Cycling a marine aquarium

Cycling your marine aquarium.

You should remember that you are trying to achieve a natural eco system and your aquarium should be started with that in mind.

When you are starting a marine aquarium, once ammonia or nitrites are present at any amount, you should than be PH buffing each second day until nitrites are nearly gone, also when you do a water change or anything disturbing to your aquarium, Ph buff your aquarium than as well!

Each and every variation of waste, dead tissue, etc is oxidised into a variation of ammonia and nitrite.

If this is not remembered your result will only be one that may miss the mark on easy success and not experience that confidence as you achieve a very good start to your biological filtering media.

Firstly set up the external filtration you are going to use based on porous media materials or just live rock, to achieve small or extensive biological filtration!

Next get some frozen or fresh marinara mix from the supermarket or seafood shop, wherever you can get it!

Place the marinara into a tube, plastic rubbish bin, whatever with salt water (natural is best) or get some matured water from some ones tank also make sure you have an air stone or two running in this bin always to move the water in this area and to provide oxygen for the mutating bacteria to go to work on these rotting tissues to achieve varied forms of ammonia.

After five or six days the bin has produced an enormous amount of valuable ammonia with in it.

Have your tank ready now with water and it should be completely running, you should also have all your live rock in the aquarium as well.

Pour the water out of the bin through material or whatever to get the particles out so you have very high ammonia water only.

Take out the same amount of water as you had in your bin from your aquarium and add the bin water to it.

If you know someone with a matured aquarium, get some active media or some live rock from them and add it to your tank or the media at the start of your external biological filter.

Start testing for nitrites with in three days and watch the maturing take affect.

With a dry section of size and care, you will never have to test for ammonia after the aquarium has cycled.

Once the nitrites are near zero, (this is optional) make a tub or bin with an overflow out of it and place it somewhere on your filter or aquarium to have your aquarium water pumped into it and than over flow back in and start some hardy fish, crabs, whatever and over feed them a lot in this tube environment so that you do not have to disturb your live rock in your tank by removing unwanted fish.

Establish your system with any fish, crabs dead tissue, whatever in the tub or bin with only bits of plastic pipe for hiding in (and clean these in freshwater once a week), so there is no porus material to become biological.

Once the tank water is free of nitrites, start taking out the life in the tub as you add wanted life forms to your tank.

Add corals, inverts anytime, they do not need to be kept else where for maturing, unless checking for mantis shrimp.

Or you could buy a marine starter from the shop and you will be blissfully unaware of the more robust cycle you could have achieved with a little more trouble, but that is what a marine aquarium is about, if you make a mistake,expensive trouble!

In a day or so, i'll be going through the cycling process once again. I've decided to set up my 20g (2ft tank) for a marine tank once again, but this time i've painted the back and used a finer sand.

I'll do a thread on it so that i can document its progress.

I think everyone has a different way of cycling, or their own beliefs and such. Its fairly well known that if you fill your tank with sand and salt water (to the correct salinity) then when you add a few kgs of live rock, the rock will have dead bacteria and stuff already there, and that dead bacteria will create the ammonia cycle and the bacteria that are survived the transition from ocean to LFS, will feed on that ammonia and then also breed ect ect.

I personally, this time round.. have got my 20g tank, with sand and water.. and i'm using a Aquaclear 70 HOB (Hang on back) filter, modded to be a refugium. I've got a bit of very fine pillow like foam, then a lot of crushed coral / thicker (left over from first round..) gravel, ceramic (i think..) circular tube thingys and smaller versions of the same stuff.. and then a less dense filter foam before it goes back in the water. My thinking is that that will house my living bacteria (i don't plan on much rock).

A mate gave me a great idea tonight, where the stuff is, drill a hole in it (eventually) and put a grating on the bottom, with a small bulkhead.. and i'll be able to pump water up, go through the foam, through the stuff and then down the bulkhead into a sump and be pumped back up.

I could never think of how to do it without drilling the tank, although this will be perfect. I'll do a tutorial on not only making a Aquaclear HOB filter into a fuge/ good marine filter, but also how i plumb it to work in with a sump.

Most anyway will work to start your aquarium,to what degree is the question.
What is important to remember is that there are a lot of variations with in the group of bacterium needed to run a marine system.
A long time ago there were some tests done on amonias and nitrites and it was found each and every form of dead tissue or waste gave off it's own signature variation of amonia,to a supporting form of bacteria to take it to nitrite.
so basicly,if it is a dead worm,what it gives off has a distinct variation to oxydise it to nitrite and a mutation has to happen to convert another form of waste and so on.
From starting a tank with many forms of waste/dead tissue,this makes for a diverse start and allows for very little time waiting for that matured system to not take months,just weeks for a stable system for many life forms.

You should also mention your dead waste / fish tub idea of cycling a tank. I found that to be interesting, i'd never thought of it before. Although, thinking about it now.. it'd probably require some form of sump setup (drilled tank or overflow or something) to get the water into the tub, and pumped back up.

You just do what i showed danny for while his tank is down to change it to a devided tank into two sections and still runs his fish and inverts and all the live rock on his system while he works on a dry tank.
Put a hole or two in a tub near the top,silicon in plastic pipes to overflow into the start of the sump and have it slightly above the edge of the sump to over flow in and the pump pulls the water out of the end of the filter system into the other end of the first tub and you can put on as many tubs cascading from one to the other as you like and it all works off the origianl bio system as a fool proof,what ever goes in over flows back out way.
The pump area in your sump controls the water height,not your tubs,we use a similar thing at the beenliegh show to run two tanks off the one bio filter.
All my storgae tubs work the same way.
You can do this in so many ways to accommodate all homes and styles of tanks.
You can even make a little hang on the side of your tank set up thing,why people do not do this is beyond me
you have fish and inverts in your tank water maturing your tank and they are not actualy in your tank,so you don,t have to try and get them out of your live rock later and upset your tank .