Help me avoid a cycle:

[Picasso]

Ok, I've got a 14 gallon bio-cube. Currently my emerald crab and a maroon clown fish live in it. So do tons of aiptasia and macro which is covered with aiptasia. The back wall has a good bit of red slime on it. There is a ton of sand in there too. I want to remove all of the contents, scrub the cube, scrub the rocks (with rock scrub) eliminate all the macro (darn it) and get rid of all the sand. I want to then replace the scrubbed rocks, add a couple other small live rocks, then replace the crab and the fish and add new live sand.

How can I do this without cycling?

C

 

[Piratefish]

I think it will hit or miss. I moved my tank when I got it, scrubbed all the rock clean the tank, put in new live sand and fill it with new SW. It did not cycle. That maybe because the was about 120lb of 5 year old LR.

I would try to add more established live rock from an existing tank.

 

[little_fish]

Just scrub all the rock you want to keep in saltwater.

I would wash the tank in fresh though to kill any spores of stuff you dont want around. Then dry really well, add in the new stuff and scrubbed rocks.

Wait one day (keep the fish is a tub in the mean time) and see if you cycle. I dont think you will if you keep the rock wet.

 

[Ulta]

yup, do the best you can to keep your rocks full of bacteria.

That is all :)

maybe adding a really nice porus piece from a older established tank for a few weeks like Piratefish said would work too!

 

[little_fish]

Ya, i would pre-cycle the rocks you want to add.

 

[Picasso]

Ya, i would pre-cycle the rocks you want to add.

If the other rocks are ok, adding new rocks won't start a cycle. The question is, will scrubbing it with Rock Scrub kick off a new cycle?

C

 

[Ulta]

will scrubbing it with Rock Scrub kick off a new cycle?

It shouldn't if you do it separate (in a bucket) then rinsed of course, and have a high enough pop of bacteria to handle whatever bioload your gonna have in there.

So if you were to just put 1 piece of established rock(not scrubbed) with them like we suggested you should have no prob, unless there is like a huge bio-load which I doubt there is :)

 

[Ulta]

What you want to do is keep any decaying matter or detris in the tank to a minimum. So by rinsing everything off(after being scrubbed) you should have little or no die off, hence all you will have to sustain is the waste product of your livestock.

 

[little_fish]

I was suggesting to pre-cycle the other rock incase there is some die off from the scrubbed rock they would be able to handle it