No cycle?

[chromis]

On wednesday I added 90 pounds of Premium Aquatics semi-cured rock. It is great shaped and has lots of corraline and macroalgae. Melissa told me I would have a small cycle lasting a couple of days. Well I tested for ammonia on saturday and I got 0. I was using red sea testkits but I thought that they were fine for ammonia, nitrite etc. Is it possible that my cycle only lasted 3 days? There seemed to be alot of decaying sponges on the rock so I know there should have been a spike.

thanks
Andrew

[SPasse]

Hi All,

I just thought I would make a few comments about the infamous “cycle”

The cycle, as the term is commonly used by aquarium keepers, Is the time period where whatever biological waste (for sake of argument Ammonia) is converted into first nitrite and then nitrate by bacterial action.

This assumes that there is something to process.

When you add cured live rock to a new system with very little bio-load, there is nothing for the bacterially active live rock to process, hence no or very little nitrate as an end product. Cured or semi-cured live rock, if it was well handled between the supplier and you, can go through a very brief initial cycle, sometimes you even miss it.

Uncured live rock is a very different story, as it puts a great deal of waste into the water for the nitrogen cycle to deal with, hence a large amount of nitrate end product is created.

By adding some “fuel” like the cocktail shrimp, you not only feed the existing bacteria on the live rock, but you build up additional bacteria.

But once whatever “fuel” is exhausted i.e. consumed by the bacteria, the bacteria goes into “hibernation” after a few days. Bacteria cannot stay active without food.

Another alternative is too slowly start building up the bio-load. If you do this incrementally, you give the nitrogen processing bacteria colonies, time to grow in step.

Many people think of the cycle, only in terms of the first cycle, but in reality it happens every time additional bio-load is added and the bacterial and/or fauna communities have to build up to “process” the additional nutrients.

And a reef tank really only reaches a marginal degree of stability after about a year of operation.

Regards,

Scott