High School Reefer Madness

[SamK]

Hi,
I teach chemistry in a Mercer County High School. We are starting a reef tank and to this point we seem to be making progress. It is a 75 gal. and a 29 gal sump. We added rock the other day and the kids think it looks great. We have nothing living in the tank, but the values at this point are - pH = 8.2, salinity= 1.023, temp = 75, nitrites = 0.25 ppm.
We have nothing live in it yet. The water became very cloudy, as we expected after adding the rock. It now is clear, but there are a lot of suds in the sump. Is this normal after adding rock that has been sitting in some garage for a long time? Will it eventually stop foaming? The foam looks like soap bubbles, but isn't - some it takes on a yellow tint, but the values have stayed constant.
When can I teel the kids we can add something that's alive - what should it be? When can we add invertebrates, when fish? Lots of questions, not too many suggestions - can you help out?
How long should it cycle?
Got any suggestions for our next step?
Thanks to you guys who have given me ideas already,
SamK

 

[downbeach]

Hi,
I teach chemistry in a Mercer County High School. We are starting a reef tank and to this point we seem to be making progress. It is a 75 gal. and a 29 gal sump. We added rock the other day and the kids think it looks great. We have nothing living in the tank, but the values at this point are - pH = 8.2, salinity= 1.023, temp = 75, nitrites = 0.25 ppm.
We have nothing live in it yet. The water became very cloudy, as we expected after adding the rock. It now is clear, but there are a lot of suds in the sump. Is this normal after adding rock that has been sitting in some garage for a long time? Will it eventually stop foaming? The foam looks like soap bubbles, but isn't - some it takes on a yellow tint, but the values have stayed constant.
When can I teel the kids we can add something that's alive - what should it be? When can we add invertebrates, when fish? Lots of questions, not too many suggestions - can you help out?
How long should it cycle?
Got any suggestions for our next step?
Thanks to you guys who have given me ideas already,
SamKView attachment 2214View attachment 2215

Where did you get the rock? Are you using RO/DI water? Running a skimmer, GFO and GAC reactor's?

 

[steamman]

The tank and rock work looks nice.

What have you used to start and maintain the tank cycle?

Did you seed the tank with established rock or sand from another system?

Did you add any commercial bacteria strains to start the cycle?

What kind of sand are you using and where did it come from?

How long has the tank been cycling already?

What type of lights are you using (this will determine what you can ultimately keep in your tank as far as the lighting requirements go)?

Can you post a picture of the sump?

Things Downbeach inquired about especially RO/DI and a skimmer. IMHO reactors are not imperative at this point but others may disagree with me. I believe the basics should be in place first. Sometimes less is more.

 

[SamK]

Hi,
I didn't use anything yet. What should I use, in your opinion, to get the cycle started? Do they sell commercial bacteria strains in a salt water fish store?

The sand I'm using was in the tank when it was going last. It sat for a couple of months, but the last owner said it was "live sand" before it was in his garage.

I don't know enough about cycling yet to know if it is cycling or how to get it started. Any suggestions?

I have a light that has 4 tubes. It is made by Current . There are 2 blue tubes and 2 white tubes and a fan that turns on when the white tubes are on.
I will post a shot of the sump, but it is a 29 gallon tank divided into 4 sections - the intake section, a charcoal section, a filter media section and a return submersible pump section.
Thanks

 

[wienerdog]

hey Sam...great idea for the kids and the hobby!! Definitely follow the suggestions offered by all members on here. You're only gonna get great advice. Personally, I dont have to much offer as I've only been in the hobby for a year or so. My only suggestion wold be to learn about the cycle process and use that to teach the students. They can check parameters on a spreadsheet and check them daily/weekly as part of their class. Great classroom project as the students will have a ton to learn with the rewarding result being the fish and coral. Good Luck!!!!

 

[Jcurry@wesketch]

Most likely the foam is protein from the live rock and sand. You can just scoop it off the water and through it away. Eventually you'll get similar foam in your protein skimmer. I typicallycycle my tanks by adding a cup of sand or a small rock from an established tank. I then feed a pinch of pellet food to the tank every couple of days for a month. Keep the lights off for now it will just make the algae grow even more than usual.

Now is the most difficult part....you just sit and wait for nature to do it's thing.

