Faster Cycling

[Grinch245]

Is there a way to cheat and make your tank cycle faster?
Just wondering. Trying to get mine setup in a hurry. I just want to start buying stuff for it.
Thanks Ryan

[sperry]

Marine Bio-Spira, cured live rock Good things come to those who wait though.

[Illuminati]

Agra Alive sand claims to cut down on the cycle, It worked for me to. Use it with cured live rock and you might not even see a cycle, I still would add things slowly like sperry said :)

[storagedaddie]

Fight the urge, and take your time. You will see here on RC over and over... "The only good things that happen fast, are bad"

Let it do it's thing...

[Jocko]

What's in your tank now? Unfortunately, the cycle is not a step that you can just check off a list. Every time you add or remove life, you disrupt the equalibrium and the bacteria population has to adjust.

A tank with a couple of pieces of rock thats cycled doesn't have a very large bacteria population because there isn't much life that is producing waste (bacteria food). Whenever you add a new fish or coral, the amount of waste produced is now greater than what your tank can handle and thus it will affect water quality. It takes a bit of time for the population to grow to handle the new supply of waste. Adding fish slowly, the impact is not noticable. Add a lot of stuff at once and now you have alot of unprocessed waste. If this degrades water quality enough, then a really sensitive creature might die. That will cause more water quality problems. More things die... you get the idea.

Not sure if anyone had told you WHY to add things slowly. That is why.

[Mojo Jojo]

No such thing unless you take pieces from another set up tank ... SW takes time and you cant create an ocean in a week ... Patience:D

[Doglover_50]

pedal faster, wait for the tank to catch up....

[YellowDesmo998]

I used fully cured LR and fresh sand, not live sand. My tank cycled in 4 days and by day 6 I saw a small diatom bloom. By day 12 most of the diatoms were gone and my levels were still 0 across the board.

Granted I did 2 25% water changes every week for the first two weeks and continue to do a 25% water change every 5 to 7 days. Take you time and be diligent with your maintenance.

[Waterboy]

I agree with colinadam. If you start with well-cured live rock (at least 1#/gallon) and Arag-Alive sand, you'll probably have little or no cycle.

[matter1331]

there's a product called turbo start that will speed up the cycle, I've seen small tanks cycle in a few days with it. It's basically a concentrated solution of nitrifying bacteria. That being said, you still have to go slowly as far as adding livestock. Patience is very key to the hobby, and while you can speed up certain things, not everything can be advanced extremely quickly.

[TriniReefer]

I put a dead fish in mine for a few days. It worked then my two curly cue anenomes i had in there ate em.