ciao Posted December 2, 2009 Share Posted December 2, 2009 When your tank is cycling, should you have your skimmer on? The tank has LR and 'shrooms, maybe a ricordia, 2 or 3 snails, a good sized sand sifting chocolate starfish, and some zoas. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ClayTheSavageFraser Posted December 2, 2009 Share Posted December 2, 2009 You have no bio-load exept the starfish. I would keep it off and add a damsel or another hardy fish to help the "good bacteria" feed. How much live rock do you have? Sand? Clay Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
snowpunk Posted December 2, 2009 Share Posted December 2, 2009 I would leave it off. Only add fish if you think you will want it in the tank forever! Damsels are tricky and are one of the hardest fish to catch. I wouldn't ever put one in my tank except a clown. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dsoz Posted December 2, 2009 Share Posted December 2, 2009 Don't bother with the fish. Just let the tank cycle with the live-rock for several weeks. Once there is no detectable ammonium or nitrite then you can start thinking about adding some additional livestock. Skimmer, or no skimmer, it does not matter at this point. If you have not read this article, you should. Scroll down to Myth 15, but the rest of it is good too. http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2004-01/eb/index.php dsos Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ciao Posted December 2, 2009 Author Share Posted December 2, 2009 You have no bio-load exept the starfish. I would keep it off and add a damsel or another hardy fish to help the "good bacteria" feed. How much live rock do you have? Sand? Clay I probably have about 150lb of live rock and maybe 50 lbs of LS Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nwcoralfarm Posted December 2, 2009 Share Posted December 2, 2009 I agree with dsoz no fish, especially damsels. When I first started I was given the advice to start with a few Damsels, the tank cycled fine and months into it I was tearing my tank down to nothing just to remove those speedy damsels that were destroying a lot of things. If you want to speed up the process then add a little but of food here and there for bacteria growth. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
impur Posted December 3, 2009 Share Posted December 3, 2009 If you want to keep the starfish and snails alive, i would run it. Doesn't matter either way really, but definitely don't add a fish. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lowman Posted December 3, 2009 Share Posted December 3, 2009 If you want to keep the starfish and snails alive' date=' i would run it. Doesn't matter either way really, but definitely don't add a fish.[/quote'] I agree with this. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rick Posted December 3, 2009 Share Posted December 3, 2009 I concur with the advice to keep the damsels out unless you want an aggressive fish only system. They often eat corals and eventually get territorial and aggressive towards other fish. As mentioned they can be very difficult to remove as well. (I've torn all of my rock out twice now to get damsels out) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ThePremiumAquarium Posted December 3, 2009 Share Posted December 3, 2009 Damsels usually wont eat coral but they are a pain in the butt! There are some less aggressive varieties out there that will generally be pretty peaceful but the majority are very territorial and just plain bullys. Of course if you like alot of little fish with lots of colors and don't plan on keeping any docile or smaller fish, you could always just keep a way colorful damsel tank! I have about 15 or so different damsels in my 90g along with a school of chromis, a purple tang, a pair of royal grammas, a pseudochromis(also not recommended), a couple of gobies, a lone anthias that likes to school with the chromis, and a starry blenny. The damsels only pick on each other really. The yellow and with black striped ones get mean and ugly as they mature. I kind of added all of these aggressive fish as an experiment and am happy to say that many small aggressive fish looks pretty dang cool. I won't be adding but a few of the more peaceful damsels to my new display and only for color really. I may decide to keep the 90g going just for the massive amount of small colorful fish that I have come to enjoy. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rick Posted December 4, 2009 Share Posted December 4, 2009 I had problems with a Jewel Damsel that nipped at small polyp corals (Ended up killing my maze coral) and was somewhat though not overly aggressive towards others. The other damsel I had problems with was a neon velvet damsel that immediately began eating the zoanthid polyps. While it was a beatiful fish this particular one was quite mean and ended up killing several fish before it was finally traded in at the LFS. I have all of the damsels out of my system now and it is going to stay that way. While there are some that will not be a problem it's a gamble and if the gamble turns out bad dealing with getting them back out of a reef tank makes it not worth the risk IMO. (Between the two they did about $200 worth of damage) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
reef165 Posted December 4, 2009 Share Posted December 4, 2009 Where did you get the live rock? Is it base rock? I ask because if you have cured live rock you shouldent need/have a cycle period. If you are curing the rock then yes you need the skimmer on but you wouldnt need any fish. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rick Posted December 4, 2009 Share Posted December 4, 2009 It doesn't matter if it is cured or not it will still have a cycle period. The more established stuff that is used the less severe it will be but no matter what the tank will need a period to reach an equilibrium based on the new environment. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
reef165 Posted December 4, 2009 Share Posted December 4, 2009 It doesn't matter if it is cured or not it will still have a cycle period. The more established stuff that is used the less severe it will be but no matter what the tank will need a period to reach an equilibrium based on the new environment. As true as this is, it's not even close to the cycle of a tank being started up with base rock and dry sand, or with uncured rock. With live rock bought from a lfs or established tank, there is an abundance of bacteria already present, there will either not quite be enough to Handel the bio-load of the tank and it will take a week or so for the bacteria to catch up, or there will be an abundance of bacteria for the bio-load in which some will die off. I'm not sure if the dieing off of bacteria will cause any ammonia and if it dose would it be enough to worry about because it would happen slowly since if it dose produce any bacteria it would feed the living bacteria until the bio-load equals out but in this case it wouldn't affect the tank really at all. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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