water change during cycling?

[aquaboy]

i threw half a codfish in my tank for a month and a half. Methinks i cycled

[reef_guru]

airborneguy:

My FW tank can devour almost 4ppm of ammonia in a matter of hours.

freshwater NH3,4 toxic levels are 5-10 ppm
Ammonia Toxicity to Freshwater Fish

[Airborneguy]

But is fishless cycling a popular method in SW? It seems every method involves some sort of fish to start the cycle. A fishless cycle where you directly add ammonia to the tank creates a full load of bacteria so you can add all of your fish right away.

[aquaboy]

you can cycle without a live fish, but tangster prefers the damsel method

[reef_guru]

so you can add all of your fish right away.

nothing worth while happens fast in this hobby. there are many ways to "cycle" a tank. some people spend alot of money on live rock with the extra added hitchhikers and want to keep the wide variety of life alive, which is why i started this thread. starting a tank with bleached rock "cycles" different than fresh live rock from the ocean with critters.

[Airborneguy]

I can't get this answer anywhere...

SPECIFICALLY, does anyone cycle in SW with pure ammonia? I cycled my last FW tank using nothing more than pure ammonia and through testing watched the textbook cycle from amm, to Ni to Na. Once this is done, you have built up enough bacteria to support a full bioload as long as you are adding the correct amount of ammonia everyday.

I didn't do this with my SW tank because I could not find any info on it for SW, but I would like to next time.

[Tangster]

Yes its been done and is still being done I posted that here or some place that you can use Boo Peep or urine even or a dead mouse a hot dog raw steak anything that rots and turns to carbon wit kick the cycle in a pack of frozen brine shrimp even .

The reason I use a live fish is its a constant bio load with no ups and downs .. Higher demand requires more particular bacteria and as the demand falls of so do the bacteria as there is nothing for them to do..A fish tank can not store in reserve bacteria .. you have one fish thats all the bacteria you will have in the system just enough for the demand that one fish places on the system.. take the fish out the bacteria dies off add another the bacteria have to increase to handle the new demand .

[Airborneguy]

Thanks... that's pretty clear to me.

[KOgle]

I'm going to chime in here and say personally I would not add live rock to any tank I ever set up again. The marginal benefit you get (and there is no proof that there even is a benefit) doesn't outweigh the chance you are taking on introducing unwanted's into your tank.

I've seen the tangster way work two times now and I'm about to tear down my 180 and do it the same way.

That being said I would have to guess if you've got enough die off to drive your nitrites and amonia up that high you've probably got massive die off anyhow and doing a water change for the sake of the critters in the rock isn't going to be of great benefit. Only my opinion. And no I don't have any scientific proof so don't ask. Only what I've seen with my own eyes.

[GeejEx]

Originally Posted by KOgle

I'm going to chime in here and say personally I would not add live rock to any tank I ever set up again. The marginal benefit you get (and there is no proof that there even is a benefit) doesn't outweigh the chance you are taking on introducing unwanted's into your tank.

I've seen the tangster way work two times now and I'm about to tear down my 180 and do it the same way.

That being said I would have to guess if you've got enough die off to drive your nitrites and amonia up that high you've probably got massive die off anyhow and doing a water change for the sake of the critters in the rock isn't going to be of great benefit. Only my opinion. And no I don't have any scientific proof so don't ask. Only what I've seen with my own eyes.

That's an interesting side note. My old roommate had a 75 gal FO tank with about 50# rock. He complained about wanting add more rock, but couldn't explain why he wanted to add "live" rock to a 3 year old tank- the 50# of base rock was "live", right?

The main difference in his 3 year old tank and my 3 month old tank? I have coralline, a feather duster, copepods my fishies like to chase, etc. And yeah, there's a bristle worm or two poking around and I've had some aptasia and extra algae- but all in all next time around I'll still use live rock to seed the tank.