A Cycling Question
I’m going to be picking up some live rock to start the cycle in my tank this weekend. I’ve filled the tank with salt water using a really good quality salt and RO water. Salinity is between 1.023 and 1.024, nitrate nitrite ammonia and phosphates are all at 0, and the PH is at 8.2. I’ve got all the equipment running and everything looks like it’s good to go. My goal is to have this tank set-up and running for a few months as a FOWLR tank and slowly add the corals making it a reef tank once I up-grade my lighting to a better quality light that will better support corals.
But I do have a question about cycling my tank
I have a 90 gallon tank with a 30 gallon sump. I’ve already got approx 80 lbs of dry rock in the tank and I will be adding between 20 to 30 lbs of live uncured rock to cycle. The rock will be going in my main tank as there is no room in my sump for any rock. After reading the info on this site about cycling I was not going to have any lights on the tank until after the cycle was done and I had some fish or CUC in there. I don’t want to have to deal with more algae than absolutely necessary as this is my first salt water tank and I’ll likely be making a few mistakes along the way as I learn.
But what if the uncured live rock has some coral on it ? It seems wasteful to allow it to wither and die if I find some coral on my rock. I found a lot of info and heard a few first hand experiences of having corals survive the ammonia and nitrite spikes of a cycle and then latter thrive once the tank is established.
I do have a two FW light fixtures (each double T5 with 54 watts @ 6700K of light) which I was planning to use once I added my CUC to the tank. If I would use these light fixtures, would this be enough light to keep a small coral from dying off (assuming it were to survive the ammonia and nitrites spike) ? On the other hand, would this be enough light to result in excess alga during the nitrate spike after the cycle?
What would you guys do ?
Myka, if you are ready this, great job on the excellent cycling instructions. That info was a great help for me. The best that I’ve found on any forum out there
|