Hey all, I just got a 3 gallon picotope. I am going to the LFS to score some live rock and sand. I will also be getting my water from them as it is only $1 per gallon. If I am using cured rock and the same water as the rock has been in will I see a cycle? All I am adding is a bag of live sand. Will the sand cause a cycle?

The live sand often is full of dead bacteria, while it may offer a faster cycle, chances are, you're still have one.

I would use dry sand as it will become "live" with time.

IMO using established LR shouldn't cause a cycle...but I would let the tank mature atleast a couple weeks or so before adding any livestock. Get the water parms in order...make sure to test for nitrates/nitrites/amonia...etc.
Am i right???
Anyone else have thoughts on this???

It really makes no difference to me, I am not putting any animals in until I can get a read on how the thing acts in my cold basement. I want to get into a really good habit of testing, checking, topping off, and changing water before I go adding life to it. I got a heater so I will want to make sure I know the temp at which to set it and how much evap and all that jazz. I want to totally have it under control so I do not kill anything.

The basement is finished, but is not heated or ACd. It stays around 68 all the time down there which is good. Once i get the heater dialed in everything should be fine as far as temp control. I will ad a CUC as soon as params allow. Then, I will have to upgrade lights before anything alive goes in. Well, maybe some shrimps.

it will cycle

I have the same tank and all I can say is take your time. With a take that small there is no room for error.If you dont get live sand make sure you rinse it real good.Other then that, let it cycle a couple weeks and get your clean up crew going. Let me know if I can help. If you check my build thread you will see that the only problems ive faced is the heat. A tank that small is real tricky to keep the temp stable. Good luck.

LOL. I forgot to rinse the sand. So cloudy.

LOL. I forgot to rinse the sand. So cloudy.

It will clear on it's own.

So after a day and a half, I have no changes in anything. PH is 8.0, everything else (ammonia, nitrates and nitrites) is 0. Temp is steady at 73. My kit does not test for calcium and magnesium. I thought I ordered that one too but I guess not. I don't think that "live sand" was ever all that live.

Ok. Three days later and ammonia is still 0. I m having a hard time keeping the temp up. Lights were on all day and the heater was on as high as I could get it. It only brought the tank to 75. Wussupwittdat yo? It is a 25 watt heater in three gallons of water.

I don't really expect a cycle. Everything came already cured from the LFS (it was all in use) and was put right into my tank at home. I even got my water from their tanks. Probably gonna wait a couple more days and get a few snails and maybe a shrimp.

Ok. Three days later and ammonia is still 0. I m having a hard time keeping the temp up. Lights were on all day and the heater was on as high as I could get it. It only brought the tank to 75. Wussupwittdat yo? It is a 25 watt heater in three gallons of water.

I don't really expect a cycle. Everything came already cured from the LFS (it was all in use) and was put right into my tank at home. I even got my water from their tanks. Probably gonna wait a couple more days and get a few snails and maybe a shrimp.

Hi,
i had problems with getting mine to 78 degrees, had 20 watts in it ( 2 marineland 10's )and would drop to 72 at night. Bought a visi-therm deluxe 50 watt , just the right height to stand up in the rear corner . 7 1/2 inches. Have had NO problems keeping a constant 78 degrees ever since.
Water evaporation is driving me a little nuts, even with a custom made 1/2 glass top , have to add am and pm, about a pint a day. Not sure what I'm gonna do if I leave town for more than a day. I can post pic of the tank with top if your interested in a top. I love my pico, have 3 SW tanks up now and it is our favorite to play with.


Joey

Thanks for the offer on the top. I think I am going to end up drilling this thing for a 10 gallon sump and have an ATO. Maybe. Until then, I am going to go topless and add water twice daily as you do. I may have to bring it upstairs. It stays between 65 and 68 in my basement. I just have to find a place for it that the wife will not go nuts about.

I suspect you will cycle,

I have a pico setup in the bedroom, reason your showing no readings yet is because nothing has started to build up. I started my pico a month ago. I used new water, new sand but live rock from another tank that was established.

I kick started the cycle with a 5 cm piece of raw shrimp. Took about a week before I saw any change in readings then the ammonia spiked. Now i am just working on reducing my nitrates down to under 10 they are hovering at about 15ppm atm. A good way to know if your cycle is underway is if you see diatoms, always a sign in my view that your tank is cycling.

I evaporate around 2-3 cups a day, will be fitting a little 1 gallon autotop off to it this weekend once I have my RO unit installed.

Hope this helps

Mark

When/how do you know if that shrimp thing is necessary? Sounds to me like all you did was cause a spike in ammonia and purposely crashed the tank. Would it not have been the same if you never did that? From what I have read the cycle is a process that happens due to dead "stuff" on your live rock and in your sand. That stuff is already dead and must regrow in order to adequately filter and remove toxins. If you never had dead things on your rock, then you simply cause an ammonia spike with a dead shrimp, not the dead organisms on your rock.

