Dry Rock

[SmallFry]

Originally Posted by tidal_waters

OK, so I have had the 75 gallon with a 25 gallon sump up and running now for a month now and I'm hoping to get some assistance about cycling dry rock times.

I have 60lbs of dry rock in the main display with 60lbs of new sand. I have another 25lbs of rock from my solana in the sump. The pumps have been running for one months time. The skimmer has been running for 9 days, and last friday I had placed in a few Chromis.

I have been using Seachem Stabilizer in the tank for 9 days as well.

So far, I have yet to see any ammonia spike, and nitrates and nitrites are at a minimum. I was gone away for the first two weeks of the tank running. for the last two weeks i have noticed the following occurrences in my tank

1) a thin brown layer of algae film covered 85% of the tank
2) that died off and cleaned up
3) now I have little tuffs of green hair algae.

So for anyone else that had used dry rock in a new tank with new sand, how long did it take to cycle?

I started ~35lbs of dry rock off with 2lbs of live rock. Despite throwing food in as well, I never saw anything more than 0.5ppm ammonia and 3ppm nitrite. Neither of which I'm sure weren't me making an incorrect judgement of the colour of the test kit... If i read it correctly your 25lbs from the solana was live? If so, I'm not surprised you haven't seen a traditional cycle, or if you never do..