Live Rock and Cycling

rdahlke1105

I'm a girl.
I was just curious on how long on average does it take for you to see the ammonia and nitrites to start to build once you put live rock in your tank? I put mine in on Saturday and they are reading 0's. I'm figuring that its WAY too soon to start reading anything but I'm trying to figure out when I really need to start closely monitoring.
 
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All tanks are different, some can happen in a week, some can happen in a month or two. I never saw a spike in my tank. I have a 125gal, I put in about 100lbs of live rock...then about a week later I added about another 100lbs...I added some snails and hermits about 2 weeks after that. I didn't add any fish until it had been up and running for about a month and a half. But the more Live Rock you use, that comes from an established system, the less of a spike you should have. I would do a daily test though, that way you will know for sure when it has happened and gone away. If not daily, maybe every other day.
 
Ok thanks. The rock that I got never had a chance to "dry out". It went from a tank that had T5's on it (live rock tanks at the LFS) to being wrapped in newspaper (wet) with water added, to my tank. I only got about 5 lbs of live rock. I had 20 lbs of base rock already in there.
 
You may see a cycle since its only 5lbs of LR. It will take it a month or two to seed the base rock and spread over the sand. I would still test every other day and you should see the changes. You can add a bit of flake food to the tank, or a piece of table shrimp to help the cycle happen faster. Just take out the piece of shrimp after a day.
 
Yea I knew it would take awhile for it to turn the other rock into live rock, that I wasn't too concerned about. I was mainly wondering how often I should test. I was thinking about the table shrimp idea, but I figure I would just wait it out for a few weeks to see what happens first.
 
You probably need to add the shrimp to start your cycle. If you add the shrimp and over the period of a week dont see any spikes then i would assume your aquarium has cycled and you are good to go! Wohoo!
 
Yea that was kinda my thinking as well. So at lunch today, I got out one of the frozen shrimp out of the freezer, nuked it so it wasn't frozen anymore and set it on one of the rocks. I figure I'll monitor from there. I knew I didn't want to do the fish thing, I didn't want to take a chance on killing a poor little fishy. :)
 
Sound good! Just leave it in there for a day or so, test your water once a day and you will be on your way!

And thanks for not going the fish method, damsels are evil critters but they dont deserve that!
 
I personally feel that no fish deserves that. :) As evil as damsels are. :lol: In high school I has 3 freshwater tanks and bred bettas. I got really attached to my fish.
 
LOL Maybe. One thing I do remember is that the females are much less pretty than the males. Also once the females lay the eggs or fry (I'm thinking they are live bearers) that its the male that takes care of them and you have to pull the female out as soon as she is done because she will kill the babies.
 
The male betta builds a bubble nest. The female deposits the eggs in the nest the male fertilizes them. The female is then removed and the male tends the nest and the fry :)
 
Thanks Karen. I couldn't remember if the fry were live or egg. I did remember about the bubble nest. I had them ringing my tanks most of the time. :) But like I said, this was 22 years ago.
 
Yea I really enjoyed it as well. Then we moved from California to Missouri and I sold all of my tanks and equipment before them move. I never got around to getting another tank until recently. :(
 
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