Cycling A Marine Tank

[Xraymark]

Your CUC are as interesting as anything in the tank. Personally I would add a few snails and crabs first. Leave the shrimp until fish are added as they are more scavengers.

Peppermint shrimp can tackle aiptasia but they can be a bit hit or miss in this area. They also can start eating your softie coral, so a bit of a risk. I injected vinegar into my few Alps and that worked for me. Some people love their peppermint's.

IMO, add your initial CUC, then a few weeks later add your first fish. I left a good month between adding new fish.

Add stock slowly and you will be fine. It also allows you more time to decide what you want.

 

[Donya]

Peppermint shrimp can tackle aiptasia but they can be a bit hit or miss in this area. They also can start eating your softie coral, so a bit of a risk.

 
I think most of these issues are care-related and/or incorrect species IDs - either on the part of the shrimp or the anemone, as there are multiple Aiptasia species too. I've seen the problem behaviors, but they were all correctable with only two clear exceptions. I've had tons of Lysmata. wurdemanni from different sources and been able to get all of them to bust Aiptasia for me with careful adjustments, although not the larger Aip species (exception #1 - but those also don't split unless injured). There are three things that will reliably cause lack of aiptasia-eating for example: too much other food for scavenging (no motivation to hunt), not enough shrimp in a group, and shrimp getting old (exception #2). People often buy large shrimp thinking they'll tackle bigger anemones, but old shrimp are often less active and eat less. When growing them from little guys, it's obvious when they're getting old because of that. It's better to buy the smallest peps available both because they'll live longer (it's a short-lived species anyway) and be more active for longer. Aside from going after corals due to being malnourised (which can happen when trying to "starve" them into eating Aiptasia), shrimp will also go after something the instant they smell anything decaying, which is often before it is obvious to a hobbyist that something is wrong with a coral (same issue as hermits/mythrax going after corals). 

 

[CezzaXV]

Hey guys, thanks for the advice so far. It is appreciated.

I just made a post on my tank journal over on the other marine forums I'm signed up to, and thought I'd just let you guys be in the know as well. Some people will disagree with what I wrote, but I am confident I am making the right decision for me.

I've got tired of passively going along with this tank, not really knowing what I'm doing and getting different advice regarding cycling everywhere I turn, both from this site and elsewhere. It seems to be much, much less clear what to do when you don't get spikes from die off and everyone has different opinions. As such, I decided to get assertive and make a firm decision about what to do, based on what I know and what makes sense for me to do. Some people will disagree with me here, but this is what I'm doing.

My second 0.25ppm dose of ammonia was processed in significantly less time than the first dose (36 hours as opposed to a few days). Last night I decided to double my dose to 0.5ppm, and 20 hours later the ammonia is completely gone, although I still have 1ppm nitrite that I hope will be gone by the morning. To be fair, I tested this morning approx 10 hours after that dose, and I had 0.25ppm ammonia and 0.25ppm nitrite, so it's not had the full day to process all that.

As well as this, I decided to add a very tiny amount of crushed flake to the tank, as if there are any unseen critters in the rock they'll have something to feed on, and if not it will rot down and help the cycle. Should also give my skimmer something to skim either way.

If the nitrite is gone in the morning (I hope/think it will be) I'll dose to 0.75ppm or 1ppm and let it chew through that. I think 1ppm is significantly more waste than I can realistically expect a small CUC to produce. So, as long as it chews through that dose in a reasonable time, I will be comfortable adding my hermits and snails at some point next week (I'm told cleaner shrimp do better in a more mature tank, but if anyone has any shrimpy ideas for me, do say). I suspect I'd be fine to add my first fish at that point as well, but I'll play it safe. I'm prepared for the fact that my nitrates are going to be high and I'll likely need to do a fair sized water change to get them down.

Not really interested in debating/arguing about this (no matter what I decide, someone will tell me I'm wrong), but thought I'd just drop by and say that this is the decision I have come to.

 

[Donya]

I know you're not looking for replies, but I'm going to make one anyway because other people will be reading this even if you don't take it on board and continue down this path with repeated ammonia dosing. From what you said, it sounds like the rock you've got is low to moderate quality in terms of fauna so you are probably not going to damage it too much with this treatment, which is essentially subjecting the tank to conditions that would normally risk crashing even a healthy, established tank. However, please do NOT subject any high quality rock with lots of macro fauna to this kind of unnecessary stress testing, since subjecting it to repeated nutrient spikes would risk killing off half the beneficial organisms. You may well be killing off hidden beneficial things already with this treatment. 1ppm is not a low level in a marine system and will easily kill beneficial organisms.