New tank cycle with full-cured LR

[Jaybird]

I'm going to pickup a good chunk of the LR I need for my 90G tonight and am wondering how long of a cycle I should be expecting.

The live rock is fully-cured, so I'm not expecting a large ammonia spike at all. I'm pretty much expecting to see almost zero ammonia, almost zero nitrites and a steadily rising nitrate reading.

Question is: should I be running my skimmer while doing this? If it's sucking out the junk that would make ammonia it would just be defeating the purpose of the cycle, no?

Another question: if the LR is fully cured there shouldn't really be much of a cycle at all. It should be safe enough for basic inverts right away. I'm not talking LR arriving from a courrier service but basically from a holding tank at the LFS to a plastic tub to my tank at home....total trip 30 minutes.

Any input/ideas would be appreciated.

 

[melosu58]

Looks like you summed it up pretty good. 1) No real need to run the skimmer during the cycle unless you want to get the break in period for your skimmer over with. 2) Yes if your LR is already cured then you might not see a cycle.