome to Reef2Reef!

An easy way to test your cycle is by adding ammonia to the tank (a lot of people like to raise the ammonia level to 2 ppm), waiting 24 hours, and testing the ammonia - if the tank has processed the ammonia (i.e. dropped the ammonia from 2 ppm to 0/as close to 0 as the test kit gets), then the tank is cycled and ready to go.

Basically a tank that is cycled has bacteria established in it that breakdown harmful waste (Ammonia) and convert it to not so harmful waste (first to Nitrite, then to Nitrate). This bacteria is generally found on substrate (rocks, sand, etc.) rather than in the water is my understanding, so the water alone wouldn’t cycle the tank (though people do use live rock from the ocean to cycle their tank without issue).

Most of the nitrifying bacteria in a cycled tank is going to be benthic (growing on surfaces like the rocks) not pelagic (floating in the water column),

 

[SeeSnek]

Unless you have been adding ammonia, a fish, or a protein source (like fish food) then nothing has happened and you haven’t even started your cycle.

 

[BeanAnimal]

Unless you have been adding ammonia, a fish, or a protein source (like fish food) then nothing has happened and you haven’t even started your cycle.

He added live sand and NSW both of which contain nitrifying bacteria and other living bacteria. The tank is cycled to whatever extent there is food.

The tank may not be able to support 17 fish tomorrow, but there are nitrifying bacteria doing their jobs and ready to expand to whatever counts are needed to be in balance.

A “cycle” is never really “done”.

Even just dry rock with water will eventually (sooner than you think) contain nitrifying bacteria, it is all around us.

 

[bobens18]

Unless you have been adding ammonia, a fish, or a protein source (like fish food) then nothing has happened and you haven’t even started your cycle.

That was what I was afraid of so I am glad I asked. Thank you for the reply.

 

[SeeSnek]

He added live sand and NSW both of which contain nitrifying bacteria and other living bacteria. The tank is cycled to whatever extent there is food.

The tank may not be able to support 17 fish tomorrow, but there are nitrifying bacteria doing their jobs and ready to expand to whatever counts are needed to be in balance.

A “cycle” is never really “done”.

Even just dry rock with water will eventually (sooner than you think) contain nitrifying bacteria, it is all around us.

The point is that he wasn’t adding “food”, i.e., an ammonia source

 

[BeanAnimal]

The point is that he wasn’t adding “food”, i.e., an ammonia source

It doesn’t matter, he added live material and even if he didn’t it would have come on its own.

By tossing in more food you just speed up the process by increasing the demand. It happens one way or the other.

As the load on the system (food) increases, so does the capacity of then nitrification subsystem. This goes on forever, expansion and contraction based on need.

So the “cycle” has “started” - it may or may not be in a state to support a fish. As mentioned above, an easy test would be to simply see if it can process ammonia at a reasonable rate. Even if it can’t it is well on its way and he will not be starting from zero hour.

 

[bobens18]

Welcome to Reef2Reef!

An easy way to test your cycle is by adding ammonia to the tank (a lot of people like to raise the ammonia level to 2 ppm), waiting 24 hours, and testing the ammonia - if the tank has processed the ammonia (i.e. dropped the ammonia from 2 ppm to 0/as close to 0 as the test kit gets), then the tank is cycled and ready to go.

Thank you for all the replies. I tested again and everything was really good so I decided to go the route of adding ammonia to raise it to 2ppm and I’m going to test once it has time to filter to make sure it is high then test in 24 hours to make sure it is going down. I figured it is best to do it now then chance adding life to it and putting whatever I add into a harmful environment.

 

[bobens18]

Update, good and bad news. Bad news is I added ammonia and tested and still showed none so I added some more and still none. Finally I decided to test straight ammonia with the test kit and it showed 0ppm. Looks like I got a bad test kit. The only good news to this is that at least I didn’t have livestock in the tank. Who would have thought a brand new test kit would be a dud.

 

[ISpeakForTheSeas]

Update, good and bad news. Bad news is I added ammonia and tested and still showed none so I added some more and still none. Finally I decided to test straight ammonia with the test kit and it showed 0ppm. Looks like I got a bad test kit. The only good news to this is that at least I didn’t have livestock in the tank. Who would have thought a brand new test kit would be a dud.

Let us know how it goes with the new test kit.