My first saltwater tank build

[homedog98]

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.

i know... i wasn't saying there was a set time limit... that's just when i believe a tank is cycled.

 

[Ace25]

That is fine, nothing wrong with your definition of cycled. I was just responding to your question "does it take 6 weeks to cycle or not".

 

[homedog98]

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). ok... so the live rock be the sole ammonia source?

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.
i'm not doing a skimmer since it's only ten gallons. so i need carbon? does it have to be those types, or can it just be the stuff that comes with the filter?
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.

so, is there a better place i can buy water from?

 

[homedog98]

That is fine, nothing wrong with your definition of cycled. I was just responding to your question "does it take 6 weeks to cycle or not".

oh... nevermind then. lol

 

[Ace25]

Well, if you have bottomless pockets, the carbon in the filters is ok, just replace the filters every 24 hours and your good (because they only put a teaspoon of carbon in those filter pads). Carbon is good to have, but not required. I am not running any on my tanks right now. Larger tanks with fish like Tangs, carbon is actually VERY BAD to use because it causes HLLE disease on Tangs. I would never use the "filter pads" made for filters because they are way to expensive, I just get a $1 filter bag and fill it with a mix of ROX carbon and high capacity GFO to make my own "Super Chemi-Pure Elite Ultra Platinum Edition" for 1/4 the cost of a bag of Chemi-Pure Elite. LOL.

Buying from the dispenses is fine, just spend $12 at a Wal-Mart for a TDS meter before you start using it. Short of making it yourself, the next best option would probably be to buy it directly from a "Water Store", then maybe a LFS if they are a good one and keep up on filter changes. Some are great about that and will show you 0 TDS upon request before you buy, others will promise you their water is "fine" but won't show you the results, those are bad LFS.

 

[blue2fyre]

I run just purigen in my tank and I'm pretty happy with the results. I haven't started with carbon yet since I'm not quite sure what's needed. I also have a bit of cheato(algae) with a light to help remove extra nitrates. When I added this and the purigen my nitrates dropped to 0 and have stayed there. Niether is reallyed needed until after the cycle though so you don't really need to worry about it now.

For water I filled up using jugs of distilled water from walmart. I've since switched to RO/DI but for starting out it wasn't too bad. Like ace said just have a TDS meter.

 

[homedog98]

@ ace: oh, that makes sense then. i think i'll just suck it up and go with the tds meter in the first place. and i'm still a bit confused about the media, isn't ROX carbon, carbon? so i do need it in this case? and another thing is, what does GFO stand for? (i'm sure you've probably explained it already... i just forgot lol)

 

[Ace25]

GFO = Granular Ferric Oxide, it removed Phosphates from the water, one of the things that causes algae blooms.

Here is a video to show the difference in carbon. Chemi-Pure uses #3 carbon in their product.
[yt]oVpRGzerJFI[/yt]

 

[Ocean lover]

Hi, I'm new to this forum thing too and the saltwater a bit also. My bf and I have a 28 gallon jbj nano and seting up our 65 soon.
For your cleaning drew I would suggest to get a few (4 or 5) turbo snails. We got a few hermit crabs but we noticed that our biggest one will eat snails if they fall off rocks or glass and can't get back up. Assasin snails are good also because they are smaller. I would wait a bit for the sexy shrimps since they are so small and will stay that way but I would get a peppermint shrimp. Ours has been doing a good job.
For your skimmer, is it a hang on one? If you get a hang on refugium with built-in protein skimmer you will not need a filter as you will be cleaning it ever 2 days.
For a hermit crab, we can't tell you what is the difference but for a 10 gallon I'd start with small ones that you would buy for that, not the ones you can buy as a "pet".
Last advice is saltwater is not as easy and as inexpensive as you think. Do alot of research as it will be needed later on. Last be not least, are you doing a fish only aquarium or a reef aquarium?

 

[Ace25]

Have to disagree with you on the turbo snails, I have 2 in my 75G and 2 is more than enough for that size tank. 4-5 in a 10G will 1/2 fill the tank just with their shells. They get bigger than a golf ball in size. Not sure what as assasin snail is, Astrea snails are a good choice for a 10G though, but if they fall on the sand you have to flip them back over yourself, they can't do it on their own (either can turbos). No skimmer for a 10G tank, really not even recommended on that small of a tank. Blue legged hermits are the most common, but I will always recommend snails over crabs because they live longer and don't kill each other like crabs do. True, saltwater is never as cheap as a person originally thinks it will be but on a 10G tank just doing weekly water changes (1-2G normally, maybe 5G once a month) is more than adequate to keep it good with proper amount of live rock and flow without any other filters but a small HOB filter with a bag of carbon/gfo will help. That's my opinion anyway. Since this thread is posted in the Fish Only section of the forum I would assume that is what this tank is going to be.
:cheers: