60 gallon cycling

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ekean45

Aquarium Advice Activist
Joined
Nov 29, 2011
Messages
154
Location
Marietta, GA
Just started cycling my 60 gallon! Still not sure if I am going to do FOWLR or reef.
 

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Wow man how many lb of live rock do you have?!?!?! Haha i like the tank :)

And i would suggest looking at reef save fish for the most part in case you DO decide to go reef... I would go reef if i was you... Lol.
 
Probably 50 lbs live and another 60-70 base and fragments. I wanted to make the tank look like a sea wall with lots of nooks and crevices.
 
I'd get the rock away from the side walls enuf that you can get a hand or a tool down there to clean. It'll get real ugly. I also think the rock is packed too tight. Try to creat some holes in the rock wall you have there for swim thru areas. Yu gonna do a sump? If so I'd put some of that rock down there as it'll do the same thing in the sump for you as it does in the main tank as far as natural filtration goes.

You definitely have enuf rock for a reef. Yu just gotta consider how much you're willing to pay for the lighting to support a reef.
 
AquaRick said:
Yup, corals are addicting. Pretty to watch. But then again so is a fowlr with aggressive fish or non-reefsafe fish. (Emperor Angel comes to mind).

Yea but all the cool FOWLR fish are too big for the tank
 
thats a little to much rock, that base rock once it soaks up water weighs alot more then it did :p so you probably have 150 lbs atleast
 
Is it a bad thing to have too much rock? Why?

Well there's a couple reasons.

The first, and most logical, is that you are greatly reducing the amount of room that you have for fish and inverts.

The second, and more important, is that there is great potential for dead-spots in your tank: areas that there is no water flow where pockets can form of proteins, nitrites, nitrates, ammonia - all kinds of nasty stuff. With your rock configured the way it is, you're going to need a good number of power heads to ensure sufficient water flow.

What kind of fish are you thinking of putting in there because, again, keep in mind that if your 60 gallon tank has that much rock in it, you realistically will only have around 40 gallons of water (rock does take up volume).

Just my two cents - might want to remove a few of the bigger chunks of rock. It'll give you more flexibility in terms of arrangement, and also let you fit some holes in there for water flow purposes. :)
 
yep, it has also been said that havign more then 1.5lbs per gallon also starts the nitrification process quicker and doesn't allow time for the protein skimmer to remove the organics. this is nothing to that i would concern myself with though it is just something "newyorksteelo" on youtube claims, which logically would make sense but with all the natural filtration that can be in place it shouldn't really make a difference
 
I took out some rocks and redid the structure. There are many more open spaces rather than it being tightly packed together. See the new picture below. Any comments or suggestions? I am loving this site - everyone has given me great feedback and advice!!

But now a new question. I was away on vacation for about 10 days and while we were away, our house painter blew the fuse on of course, the line that my tank is on. The tank was cycling and I was hoping it would have been done when I got back. It almost looks like the cycling kind of froze where it was before I left. Will this cause any further issues if a cycle seems to freeze?

Here are some of the water parameters I took last night.

Salinity: 1.022
PH: 8.10
Ammonia: 0
Nitrite: 1 ppm
Nitrate: ~15 ppm

49640-albums2861-picture18974.jpg
 
Love the new rockwork. Looks like you sloped it a bit back to front. This will help when you add corals etc.

Since the fuse tripped, i'm assuming the heater was off. You may have some BB dieoff as a result. Best way to test if you're on track is to add ammonia and see how quickly it gets turned to nitrite. If you dose to about 4ppm and it goes down to 0 in a day, you're still on track. If it takes awhile, then you're not and will probably need to wait it out a bit.
 
Yep - the heater was off and got to about 60 degrees. Thank God I did not already have it stocked! I can't even remember the last time that breaker tripped. Thanks!!
 
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