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fraggleRocks
07/02/2010, 08:51 AM
ok i'm not exacty *new* to the hobby, but I was planning on adding another tank to my house and have a question.

I have a 90 gallon mixed reef right now. Sump is my old 75 gallon about half filled, So I have about 120 gallons.

If I get a 29 gallon aquapod, and fill it with the water I get from the 90 while doing water changes, and also add live rock from there, will it still go through the cycling period? Or will it have one but it will be very brief?

Just curious. I want to make this new tank an all softies tank with mostly shrooms. ever since changing my PC's over to t5 HO's, adding a nice skimmer and GFO in a reactor, I just dont see them as being as happy as they were before when the water was more "dirty" w/o running the skimmer.

jformani
07/02/2010, 09:13 AM
You should have no cycle. If you do it will be minimal. You might get a little algae bloom due to different lighting and just having more area for it to grow, like the glass, sand, etc....but you should be fine!

Palting
07/02/2010, 09:37 AM
The key is the liverock you will add. It's been in your tank for a while, right? So, it's premium liverock loaded with the good bacteria. Depending on how much "life" is in your live rock and how much bioload you put in your tank, you may or may not see a cycle. Whether you use old tank water or not is not an issue, unless there is something wrong with your tank water. The only time using old tank water is a better idea is if you are also transferring livestock. If you transfer livestock and old water, you don't have to acclimate the livestock since it's the same water they were in.

fraggleRocks
07/02/2010, 10:03 AM
sounds good. yes I will be adding about 2 large pieces of LR that are full of 3 different colors of coraline.

I had an interesting cycle in my 90 when I decided to add more LR that was pretty much dead and dry rock. I should have known that was going to happen before I added it, but I honetly diddnt think of it at the time until I had diatoms and sprouts of algae EVERYwhere and was trying to blame my lighting until I realized what had happened. If I slowly add more LR along the way in the 29, I should still be able to avoid triggering a cycle, correct?

And yes, I will be transferring all of my mushrooms from my 90 over to the 29, including approx 1/2 of all of the zoas. I plan on doing an experiment to see if the zoas/shrooms with thrive better in the 29 under PC's or in the 90. Essentially using the same quality of water, but I plan on not adding a protien skimmer and only keeping a CC and a pair of clowns. I am going to be very consistent with water changes, and hope to see better results as far as health/overall growth with the zoas and shrooms.

I want to reproduce the results I had with the previous 75 that I had set up, no skimmer, only pc's. I look at pictures from then to now, and its stunning to see the overall difference between the health/growth of the exact same specimens in a different tank.

the 90 is considered to be a more advanced tank as far as water quality, equipment, lighting...ect., but I swear they all looked much happier in the other tank, and grew faster also.

Palting
07/02/2010, 11:38 AM
Interesting experience. Trying to understand it. Shrooms, in general, don't like too much flow or light. Zoas prefer more light than shrooms, but still like less light than most. Both are filter feeders as well as zooanthelate. Too much light, and they both lose color and turn brown as the zooanthelate become their primary food source. So, yeah, the lower light with PC's may bring more color to your low light loving livestock.

I suspect you buried some of the live rock when you dumped all that new rock on top, which caused a die off and a cycle. I would suggest getting enough of both dry and live rock for your new tank, put the dry rock beneath the live rock, and you should be good to go. Like I said, whether you will still get a cycle or not depends on the amount of life in the rock vs the bioload.