Cycling tank, skimmer? UV?

[azpt]

I'm cycling my tank by using the "cocktail shrimp method".

I threw 4 large cocktail shrimp into my 150 gal (w/ 40 gal sump).

I've unplugged my UV to allow the cycling process to happen unhampered.

My questions are.

1. Should I also unplug the protein skimmer during cycling?
2. When can I plug my UV back in again?
3. Will I need to unplug my UV for a few days everytime I add a fish to allow the water to condition itself to the new bio load?


hhmmmmmm????????????

[Avi]

In the scheme of things, I think it's all right if you just leave the skimmer and the UV sterilizer on all the time, even while cycling. I did it that way and things went very smoothly and I never had any serious algae outbreaks at all other than the run of the mill diatoms.

Once your tank has finished cycling, and you have consistent zero reading for both ammonia and nitrates, then you can add fish...slowly....without unplugging your UV. You shouldn't ever have to do that.

[sir_dudeguy]

ya keep them going and you wont have a huge algae outbreak like avi said. If you turn them off, the stuff will just be rotting on the ground and stuff causing algae to grow..

do you have live rock tho? if you do, take that shrimp out, because the live rock will cycle the tank.

[Andrew]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=7792005#post7792005 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by sir_dudeguy

do you have live rock tho? if you do, take that shrimp out, because the live rock will cycle the tank.

Most of the time only non-cured liverock will cycle a tank.

[sir_dudeguy]

the rock is whats actually cycling tho isnt it? not the water...when you get cured live rock, you wont even see a cycle usually, because its already "cycled" rock. If you do, its minimal.

uncured live rock tho, has lots of die off, so all that stuff is creating nitrates amonia etc...either way, the shrimp would really do no good...if you have cured rock, the shrimp will only add nitrates cuz the rock is taking care of all the amonia and nitrites already...

if you have uncured rock, its doing the same thing, except the amonia is already up becuase the die off...so imo, if you have live rock, there's no need for a dead shrimp...

I would think that it would only cause algae to grow and really high nitrates.

[bertoni]

If the tank has live rock, I would recommend removing the shrimp. They're not needed, and the decay can only cause more death, bad smells, etc.