 

[MadReefer]

I never used this but you may want to give it a try. Maybe someone here has and can comment.
http://reviews.petco.com/3554/5626/...roducts-saltwater-biozyme-reviews/reviews.htm

 

[mnat]

Essentially you need to introduce a form of ammonia to kickstart the cycle to get your tank ready. Back in the day, people would add a damsel fish but that practice really ended because it is really inhumane to the fish and nobody wants the damsel in their tank because of how nasty and hard to catch they can become. People started to use raw shrimp and would just let that decompose to kick off the cycle. There are also people who will add straight ammonia to the tank to kick it off, but I don't know the measurement to do that.

There are products you can buy (Dr. Tim's and biospira) which will essentially add the bacteria right off the bat to your tank which allows you to skip the whole cycle process. The key here is to add fish right after you add the bacteria (within 24 hours) or the bacteria will die with no sources of ammonia to feed off of.

The rock and sand you added sounds like it has been dead so if you can find a local reefer, you can get a cupful of sand or some rock rubble that is live and colonized with the good bacteria. Once placed in the tank this will spread through out the tank and help you out.

The light fixture sounds like a t5 fixture which is a good lighting source. It will allow you to keep mostly everything, does not generate too much heat, and also allows you to change the colors (kelvin temp) of the bulbs to get certain colors to pop. However, you should replace the bulbs on a yearly basis as when they get older they lose their strength and can speed up algae growth. ATI bulbs are currently the most popluar and provide some of the best PAR numbers (what you want), with 4 bulbs you probably want to look at 2 blue+ bulbs 1 aquablue special and 1 purple plus (what I just put on my 4 bulb fixture).

As Jeff stated the floating stuff can be removed and is just part of adding old sand/rock. Not a problem but you do want to take it out.

When you say charcol I hope you mean carbon. What is in the filter media section? You really want/need to put a skimmer in there. They will keep the tank clean and will cut a ton of your headaches. With the way you have it setup now it leaves a very very slim margin of error as far as nutrient levels go. You could probably get away with it if you stock the tank very lightly and don't put corals in there along with weekly water changes. The skimmer will give you more flexibility and are basically considered the most important or the 2nd most important piece of equipment in a saltwater tank (lighting would be the other one).

Keep asking questions, you want to get the setup right before you put livestock in or you will forever be trying to correct the problem which is really hard to do in a stocked tank.

 

[TanksNStuff]

All great questions and suggestions so far... and I agree the tank and rock both look great.

Here's my input (sorry if it seems like a lot, I like to give details):

1. Cycling time can vary depending on size of the tank and amount of bacteria present to start the "cycle" process. Typically, it takes about a month for a cycle period to complete. However, "cycling" is really a balancing act of chemical changes, and it's never really complete. Each time you add a fish, the food you feed it and the waste it produces will change the chemical makeup of the water, and the process must start over again to remove the toxic compounds (ammonia) and ions (nitrate & nitrite). The trick is to have enough water volume to dillute the toxic chemicals (so they don't harm your inhabitants) and having enough (good) bacteria established to process the ammonia into nitrite, then converting the nitrite into nitrate (this is called the nitrogen cycle and is where the term "cycle" comes from). The cycle will not start however until you have the necessary bacteria to make the conversions.

2. In necessary components required to begin the cycle are: a.) ammonia, and b.) bacteria. The ammonia can be supplied by many ways; straight ammonia, adding a cheap fish that will produce it through waste (but may die due to the tank not being established yet), adding a dead shrimp (even a frozen one would do... probably the preferred method even though it's not pleasant to look at as it decays), or even adding human urine (strange, but it has been done... or so I've read.) The bacteria is provided by several ways too; most popular is by adding a piece of Live Rock or Live Sand from another established tank or from commercial vendors, another method is adding commercial products called microbacters (there are several on the market that will jump start your tank cycle.)

3. Once your cycle begins, you will want to monitor several parameters: a.) salinity, b.) temp, c.) pH, d.) ammonia, e.) nitrite, f.) nitrate. The last 3 (d. - f.) will be what determines when your cycle is "balanced"... and you should see them decrease to 0.0 ppm in the order they are listed. Once all of them are 0.0 ppm, then you can add something new to the tank (which will soon start another mini-cycle). As long as you don't add too much at a time, the process can balance itself again fairly quickly.

3b. Unrelated to the cycle process, another thing you should be testing for is phosphates (PO[SUB]4[/SUB]). This, along with nitrates is what will feed unwanted algae.

