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aquascum
11/17/2011, 02:36 PM
i have been reading up on the cycle time for awile now and im kind of lost here so.... i bought my live rock 55lbs all out of tank tht has been runnning for 2 years also the sand i bought i had 20lbs out of that tank as well and 20 lbs new from bag from what i understand i am waiting for the amonia spike to happen for the rock to cure? i have been ghost feeding for a week and had the tnk set up for 3 weeks still no amonia or nitrite so the question is am i going to even get one because everying was alredy cycled?
frog.pauley
11/17/2011, 02:47 PM
probably not...the cycle would be the bacteria colonies forming to handle the bio-load. Since the rock has been established, you will probably not see a cycle...or a large one anyways....If your rock was transfered from one tank to the other, there was no die off.
thegrun
11/17/2011, 02:51 PM
+1, unless the rock was out of the water for an extended period of time, there will be little if any die-off and the established bacteria on the rock will handle any waste. I would add a clean-up crew, continue to feed the tank and after a week slowly begin to add fish.
aquascum
11/17/2011, 02:52 PM
so if i am probly not going to get one am i safe to put fish in do you think or should i still wait it out a few more weeks?
WetShepherd
11/17/2011, 02:54 PM
probably not...the cycle would be the bacteria colonies forming to handle the bio-load. Since the rock has been established, you will probably not see a cycle...or a large one anyways....If your rock was transfered from one tank to the other, there was no die off.

The same thing happened to me - I waited a month before adding my CUC just to be sure. You should be able to get some nitrates though. There's another thread of similar nature going on here (http://reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2095892) with some other responses if you're interested ;)
RubberFrog
11/17/2011, 03:27 PM
The problem is that rock will only have enough bacteria to handle the current bioload. You can't just drop a bunch of fish in it like that. Add a small crean up crew to increase the bioload and the bacteria count will rise to match.