It's not a crash if there's nothing alive in there, not even bacteria. You need a source of ammonia to feed the bacteria. If you don't use live rock or anything, there is nothing living in the tank, and nothing dying, so it won't cycle. You introduce the source of ammonia and the bacteria eat it up and multiply.


BTW, Freddy, how did you get your state to display AL? I've looked all over for that, but when I signed up, it wouldn't let me pick, it was just stuck on GA.

I started off with rock from the LFS that went from their tank and directly into mine. No die off. So the rock is established. So unless I put something dead in the tank, I don't think I will get a spike.


Not sure about the state. I just signed up.

unless i am mistaken, you need a cycle, this what will enable your tank to support your live stock level. The cycle process builds your biological filter. The shrimp method force ammonia into your tank, its not a crash as you have no live stock.

Posting from my phone is not good lol. I blame pulling my back last night working on my kitchen.

OK as I was saying looking at the cycle, ammonia produces a boost of ammonia munching bacteria that will convert the ammonia to nitrite this in turn will get munched and turned to nitrate. The bit I think that we miss sometimes when talking about using existing rock is that if you put this into a new tank what will the bacteria feed on. If i recall correctly the life span on this microbes is only a matter of hours and if they do not have enough to eat and reproduce then over time they will die off and not enough new bacteria are formed to keep the bio filter at the level you would want. So when you then go to add inverts or fish your level will shoot up. I know I found this when adding livestock.

As I said in a previous post things like diatoms give you a good indication on a new tank of the bio load as they will feed off excess nutrients that your biofilter can not breakdown, hence these being a sign of a tank cycling.

Just my two cents I am still finding my way in reef keeping but that's my understanding of cycling.

Thanks. You guys obviously know more than I do. I was thinking that if your goal is to grow beneficial bacteria and your rock already has it, then you don't need to kill your rock and have it all grow back. And if it is true that those existing bacteria die in transit, then they would cause the cycle and there would be immediate ammonia in the water. Right? At least that is what is seen when live rock is shipped over a couple of days anyway. In those cases, there is no need to "start" the cycle with dead shrimp or fish food because the dead bacteria on the rock itself causes the cycle. OR...All of my study has been for naught. LOL.

The one thing I have learned in this hobby is this, nothing is instant or immediate unless you pour lots of weird stuff in your tank.

People have different views on how to address the issues that arise in running a reef tank. The pico I have had cured rock placed in it and I had 0 readings of any kind for atleast a week. Given the size of a pico you have to factor in the total mass of microbes available to die off be replaced etc. Right now I have a damsel fish in mine and thats it and i have 0 ammonia 0 nitrite and less then 20 ppm nitrate. But the time for me to get to that has been in all around 3 weeks.

You dont have to use shrimp, my biocube I did the exact way that your doing your pico and it works fine. The approach I have adopted is I want good biological flitration from my rock, the two ways I have found to achieve that are:

1) Add some matter for the bacteria to feed off
2) Allow the cycle with just rock and add new stuff in no greater than once every two weeks, that way gives the tank a chance to catch up with the increased load.

The issue as I see it with a pico is they are very small so its really easy to cause an overload with such little water and surface area. Over stocking in either my cube or 90 is more forgiving. That and the evaporation of your water volume make a pico a challenging tank to keep stable.

I think you are doing fine with your approach I just think that it will take a bit longer for it to cycle but thats just my view

The really cool thing with a pico is how easy your water changes are if something does get out of whack.

When I moved my 90 I kept all the rock immersed, livestock in seperate tubs, inverts in another. I lost zero livestock during the move, I retained around 90% of the water and seeded the tank with two cups of old sand and all new live sand. I did water changes everyday for the first 3 days. Tested the water everyday to see what was happening. It took the tank 7 days for ammonia to appear and then it only ever reached .25 ppm. Nitrites never even registered, however nitrates I am still running 40ppm which is why I am not adding anything as yet. I do a 10 gallon water change every other day but its a slow process. Intresting point though when i tested the tank which is 2 years old before i moved it nitrates where at 80ppm.

Hope my experiences help.

Mark

Thanks again. I think I am going to add mt CUC next week and I will NEVER have a fish in it anyway. I just want some sexies and softies in there. Once my softies grow up, I will move them into a larger tank. The pico is so I have something that sort of always looks reasonably finished while the larger tank looks like a work in progress. One day the larger tank will be finished as well. Until then, it is pico life for me.

Cool,

That's what I did with my cube, first addition was a peppermint shrimp that now eats from my hand and tries to give me a manicure at the same time :D

My LFS has a few peppermints that eat from the owner's hand. Really cool. He has them trained so that when he puts his fingers in the water, they come running and play with him. Cool. but the sexies are just cooler IMO.