3c. As you get closer to the end of the cycle, you will start seeing brown diatoms (beginnings of an algae bloom) all over the glass, sand bed, and your rocks. Don't be too alarmed because this is due to the amount of nitrates (and phosphates) present in the water. The algae, along with the nitrifying bacteria will consume the nitrates and this bloom should dissipate in a couple weeks.

4. Test kits. There are plenty of them out there. I'd suggest staying away from the cheaper brands like API as they are sometimes not reliable and also don't have good scaling on their results color charts. Not only that, it's hard to determine which color is the right one most of the time. I'm not going to recommend any specific brand, but do some research that includes reviews of the kits before buying.

5. Judging by your description of your lights, it sounds like you have a T5 light fixture. This will be adequate for most anything you put in the tank as far as corals go. Metal Halides (MH) and LED's are more powerful and may be needed for certain corals, but I doubt you will need to upgrade. You may want to consider replacing the bulbs though, once you start adding corals. For fish it won't make a difference at all.

6. Stocking your tank - I could write an entire new post on this subject if I had the time, so I'll just be brief about it here for now.

6a. Once your tank is cycled, add a fish of your choosing. As a general rule, you want to start with less aggressive fish and add any more aggressive fish last. This is because if the aggresive ones go in first, they will bully the more timid ones that you add later. Being bullied adds stress to the new fish and can result in it either hiding constantly and/or even death. So, plan out all the fish you think you will want, then rank then on aggressiveness.

6b. Add one fish at a time and give it about a month for your tank to balance the cycle again. This will also give the fish a chance to adjust before a more aggressive one gets added. It probably won't need that long, but I say a month due to my next tip...

6c. After your first fish is added, you should quarantine each additional fish in a separate tank before adding it to your main tank. This gives you a chance to observe the fish for diseases before introducing it to your other healthy/happy fish. 1 month is suggested because that's the life cycle of some paracites that could be present on any fish you buy. If it's in a stage that you can't notice for a while, it can continue to develop to maturity and then attack the fish at that time... and likely spread to other fish as it reproduces. So, setup a small (QT) tank after the first fish and prevent contaminating your main tank with new fish.

6d. Corals should also be in a QT tank when possible. If not possible, you should at the very least "dip" them in a coral cleaner such as Coral RX, Lugol's solution, or ReVive. These products should kill any harmful pests that corals can carry. Read the instructions on whichever one you get.

6e. Very Important! - Take it slow. You don't want to add too many fish or too many corals at once. This will offset the cycle balance by a large amount, which will make it harder for the existing bacteria to process at a sustainable rate. The only time you should add more than one at a time is with smaller fish (up to say 1") or when you have fish that do better in pairs or small schools (cardinals or chromis for example). It's more beneficial for their health to have that community to reduce stress than have slightly better water quality. With corals, there is no bio-load change to worry about, but there can be a big drop in important minerals like calcium, magnesium, iodine, etc. You will need to learn to control those things when you get a bit more down the road, so I won't go into that here.

OK, that's it for now. I hope I didn't bore you with details, but more importantly, I hope this helps you and your students have a successful tank. Feel free to ask any questions. Everyone started as a newb once, so we understand that learning the hard way is not the best way.

 

[TanksNStuff]

Essentially you need to introduce a form of ammonia to kickstart the cycle to get your tank ready. Back in the day, people would add a damsel fish but that practice really ended because it is really inhumane to the fish and nobody wants the damsel in their tank because of how nasty and hard to catch they can become. People started to use raw shrimp and would just let that decompose to kick off the cycle. There are also people who will add straight ammonia to the tank to kick it off, but I don't know the measurement to do that.

There are products you can buy (Dr. Tim's and biospira) which will essentially add the bacteria right off the bat to your tank which allows you to skip the whole cycle process. The key here is to add fish right after you add the bacteria (within 24 hours) or the bacteria will die with no sources of ammonia to feed off of.

The rock and sand you added sounds like it has been dead so if you can find a local reefer, you can get a cupful of sand or some rock rubble that is live and colonized with the good bacteria. Once placed in the tank this will spread through out the tank and help you out.

The light fixture sounds like a t5 fixture which is a good lighting source. It will allow you to keep mostly everything, does not generate too much heat, and also allows you to change the colors (kelvin temp) of the bulbs to get certain colors to pop. However, you should replace the bulbs on a yearly basis as when they get older they lose their strength and can speed up algae growth. ATI bulbs are currently the most popluar and provide some of the best PAR numbers (what you want), with 4 bulbs you probably want to look at 2 blue+ bulbs 1 aquablue special and 1 purple plus (what I just put on my 4 bulb fixture).

