Tank cycling plan

[carbondave]

I am (very, painfully slowly) making progress on my tank build, and I've started thinking about my cycling plan. Below is what I've come up with based on input from a variety of sources including BRS, this forum, and others. Note that when I refer to "cycling" here I don't just mean the nitrogen cycle, but also establishing the full range of organisms that help keep our tanks looking good. Also, for reference, my final setup will include a 75 gal DT, a 20 gal sump with fuge, and a 10 gal QT. I will be starting with dry Marco Rock in the DT.

Day 1: With sponge filter in sump, add live rock from TBSaltwater to sump (and maybe some to display), ghost feed
Day 10 (or thereabouts): Nitrogen cycle done, put the sponge filter in the QT with 2 clownfish, follow the current quarantine protocol
During quarantine period: keep lights off in DT
T-4 weeks to end of quarantine: start dosing MicroBacter Clean, dose for 4 weeks
End of quarantine: Add clownfish to DT, turn lights on, add algae to fuge, run fuge lights opposite schedule from DT, add pods to both DT and fuge
End of quaratine + 1 week: Add first batch of CUC (3 trochus, 3 nassarius, 3 cerith, 5 hermits)
If things start looking ugly: add fighting conch, emerald crab

One question I have on this: should I be ghost feeding the DT on some regular interval while the clownfish are quarantining to keep the bacteria happy? Anything you would do differently? What else am I missing?

 

[brandon429]

your plan is great with 2 tuneups imo

feed the clowns where they reside, absolutely skip ghost feeding. that kind of rock is packed in every crevice with permanent food supply, I'm saying you can fallow the rock for 10 years and it will still support pods and never ever lose cycling bacteria from the wait, your plan above assumes that rock needs help maintaining it's bacteria, not even dry white rock you bring up with bottle bac and no waste stores can starve as an ammonia-handling cycle, that's a misnomer reef peers have spread online for decades, the starved cycle/doesn't occur

but among all rocks buyable, those you are getting are the most cycled most not in need of bacterial support substrates you can ever own

 

[brandon429]

microbacter clean is a waste of money in the plan, so is any other brand of bottle bac

do all cleaning by hand

be feeding the tank when there's animals in the display to consume it, it will litter the rocks to ghost feed the display/not helpful/algae risk. those rocks come primed for algae issues perhaps more than any other kind, diversity has it's double-edged sword this way, so the last thing you want to do is input feed that just sits on top of the rocks and sand degrading.

 

[brandon429]

one final adjust

your live rock system must fallow for 45 days min before you add any qt fish, or you qt'd for nothing.

your method is adding fish first, after quarantine. its good you are using QT but this isn't the efficient way to stock with qt fish you paid big bucks to house/secure and sustain in the preps.

by adding them first you change the entire dynamic of your setup into a 2-tank requirement or you are quarantining for no reason currently

adding fish first: you must fallow the live rock tank separately, intro the qt fish, then fallow in a separate tank any wet item you'll ever add from a fish store. any break in that chain means you qt'd for nothing and broke the security link for disease exclusion. everything you stock: frags, more corals, new rock has to pass through 45 day fallow and in my tank I wouldn't even short change that I'd do 90 days

adding fish last, a year from now after your entire coral reef is built: you fallow the whole tank once, after the last addition, then intro qt fish and you're up and running. any extra odds and ends/wet from a pet store/are fallowed in the second tank still but now you're not doing this 20 times. adding fish first means you're simply more likely to skip prep protocols later on/risk due to order of ops.

replace all concerns about bacteria support with keeping the exclusion protocol chain for disease unbroken.

 

[carbondave]

Thanks for all the feedback! Just to make sure I'm following your comments, the live rock has sufficient bacteria such that I don't need to add anything else and there's enough existing food to keep the bacteria alive for a couple of months while quarantining the fish. And by the time I get to the point of adding the fish, I should consider the tank "cycled" even though I haven't done anything except add a little live rock.

Regarding the point on quarantining vs. allowing the tank to be fallow: that's some great feedback and I appreciate the insight. While I get the logic, I'm not sure it's realistic to think that I will never want to add another coral to my tank after some initial setup period. I'll need to think about how to implement a potential fallowing setup.

 

[brandon429]

if everyone did your method the rates of fish disease would drop substantially in the hobby that's for sure, nice design

they are having you wait ten days so that very fancy/delicate animals that reef tanks don't usually carry/sponges special clams etc/ have time to die off and cure. its not about bacteria/that ten days wait