Marco rock, cycling, & when to put on lights??

[irishmarine]

Hey all,

Its good to be back!!

Basically ive just emptied my old system that was running for the guts of 9 months and decided to go the whole hog and get some biological filtration going. I bought 100 Lb's of Marco rock (nice rock!!) and I placed it in my existing tank (100 gallon), with existing external canister filter (eheim 2 pro) and internal filter and skimmer. I also have two tunze 6055 powerheads to aid flow. I added about 3 kilo...6 pounds of live rock with good colonies of coraaline algae on it to help colonise the (dead) Marco rock.

My question is just if anyone has any experience with Marco rock and cycling. Its been running now 10 days and the cycling is coming along so far, faster than expected, I have the tank at about 80 F, the above circulation, NO LIGHT AT ALL (tank is actually covered), skimmer running, external filter running and 3 powerheads (Tunze 6055's). Salinity is 28.

Right now at day 10 the nitrite has peaked and is falling.

Does it take long for the nitrifying bacteria to be created to keep the nitrate at zero?

How can I favour the colonisation of the dead rock with corraline algae?

When should I switch on the lights, in such a way that it will favour corraline algae and not other "junk"? (when the ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate are all zero????)

Lastly, when everything is at zero should I then add fish, invertebrates (corals) or does the order matter?

cant wait to get this running!!!
Thanks for any help!!

Tank specs
100 gallon
100 Lbs Marco rock and 6 Lb of live rock with corraline algae
salinity 28 PPT
Temp 80 F
2x Tunze 6055
Skimmer v2 600
Light: Current outer orbit 2x150MH and 4 Actinics with moonlights.
External filter: Eheim 2 pro canister.

Again the tank was up and running for 9 months when i decided to re-cycle the tank with marco rock. The tank was immediately filled back with 60% the same water, and was not left drying out!! Emptied and refilled same day.

 

[mgreefer]

I cycled mine outside the tank in a big Rubbermaid tub. The reason being you don’t want all the organics/phosphates/etc to sink in the sand.

The procedure is:

Put the rocks in a big tub with fresh salt mix (you don’t have to bring salinity to our reef salinity specs, just enough like 1.021(sg)/21PPT should be enough to save on salt) and/or you can also add any of your tank water when you do water changes. Add enough flow (couple of power heads), bring temp to reef temp. Leave it for a week while checking (NH4, NO2) every day and keeping tab of the readings.

Step 2:

Do a full water change once a week for 4 weeks. Once the readings are zero for NH4 & NO2 then your rocks are cycled.

If you are impatient like me and want to speed up the process you can add some of the commercial products with bacteria. I used Fritz-Zyme #900.

 

[Andy O]

Step 2:

Do a full water change once a week for 4 weeks. Once the readings are zero for NH4 & NO2 then your rocks are cycled.

I may be wrong but it was my understanding that you don't want to change out 100% of the water as you will be getting rid of the beneficial bacteria that is part of the cycling process. When I cycled my Marco Rock I did 50% water changes every week and within 3 weeks my readings were down to 0.

I'm sure that there are a number of different ways that will get you there though.

 

[irishmarine]

am i right in assuming the following:

Dont do a water change at all, instead let the Nitrogen cycle kick in and do its work???

Also, not putting the lights on until the cycle is over and all Zero's?? I wasnt going to put on the lights until the cycle is complete, and even then i wasnt going to put the metal halides on until there was a need for it, ie when i buy some coral's, so basically just run it on actinics til then???? Any suggestions?

Anyone have any experience with lage amounts of marco rock and colonising it with live rock with corraline algae? How long it took? typical things they encountered? When they put the lights on?

 

[Andy O]

I cured about 50# of Marc's rock with about 20# of established rock. If it were me I would definitely do water changes. Changed out about 50% of the water every week and after about 3 weeks my readings were all 0. Every situation will be different but this is my experience.

I wouldn't use lights until it is done curing as you don't want any type of algae bloom. You probably don't need light at all considering it is just the rock. If you wanted to use lights I would suggest no more than a couple of hours a day.

If you are able clean out some of the dead stuff off the rock b/f you begin curing that will help speed it up a little bit.

 

[marco67]

FWIW,
I do a near 100% change at about the 5days-1week mark.

You'll find lots of people that support no changes but IMO if you want to live in the house while cycling a water change is necessary (rotting organic material stinks!....real bad!).

At that point I'll add Fritz and seed rock/ sand.

On average i'm testing no ammonia no Nitrite and nitrate falling in ~3 weeks.

W/O fritz add at least 2 weeks to that

 

[Joedes3]

My tank cycled in less than a week with Marcor rock and Fritz.

 

[irishmarine]

Hey! Thanks for the info guys. I cant get Fritz over here. The cost of shipping Fritz to Ireland would be about 300 dollars cos of the need for refrigerated transport. Its up and running now about 11 days, ive gone thru the ammonia peak and nitrite peak, and both Ammonia and Nitrite are almost 0 now, so im assuming this is the regular pace of things. Ive no idea how long it will take for the nitrate to come down to zero. Will water changes be needed to bring the nitrate to go to 0 or should i just wait for the nitrifying bacteria to do that job?

 

[irishmarine]

Someone also suggested that I should get rid of my canister filter (Eheim 2 pro external canister with ceramic tubes and bio balls)????? Should I??? I dont depend on it for circulation. Another thing i was considering is would it be usefull to fill the external canister with remainging marco rock rubble?? Or would this be any use??

 

[JayM]

Someone also suggested that I should get rid of my canister filter (Eheim 2 pro external canister with ceramic tubes and bio balls)????? Should I??? I dont depend on it for circulation. Another thing i was considering is would it be usefull to fill the external canister with remainging marco rock rubble?? Or would this be any use??

switch the canister filter over from bioballs if you plan on a reef tank. It would be better served used for carbon and/or phosban.

 

[irishmarine]

would loading it with marco rock rubble help ??? or carbon and phosban better?? its a big canister! I heard the ceramic tubes in there are no good??

 

[JayM]

The bioballs and ceramic pieces will act as nitrate factories. As I stated above, dump them if you are going to a reef tank. In terms of filtration, Marco rock rubble in one of the sections may aid you in denitrifying, assuming it's actually been cured before you put it in your tank. Becuase of the flow rate in the filter, that would be more like sump rock (denitrifying) rather than fuge rock, which would be for pods, etc.

Carbon will polish your water, and remove pollutants. I suggest using it.

Phosban will lower your phosphates. Your tank is going to go through the new tank strife that happens....be ready for cyano, hair algae, dinoflagellates, etc. Keeping the nutrients that they need to grow - namely nitrates and phosphates - low, will help get you over those new tank hurdles more quickly. (notice I didn't say FAST )

The difference between setting up my first tank (72, still up) and my second tank, was that I spent WAY more on lighting, filtation, skimming, water circulation, and monitoring RIGHT AWAY, instead of economizing, then doing it over.

 

[irishmarine]

good info thanks for that. I have 3 trays in the canister filter. assuming i dum the bio balls and ceramic tubes could i fill it with the following:

Uncured marco rubble (and just wait for it to go ammonia->nitrite->nitrate)
carbon
phosban

If these three are good combo for the filter any particular order top to bottom of canister they may act best in??

So yes in a way this would act like my sump, but without any light, although not large enough it would have some input to the water quality!!!

I didnt know carbon gives the water a polish!! Nice! thanks!