First off, if there is anything you believe I have left out, tell me and I can add it into this guide.
I also think we should sticky this to the 'new to reefing' area as its most appropriate here
How to cycle your reef tank and when you should start adding fish.
First of all, there are a number of items you will need in order to cycle your tank, know when your tank has finished cycling and whether or not it is safe to add fish and corals.
· Saltwater Test kit – you will need a test kit which tests:
[FONT="]o [/FONT]Nitrates
[FONT="]o [/FONT]Nitrites
[FONT="]o [/FONT]PH
[FONT="]o [/FONT]Ammonia
· Other useful tests are
[FONT="]o [/FONT]Phosphates
[FONT="]o [/FONT]Calcium
There are various methods on how a person may cycle there tank. The most commonly used and easiest method will be the one that I will demonstrate below. For this you will need:
· Live Rock
· Live Sand
· Salt water – at the correct salinity (between 1.024 and 1.026) refractometer is the best for this
· Powerhead (to create flow in the tank)
· Heater (in order to determine correct salinity and create right environment for fish)
First off, create your sand bed for your tank with the live sand you have purchased. When you do this, you need to determine how deep your sand bed will be. The deeper the sand bed, the more Cleaning crew you will need in order to turn over the sand as to not create Nitrate bubbles under the sand bed. Now you can fill your tank, I choose to use a bowl or a slow siphon in order not to stir up too much of the sandbed through this stage.
Now that your tank is full, you can add your live rock in whatever pattern you choose and think is aesthetically pleasing. This live rock will do most of the work in cycling your tank. At any time in this stage, you can add your heater and powerhead, but make sure that the powerhead is not running out of the water as damage will occur.
Most reef tanks will take about a month to cycle through, but the cycle can take anywhere from 2 to 8 weeks depending on how much dead material was on the live rock when you first added it. Make sure you don’t decide your tank is ready without doing the tests and seeing that your nitrates, nitrites and ammonia are 0. If you do, you will have deaths in your tank. And the biggest rule here is:
NOTHING GOOD EVER HAPPENS QUICKLY IN A REEF TANK.
While cycling your tank, you can do the following:
· Run your lights
· Skimmer
· And have your refugium running properly (suggested)
Inversely, while cycling your tank you should not:
· Do any water changes
· Add animals to your tank
If you have purchased your test kit before cycling your tank, you will be able to follow the cycling process as it occurs.
Following the cycle
Step 1
The first thing you will see is a spike in ammonia a few days after the tank has begin to cycle. You should test this every 3-4 days and through this, you will see the ammonia continue to rise until eventually, it becomes 0.
Step 2
The next thing you will begin to test will be nitrites and you can follow the instructions in step 1 and eventually you will see the nitrites drop to 0.
Step 3
The last step is to test your nitrates and these will end up being very faint or 0. When you get to this point, your tank has most likely gone through its cycle. It is recommended that you take a few days to wait in order to make sure that the tank has definitely completed its cycle
Adding life to your tank
The first thing you should start to add to your tank is inverts. Inverts are known as your cleaning crew and are very important to having a live, happy tank. You should begin to add these very slowly, only a few at a time in order to keep bio load at a minimum and to let everything establish itself in the tank.
Without fish, your inverts won’t have as much food available to them, so don’t add too many inverts to your tank without having some fish for them to clean up after. After having your inverts for 1-2 weeks in the tank, you can start adding fish. The suggestion is that you don’t add any more than 50% of your tanks capacity in fish, but it is suggested to add less than this in order to let all fish acclimate to the tank and in order to keep the bio load steady in the tank. When stocking your tank, you should not have anymore than 4" (10cm) of small-to-medium fish per 10 gallons, or 2" (5cm) of larger/fast growing fish per 10 gallons.
So with this rule, you can determine your maximum amount of fish you can have in your tank depending on the size of the fish. The only problem with this is some tanks can stock more or less than this number depending on the filtration systems available. So make sure, after you add fish, you continually check your water levels in order to make sure it is safe for your animals.
Adding corals
Before you add corals, you need to make sure that your lights are sufficient for the tanks and there is enough flow in the tank.
For flow, it is suggested that your tanks water volume gets moved around 10 times in 1 hour. Depending on the size of the tank, you may need multiple powerheads and you must use your own common sense to work whether there is enough flow.
Lights
All animals in your tank, you cannot add animals without it and should never attempt it. For corals though, there is a higher requirement for light and a formula is available for you to work this out.
To have corals, we require at least 4 watts per gallon of water in the tank. This is a minimum and some animals such as clams or anemones may require a higher amount of light in your tank.
If you have a 50 gallon tank, it is suggested that you have 200 watts of lighting, but the type of lighting also makes a difference. A normal light will not be good enough for corals. The best lights for a tank are:
· T5 lighting
· Metal Halides
· LED lights designed for reef aquariums (very expensive)
Without the correct lighting, your corals will die quite quickly.
It is recommended also that you get a timer for your lights. There is no need to run your lights all the time and nor should you. If you run your lights more than 10 hours a day, you are doing your tank harm by promoting the growth of algae in your tank.
Josh
