Super Quick Tank Cylce-observations

[JoshOooooo]

I have a 12 Gallon Tall Mini reef, 40W PC Lighting. Started tank with 3 Inches Live Sand & Blue Dasmel. After 5 Days bought two pieces of live rock, one with brown star polyps on it the other with one mushroom coral, trusted LFS got about 2-3 gallons of water with the rock, sucked out water I set up with and replaced with LFS water/rocks. Got 5 gallons of Catalina Saltwater (living in West L.A. has it advantages, the LFS gets water drawn from way out in the ocean and shipped to their store once a week-best way to do water changes.) Did another 2-3 gallon water change. HUGE alega bloom by day 8. Day 11-Cycle DONE. All tests ran clean, Damsel still alive, corals doing very well. Quickest cycle to date-had a 30 gallon salt before with 20 pounds live rock and 6 pounds live sand that cycled in two half weeks.

p.s. please excuse awful spelling-to lazy to spell check.

[ChilDawg]

What were your numbers when the cycle was done? That sounds really, really quick to me...

[JoshOooooo]

NH3+NH4 at less then 0.25mgl with NO-2@ <0.3mg/l. I agree with you in that it is super fast but I have been mont. the levels and they have not risen since the first spike and algea growth. It has been another 2 weeks since the cycle and both no2 & nh3 have remained at very low levels. The LFS did a nitrate check and found it to be perfect-my experiance have dictated that with 3-4 inches of Live Sand, 6 Pounds of Live Rock and around 6 inches of fish NH3+nH4 would def. spike QUICKLY if there were no nitrates to balance system. Maybe i'm wrong???

[ChilDawg]

Well, one thing about cycling -- once complete, there should be NO NH3, NO2 detectable...during a cycle, you need to use low-level NH3, NO2 testing kits. It seems as though yours may not be detecting the NH3 and NO2 that would be there...but that's just my guess.

[JoshOooooo]

ChilDawg

I agree with you in that there should be no levels Unless new fish/live rock were/are added. BUT that being said I DID notice a huge spike in NH3 levels and then in NO-2 levels during cycling and then a drop into what remains constant levels right now. My point is, and I could very well be wrong, with the animals I have in the tank and the fact that there were already spikes, and the small size of the tank, (around 12G) there would not be a slow build up of NH3 if the tank wasn't cycled. With 6+ pounds of live rock, 4+ inches of live sand, corals, constant feedings and6 inches of fish there should be a big spike of NH3- if the tank hasn't cycled. My theory is that becuase I added (with Live Sand, Live rock and fish) about 6 gallons of cycled LFS water with my non cycled water it made the cycle that much quicker. (Imagine if you syphoned off 10 gallons of 120 gallon cycled tank and put it and started a new tank with it.) Thoughts?

[ChilDawg]

That is a good point. I didn't quite get that the first time through. The only dispute that I would have with it is the fact that very few nitrification bacteria are found in the water column, but with the LR and LS, you must have enough bacteria to at least start the cycle...the slow build-up means that something is amiss b/c there should be a slow build-up of nitrates between water changes and no build-up of ammonia. I think that some additions have overloaded the biofiltration capacity of your tank, but the capacity seems to be slowly catching up...

I'm going off theory here, so if others can chime in with experience and such, that would be great, but that's what theoretically seems to be happening.