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New Tank - Cycle Questions


Maelgrim

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Hi

Finally have the tank up and going (plumbing etc took a while to sort out).

So its just started cycling (2 days ago).

I have the non live rock from HFF which should mean cycling will take a number of weeks (6 or so I guess).

Is there anything I should do to help the process e.g tip in some amonia, chuck in a dead shrimp or add fish food ?

Should I bother with the lights on while cycling ? (currently off)

Also the water has yellowed quite a bit, I believe this is normal. Will a bag of carbon in the sump clear that ? and should I worry about it during the cycle phase (I guess its just asthetics).

Cheers for your help

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Most dry rock is pretty dirty anyway so provides plenty of food for bacteria to start with. My advice is to let it do its own thing for a few weeks and then add a bit of mussel or something to increase the capacity of the system. My philosophy :lol: is that the more we intervene in the natural process the more we have to keep intervening (says the man with a whole heap of stuff bought to reduce the amount of manual intervention!).

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Most dry rock is pretty dirty anyway so provides plenty of food for bacteria to start with. My advice is to let it do its own thing for a few weeks and then add a bit of mussel or something to increase the capacity of the system. My philosophy :lol: is that the more we intervene in the natural process the more we have to keep intervening (says the man with a whole heap of stuff bought to reduce the amount of manual intervention!).

Yeah that sounds good, there is certainly some crap still stuck to the rocks - although I did try and wash most of it off prior.

have a basic liquid test kit that will cover the essentials for a while. And yes do have a skimmer (reef octopus NW-150 otp

) which has only really just been turned on

only problem so far is a humming noise from the return pump which I have dampened down quite alot so isn't to bad now

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Ehiem pumps are normally pretty quiet, is it new? Check your impella and shaft for wear.

Yeah its new, I don't think the pump is making the noise but rather the plumbing I have going into it. It seems to be vibrating alot. Its mainly flexi fluval piping with a few joins to fit in a non return valve. I have wrapped the piping in some rubber matt stuff which helps.

I wonder if using some hard piping would make it better or worse

Ive read a bit on sump noises and it seems to be a bit of a black art in trying to reduce noise.

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