Live Rock and Dry Sand--cycle???

[930Reef]

I'm upgrading to a 55 from my 30ish. I have fresh saltwater, dry, clean sand, and about 10 lbs of extra live rock from my existing sump. I also added about 5 lbs of dry rock.

What can I expect (if anything) a cycle to look like with this?

I dropped in 2 mysis cubes just to add some ammonia/see what happens...should I have done this?

[Lavoisier]

Probably not much of a issue. Keep an eye on PO4. Wouldn't hurt to treat the 5lbs of LR. See the sticky on this forum.

[mcgyvr]

Unlikely but possible...
Fyi...15lbs in a 55g tank isn't enough rock long term..

[ca1ore]

As long as you don't do something foolish like adding a bunch of new fish right away you will probably be fine.

[Louis Z]

You didn’t mention anything about livestock. Are there fish in there after the move? Did you move corals or other invert too? If so then yes add more dry rock and keep eye on ammonia To nitrate . So that nothing gets out of hand . If for some reason you don’t want to add more dry rock you can always add innoculated biomedia in to your sump . Innoculated with a bacteria in a bottle (various Mfgs). So I really am assuming you added the food to get an ammonia spike . I think you would because you could have overloaded the system which is okay as long as you didn’t add any livestock . And as others have posted just be patient and wait until nitrogen parameters are good . In the meantime you can set up a qt for new arrivals

[930Reef]

Unlikely but possible...
Fyi...15lbs in a 55g tank isn't enough rock long term..

Totally. Going to add a bunch more once I bring over my current display tank rock. Will have at least a pound/gallon when done, plus a skimmer rated for 180g. Good call though. Thanks for looking out.

[930Reef]

You didn’t mention anything about livestock. Are there fish in there after the move? Did you move corals or other invert too? If so then yes add more dry rock and keep eye on ammonia To nitrate . So that nothing gets out of hand . If for some reason you don’t want to add more dry rock you can always add innoculated biomedia in to your sump . Innoculated with a bacteria in a bottle (various Mfgs). So I really am assuming you added the food to get an ammonia spike . I think you would because you could have overloaded the system which is okay as long as you didn’t add any livestock . And as others have posted just be patient and wait until nitrogen parameters are good . In the meantime you can set up a qt for new arrivals

Yep, no fish in there yet. My nano DT that's been up for a year has various corals, (euphyllia, softies, etc), and just one occelaris. Monitoring ammonia, nitrate, trite, etc, daily. The rock is processing the mysis I threw in to cycle. It's handling it quite quickly with just the rock bacteria though, ( I'll be running a SCA 302 skimmer rated for 180 gallons once it's up and running), and I'm not going to overload even once it's up and running. No hurry here. Learned that with my first tank.

I guess it doesn't seem like I'll get a full cycle, as the rock seems to be processing the food. I heavily overfed with 2 mysis cubes, no livestock, and no skimmer, and the highest spike in ammonia was around .25.

After that I could watch it go trite and trate and hoping it's gone in a day or so. Still being patient for sand to colonize with bacteria, too, though.

[mcgyvr]

If you are going to be filling it with more live rock from your display why do you care about a cycle?
You can transfer that rock into it and instantly throw fish,etc... in there as there will be no cycle guaranteed with that process..

[930Reef]

If you are going to be filling it with more live rock from your display why do you care about a cycle?
You can transfer that rock into it and instantly throw fish,etc... in there as there will be no cycle guaranteed with that process..

That's what I thought!!! But as a relative newb I had someone tell me to start a new cycle for tank startup to be safe (not sure what that means, safe). Also they thought the dry sand would be an issue but it's clean as heck.

I'm doing exactly what you said now.

I put a small CUC in to help get rid of the stupid mysis I put in a few days ago before it becomes any more (small amount even) of ammonia. Once that' balanced, I'll shift the rock and everything else over. After all, I've only got 1 clown at present in terms of fish, as it's coming from a nano.

Thanks for the input!