Quote:
Originally posted by dendro982
I somehow missed a part about cycling this remote sandbed - how to start it without plumbing to the main tank until ammonia spike does down?
Why I'm expecting ammonia:
Last week I assembled the new 5g tank with the water and LR from established tank, only 5 LB on CaribSea bagged live sand were new - there was ammonia growth in a day.
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If you have ammonia in one day, you should test your sand and source (tank) water.
With only 5 gallons of water, you could easily change the water daily for a week to keep it down. Move a few more rocks, or an aging carbon or mechanical filter to that tank to assure you have a viable bacteria culture.
Nitrifying and denitrifying bacteria populate detritus attached to a stable site, not the site itself, so transfer the established media carefully. With no load on the RDSB you should have no ammonia.
An older established sand bed may be rich in bound phosphates, but absorption media will remove it. Your LFS or fellow reefer should be able to supply you with a portion of their established sand bed. This will cut months off of your waiting time, and provide a phosphate export and renewed buffering capacity to the donor tank.