New Saltwater 55g

[PK Tester]

So, I've been buying all sorts of items to prepare switching my 55 gal over to a saltwater tank and I was grazing around Craigslist and found someone local that has some very healthy looking live rock that they bought from a friend.

Now, I do not have my tank up and running yet, and some of this rock has coral growing on it, I wanted to use the live rock as a method of cycling my tank and getting it ready for fish and coral down the road.

I had planned not to have any coral in there for months, but this is a very good price on some very healthy looking rock I could just drive and get.

Do you guys think the coral would have even a chance of living? He said they were mostly moderate light corals, and my light is on the high end of moderate.

I don't want to be killing a bunch of coral off, what do you guys think?

 

[Kurt_Nelson]

If the rock is coming directly out of an established tank and is kept wet during transport until it gets in to your tank, you're getting "fully cured" live rock. In other words, it already has a good bacterial population on it, and you shouldn't see much - if any - of a cycle.

In theory, you'd be able to add fish immediately and not see a cycle. But if it was me, I'd add something to get some ammonia in the tank (fish food, cocktail shrimp) and see how it handles it. If you don't see ammonia or nitrites, but DO see an increase in nitrates then you can consider yourself cycled. But if you do see some ammonia, then you still need to wait it out until levels drop to zero. Most likely, with good cured live rock, if you do see a mini-cycle it won't be much of one and depending on what the coral is we're talking about, it may be fine.