skimmer while cycling

Hello, I'm very new at this stuff but I'm already hooked. I have a 10 gallon saltwater tank (I know its too small) I have about 5lbs of live rock in it. I've been running it now for 2 weeks with a small fisson skimmer and a very large filter with 2 bio-wheels. I was doing alot of water changes but read not to do that so I stopped. The water is crystal clear but the ammonia levels are at the top of the chart. Is that good? So far I have 2 small hermit crabs, 4 arrow crabs and a spotted cleaner shrimp all seem to be doing very well. My question is should I keep running the protein skimmer or not while cycling? Also that little skimmer seems to be a pain in the butt, but it was cheap.
Thanks for any help.

 

I would turn the skimmer off if you didn't put real nasty LR in the tank to cycle. Leave the water alone and let mother nature finish her work. I would not be adding inverts yet as you may kill them with the spikes in water parameters. Get 1 yellow tail damsel and only 1 and let him feed the tank with bacteria.

 

I really don't think it would hurt keeping the skimmer going as the bio wheels and live rock should start establishing your bacteria. The ammonia spike happens first so you are cycling just don't add anything else until your cycle is over. The water changes you did just delayed the cycling process -- since you already have inverts in there -- in my opinion -- I would keep skimming but either way I don't think is going to be a big deal.

 

It won't hurt but it may inhibit/stall coralline growth (by pulling out what few spores are in the new tank at the moment).

 

OK, now I'm really confused. My LFS depending on who you talk to tells me to keep it off and they also told me that having inverts would be more hardy during the process instead of fish. Another conflicting question is lighting during the process, I have a 20" Satellite 40w with lunar light. Half of them at the LFS tell me to keep it on 6 hours and the other haalf say keep it off for a month. Thanks again [FONT=Arial, Helvetica][/FONT]

 

If you have lights on right now during cycling do it for your time of enjoyment as too much light will cause an algae bloom, so if you run them do it minimal when you can enjoy it otherwise I would keep them off.

 

Keep the lights off because they will only fuel algae. At about week 8 start running your Actinics for 16 hrs a day and take one of your pieces of LR with coralline on it and break it up with a pear of pliers and let it settle on the rock in the tank, kind of spread it out. Turn your pump off for about 2 hrs to allow the spores to settle on the rocks to start coralline growth.
Then at about week 10 or 12 when you see coralline growth hit the MH's for about 4 hrs then increase about an hour a week until your at 7 or 8hrs.
The coralline is the notification that your tank is ready and all parameters are stable.
Your probably reading this and going Others will tell you different ways and they may have done it themseves or read it somewhere. This worked for me and that is the experience I will share with you. ;D

Read Omard's signature and you will learn a valuable lesson...."the only thing that happens fast in SW is trouble".
You short cut things now and they will haunt you in the future.

 

why don't you put another 5lbs of live rock in and ditch the wheel? Use the LR as your filtration. Personally I am against adding any fish or inverts to a tank that is cycling, thats a slow painful death waiting to happen. I have read stories that people have used a piece of raw shrimp, I have always just let nature take it's course. This hobby is too expensive to rush, plus rushing just = trouble. Also, you don't need lights to cycle, I would turn them off.

 

Scott gives good advice here. Unless you've got some really funky live rock, there's no reason to run your skimmer at all. Since you don't have any corals in the tank yet, there's no need to run lights either but if you absolutely must have the lights on, just run blue actinics for a few hours a day.

I prefer to cycle using one yellow tailed blue damsel but the choice is yours as to whether or not to cycle with or without fish.

Inverts are far more sensitive to water fluctuations than fish so I'd avoid them until your cycle is almost complete.

 

From the looks of my rock it has purple stuff on it, coralline? I'll keep the skimmer off. Should I remove the inverts during this process? I kinda feel bad for them, my LFS told me they would be hardy during the process. I have one more stupid question. I have a powerhead that I used in the beginning but with all the pumps running in the tank my water temp was going over 80f. Now with the skimmer off should I be running a powerhead also?
Thanks for all this great info, its much more than I get down here.