As Jeff stated the floating stuff can be removed and is just part of adding old sand/rock. Not a problem but you do want to take it out.

When you say charcol I hope you mean carbon. What is in the filter media section? You really want/need to put a skimmer in there. They will keep the tank clean and will cut a ton of your headaches. With the way you have it setup now it leaves a very very slim margin of error as far as nutrient levels go. You could probably get away with it if you stock the tank very lightly and don't put corals in there along with weekly water changes. The skimmer will give you more flexibility and are basically considered the most important or the 2nd most important piece of equipment in a saltwater tank (lighting would be the other one).

Keep asking questions, you want to get the setup right before you put livestock in or you will forever be trying to correct the problem which is really hard to do in a stocked tank.

I guess when you take 45 minutes to type up a post, someone smart comes along and beats you to the buzzer. I feel pretty good knowing that I think a lot like him though. :semi-twins:

 

[steamman]

My head hurts reading all this information and I have been doing this for 20 yrs. LOL

Would others agree that putting a skimmer online before the tank has cycled would be counter productive to the process unless he uses the household ammonia method.

I found this article to refer to. I have never tried this myself.

Using Pure Ammonia to Cycle the Aquarium Instead of using fish food for ammonia production, you can introduce pure ammonia to the tank.

After the tank has been set up, add five drops of ammonia per ten gallons into the water on a daily basis.

Ammonia will rise to five ppm and higher. As soon as nitrites are measurable, reduce the ammonia input to three drops per day. Nitrites will rise to similar levels. Keep adding two to three drops until the measurements of ammonia and nitrites come out with zero ppm. The tank has then completely cycled.

Seeding the tank can significantly enhance this process. It is possible for a cycle to complete in seven days with seeding; otherwise this method takes two to three weeks.

The bacteria colonies produced using this method are large enough to handle a well-stocked aquarium.

 

[TanksNStuff]

That's a good point Steamman. Adding the skimmer right away may actually lengthen the cycle process because it removes some things that "feed" the cycle.

That method of using ammonia to cycle the tank seems pretty solid to me.

Also, you shouldn't add any ammonia removing agents either because that would also be counter-productive. These types of products are only good when you have a spike in ammonia in an established tank. Removing the ammonia early on will slow/halt the nitrogen cycle.

 

[downbeach]

I can't be sure, but it looks/sounds to me like there might have been enough die off from the old rock/sand that a cycle has already started. Considering that the foam my be from a fractionation event from the overflow, a skimmer might help accelerate the cycle.
I would say that if you were starting from scratch, with all new substrate, rock, etc., that a skimmer would certainly retard the cycle process.

 

[steamman]

If he has not monitored the entire process from ammonia through nitrates he may not have cycled at all. If he did cycle the tank initially and has not added any more ammonia source to the tank the cycle process may have to be repeated.

It would be simple to check. Add a source of ammonia. Check the ammonia level after introduction and time for breakdown. If the ammonia dissipates then a cycle still exists.

 

[downbeach]

I don't know what test kits he's using, but if he's reading NO2, there must be something going on.

I hope he wasn't intending to mark papers this weekend.

 

[steamman]

I don't know what test kits he's using, but if he's reading NO2, there must be something going on.

I hope he wasn't intending to mark papers this weekend.

Yes, it does appear there is something going on. He must keep it going. Are you trying to scare the teacher? LOL.

 

[TanksNStuff]

It could have just been a bad reading of the color chart on the test kit.

 

[SamK]

Thanks for your good wishes. The kids are excited about it and already I've raised enough from the kids to get some live rock and we will be buying a skimmer this coming week. It's only a start, but it's exciting.
Thanks,
SamK

 

[SamK]

Thanks,
I'll try this ammonia method to speed up the cycling. I am putting bacteria in daily, but they probably don't have much ammonia to work on. I'll follow your recipe and watch what happens. The kids are willing to wait to get the water right before we start introducing living animals.
Thanks,
SamK

 

[SamK]

I still have to mark papers, but I won't forget about the tank. I have someone checking Friday and I'll be back Monday.
I'm testing for nitrates, nitrites and pH daily with the kids. I haven't started testing for ammonia, because I was told there is none unless I add it or animals that will generate. it. Is adding it, the way it has been suggested a good idea in your opinion?
Thanks,
SamK