How long should I let the water cycle in a 180 gallon aquarium before I add my groupers?
I just set up a 180 salt water tank over the weekend. It has about 75lbs of cured live rock (out of my existing tank), 120lbs of old live rock that has been sun bleached, another 75 lbs of rock will go in when I add the fish, 90 lbs of crushed coral and I am adding another 120lbs or so of live sand when I add the fish. I am using a 60 gallon tank for a sump filter system with 1800 gph pump to filter the water (turn over rate of 10 times per hour). When I filled the tank. I used roughly 40 gallons of established water and mixed up about 130 gallons of new water.
I realize it takes about 28 days for the nitrogen to peak in a new tank, but I am wondering what other experienced aquariumist think as to how long before I should add fish, seeing how I added some of the needed bacteria to break down the nitrogen (I also added some dirt filter media).
My grouper is a blue line grouper that I have had for 4 years. It is close to 12″ long. I also have a soap fish that is just as old and as big (actually a bit fatter than the blue line). A triangulated trigger that I have had for over a year. A brown stripped moray eel (about 22″ long), golden head moray (a lot smaller than the other, but growing fast) and a green wolf eel.
I am also looking for any ideas of fish that could hang in the tank…..my grouper is not nice to new fish at all, so I need to add a few new fish before he gets transfered.
Thanks!
No one can tell you this and be 100%. the only way to know is to add ammonia or “starter fish” not reccomended by myself and test it each weak untill the ammonia turns to nitrite . once this happens wait it out intill this turns to nitrate. this usually takes about 6 weeks. i believe this would be alot quicker for you as you already have 40 gallons of established water. take it very slow introducing your fish once cycled. at about 6 months it will be “fully” mature.
As with fresh water aquariums, the cycle doesnt start till you add fish. Or add in another source of Ammonia. if you want to do fishless cycle then add a certain amount of pure ammonia so that your test kits read about 5ppm of Ammonia in the water. Once the ammonia gets there you add the same amount as you did the day before every day. This will induce the beneficial bacteria to come out of the air and into your filter.
Again you need ammonia to start the cycle, if you just add beneficial bacteria from a pre existing aquarium into a new one that has NO fish they will die off and you will go back into new tank syndrome.
Bacteria feeds on the Ammonia, which is the waste product of fish. no fish= no ammonia= no beneficial bacteria
With all the live rock in the tank, you certainly don’t want to add ammonia. There will be some anyway since in moving the rock, some life form that can’t take being torn in half will be, or some shade loving critter will end up on the wrong side of a rock and choose to expire – all ammonia/nitrogenous waste producing adventures. But you are moving an already established biofilter so it should handle it without much or maybe even not any blip on the test kit scores.
When the Cleveland Aquarium moved its fish to newly built quarters at the zoo, they didn’t wait 28 days, even though some of their fish had been at the old location for decades. They did not have 28 days and had to be moved much sooner. The aquarists arrived to take over the new aquariums from the keepers that had set them up with clear blue water. The zoo keepers looked surprised when the aquarists started dumping buckets of more mud than water into all the tanks, being careful to put saltwater filter detritus in the saltwater tanks and fresh in the fresh. They didn’t say much to the zoo keepers. The beautiful clear blue tanks turned opaque brownish yellow and the aquarists left. The next day they began arriving with the fish, sharks, Australian lungfish, clownfish, you name it. By then the tanks had cleared. The filters were actually polishing the water so it was particle free, clearer than before, but admittedly not quite as blue as before.
It seems like you are following a version of this procedure, so you could add fish as soon as the filters are going and the detritus has settled out or settled into the skimmers. For the first few weeks I’d borrow a big skimmer from someone and run at least two skimmers, since stuff will be stirred up. I just moved a custom 65 gallon reef tank (25″ by 50″ by 12″ tall) that has been running since 1983 into a custom 80 that fits on the same stand. That 65 was ten years old and had raised up lots of freshwater fry from btiny to sellable size, when it was pressed into use as a reef tank. We were beginning to worry it would spring a leak some day. Lighting technology has changed over the years so we decided to make the replacement tank several inches taller than the original.
Because of the way this stand was built, there is not a practical way to add a second skimmer or I’d be “networking” with members of my local saltwater club to borrow one.
Adding fish in stages sounds like a reasonable way to go if you have a logical schedule and you have explained that.
The part of the schedule I feel uneasy about is adding new fish. If you put them in the tank, then that’s using this new tank as a quarantine tank for at least the next four weeks, possibly lots longer if some problem turns up and has to be cured That would be a pain in a tank that large with all that live rock. I would wait, quarantine the new fish in one of your old tanks. When they have “passed”, rearrange the rock-work in the 180 to put everyone on an even keel, then add the new comers.