Cycle in One Week?

[chucko]

Setup my 75g exactly 8 days ago with 50lbs of Live Rock (from walt smith), 50lbs of dry marco rock, ~30lbs of aragonite, and around 15-20lbs of sand from an established tank. Three to four days in the ammonia was around .2ppm. Two days later it was back to zero and nitrites were at 5ppm. Now, they are all testing at zero. Is it possible the tank cycled in 8 days? Not really ready to add live stock - still planning out what all we will be getting.

[TX..r33f]

I have herd from people the min 2 weeks however even if you think its done in 8days(most likely not) tanks take 1-2months too cycle. For you its a waiting game :). Sit back relax and watch your tank mature.

[f3honda4me]

If the live rock was really good, and there was little die off, then yea it's possible. Mine never really "cycled" because of how little die off there was and how great the live rock was. I was able to add my first coral after 5 days of setting up the tank.

One way to test is to dump some store bought (NO SCENTED) ammonia to the tank until you get like a 1 or 2 ppm reading of ammonia. After 12-24 hours if you have 0's across the board, then you're cycled. :)

[00Warpig00]

Depends on your live rock/sand if it is very well established and transferred into the new tank with little to no die off I could see there being little if any cycle. There is also no fish load so having 50 lbs of established LR in a 75 gallon tank plus the qty of live sand added you very well may have just seen a little bump and are done.

f3honda... we were typing at the same time... lol you beat me to the punch. :)

Nick

[hollister]

Test in the morning and around the same time for most accurate reading. I also saw little to no cycle in my tank also. But i would and did wait 2 weeks before adding a soft coral and a few crabs and then waited 2 more weeks to repeat. Slow and easy.

[Jocko]

If you are reading all zeroes then either all your tests suddenly stopped working (seem unlikely) or you are "cycled." Nice to hear you are putting time and planning into your livestock purchases. When you are ready, I'd probably start with 1 fish (maybe 2 if they are tiny) and a really, really small skeleton cleanup crew. Then give the system a little time to absorb the increase in bioload.

[bnumair]

if live rock is of good established quality and comes with good amount of bacteria, it can cycle in few days to weeks. small the tank size faster they colonize. u can feed the tank few days with fish fodd and see if ammonia spikes again. if it does not in next 3-4 days then ur good to go.