I like to use a raw shrimp from the supermarket to cycle my sw tanks. Just stick it in a nylon and hang it in the tank. It worked real well for my aquapod and am doing the same right now in a 40b.
My first saltwater tank build
- Thread starter homedog98
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That is the old tried and true method (using raw shrimp) and works well, just takes 3-4 weeks on average to complete the initial cycle with that method, but nothing wrong with that.
I prefer to wait and know it is right than submit my pets to unnecessary unhealthy conditions. After all, it is an aquarium, not microwave popcorn. 
Well, I won't say your wrong, but I will say you sound like "Mr Old Grumpy LFS guy" when you say stuff like that. When it is proven that Dr. Tim's bacteria does in fact work as promised and gives the same (probably BETTER) results than the raw shrimp method because it puts in the proper bacteria strains it just seems like your saying "new ways of doing things that have been proven to work have no place in my world, I know this old method works because I have done it since the 80's so there is no need to change".
The world changes, advances, finds better ways to do things. That doesn't mean older ways are now considered bad necessarily, it just means the new methods when proven scientifically, are in fact better methods. There have been 1001 "Bacteria in a bottle" quick cycle products for years, but none of them was worth their weight in water until Dr. Tim came along and put science and common sense into the bottle by using bacteria strains made for saltwater aquariums, not made for waste water treatment plants like all the others out there. Using the shrimp method and waiting 4 weeks does not mean your tank is any healthier than putting Dr. Tim's in and waiting 5 days. Actually, i would put $ on the Dr. Tim's method actually making the tank healthier in 5 days than the shrimp method does in 30 days.
The world changes, advances, finds better ways to do things. That doesn't mean older ways are now considered bad necessarily, it just means the new methods when proven scientifically, are in fact better methods. There have been 1001 "Bacteria in a bottle" quick cycle products for years, but none of them was worth their weight in water until Dr. Tim came along and put science and common sense into the bottle by using bacteria strains made for saltwater aquariums, not made for waste water treatment plants like all the others out there. Using the shrimp method and waiting 4 weeks does not mean your tank is any healthier than putting Dr. Tim's in and waiting 5 days. Actually, i would put $ on the Dr. Tim's method actually making the tank healthier in 5 days than the shrimp method does in 30 days.
@ wizard and Ace: cool. just curious though, can i use pure ammonia to cycle instead? or will that kill my live rock?
You can but you run the risk of damaging some of the "stuff" on your rock. Without adding ammonia you will still see a spike in ammonia then nitrite then nitrate. Once ammonia and nitrite are 0 with nitrates rising you can start to slowly add things.
Filter floss tends to clog easily and cause nitrates to get high. If you are willing to rinse it out every few days then it should be fine as a media. You won't need the biomax it just ends up becoming a nitrate factory. Live rock will provide the surface area for your beneficial bacteria. It would not hurt to keep some purigen and chemi pure elite in the HOB. That will help keep phosphates and nitrates low.
Also I don't know if this has been mentioned yet but you will also need a water source. 99% of the time tap water is no good for a saltwater tank. It just leads to algae problems. RO/DI water is the best but distilled water is fine.
Filter floss tends to clog easily and cause nitrates to get high. If you are willing to rinse it out every few days then it should be fine as a media. You won't need the biomax it just ends up becoming a nitrate factory. Live rock will provide the surface area for your beneficial bacteria. It would not hurt to keep some purigen and chemi pure elite in the HOB. That will help keep phosphates and nitrates low.
Also I don't know if this has been mentioned yet but you will also need a water source. 99% of the time tap water is no good for a saltwater tank. It just leads to algae problems. RO/DI water is the best but distilled water is fine.
There is no set time for a cycle to complete, or in your definition, take 4ppm of ammonia and convert it to nitrates in 24 hours. There are many factors that go into that equation, surface area of rocks, state of the rocks when water was put in the tank, flow through the rocks.. which all that equates to proper living environments for bacteria to colonize on. You use a proper amount of good clean cycled live rock out of a running tank and toss in a bottle of Tim's on top of that, your looking at 24 hours tops for the tank to be cycled and ready for fish, use clean dead/dry rock, your looking at 5-7 days, you use good live rock and shrimp method, 7-14 days, and if you use dead rock and the shrimp method, your looking at 3-4 weeks for the same thing on average. With so many unknown variables there isn't a way anyone can say how long any tank will take to cycle to your definition.
The shrimp method tends to put A LOT of ammonia into the water in the first few days, which is why it takes so long for the tank to cycle afterwards, it takes a long time for bacteria to build up to process all that ammonia. Again, nothing wrong with that method, been used for decades and it does work, I just think there are better methods today but if someone were to use the shrimp method that is fine as well as long as you have patience (which is a requirement for this hobby anyway so it is a good lesson to learn early).
Purigen is like a synthetic carbon that you can recharge and reuse. Chemi-pure is just average carbon, I would not recommend Chemi-pure today because Rox carbon is 10x better and cheaper. Rox Carbon has been shown to remove up to 90% of DOCs out of a tank (Dissolved organic compounds) where as a skimmer can only remove around 30% so carbon is much better than a skimmer is in that regards but you have to replace carbon often so at some point a skimmer becomes cheaper. Also a skimmer will help out if you overfeed your tank by removing large food particles, but to me with a coral tank, I want those to stay in the tank so I do not run a skimmer, just an algae turf scrubber, so when the food does start to break down into ammonia the scrubber/algae will remove the ammonia from the water. A skimmer also helps out with oxygenation of the water where as carbon does nothing in that regard. So skimmers do serve other purposes that are beneficial, but also do negatives like remove to much good stuff out of the water.
If your using dispenser water, buy a TDS meter to check the quality of the water. You can get water that is worse than tap out of some of them.
Purigen is like a synthetic carbon that you can recharge and reuse. Chemi-pure is just average carbon, I would not recommend Chemi-pure today because Rox carbon is 10x better and cheaper. Rox Carbon has been shown to remove up to 90% of DOCs out of a tank (Dissolved organic compounds) where as a skimmer can only remove around 30% so carbon is much better than a skimmer is in that regards but you have to replace carbon often so at some point a skimmer becomes cheaper. Also a skimmer will help out if you overfeed your tank by removing large food particles, but to me with a coral tank, I want those to stay in the tank so I do not run a skimmer, just an algae turf scrubber, so when the food does start to break down into ammonia the scrubber/algae will remove the ammonia from the water. A skimmer also helps out with oxygenation of the water where as carbon does nothing in that regard. So skimmers do serve other purposes that are beneficial, but also do negatives like remove to much good stuff out of the water.
If your using dispenser water, buy a TDS meter to check the quality of the water. You can get water that is worse than tap out of some of them.
