establish water

[excal]

would establish water speed up the cycling process..?

[Texreefer]

Not really,,, you could get a cup of sand from and established tank... that is where you will find the beneficial bacteria needed to get things moving

[Troy Valentine]

+1

I've got a cup of sugar-sized you can have. That is the fastest and heathiest way to cycle a tank.

[Big_Pun]

I agree with the above more diverse bacteria in some "dirty" sand. I don't like adding dead stuff to a tank to cycle, some sand from a established tank then a small fish is the right way. make sure you choose a fish you can live with or is easy to catch. when I started my g/f tank we put lil fish in Fuge and used nice cured rock, and new sand. never got a bad algae out break or diatoms. just remember to take it slow.

[Bill S]

Bad, bad things happen in this hobby to those in a hurry. Patience REALLY pays off.

[Europhyllia]

I've had good success with live bacteria culture (the good stuff you get overnighted, not the shelfed stuff) and ammonium chloride (pure lab grade).
I no longer use live sand or live rock. I know this sounds kind of sterile and boring but I put so much effort and money into it, I don't want to have to yank it all out because I got some funky stuff in the tank .
So if there ever is another tank in my future it probably will be cycled with ammonium chloride as well.
The company I have gotten my bacteria from also supplied the ammonium chloride along with good instructions.
I also learned a lot from a seahorse board where starting with sterile tanks is not unusual when preparing for fry or large amounts of import seahorses.

I think my success with that method was based on a few things though:
- I bought good stuff (like I said not the shelfed stuff)
- I already had over a decade of experience doing it the other way
- I am pretty diligent about researching stuff ahead of time and following instructions, etc.
- I love to test and record stuff

So in short: I believe it can be done

Even going the regular route of using sand from an established tank I'd go with ammonium chloride again any day as the source for your nitrogen cycle

[Gseclipse02]

i always wonder how live is this live sand most people buy ?? i mean who knows how long its been in a warehouse for than a shelf at a store

[StevenSeas]

i always wonder how live is this live sand most people buy ?? i mean who knows how long its been in a warehouse for than a shelf at a store

Thats why there is a sell by date ;)
in theory it should only be bagged for x amount of time, but still I have seen some pretty cool stuff come from just bagged live sand. Where else would our pods come from for example? Those would most likely die in transit of live rock right? I like to think of it as acting like how brine shrimp eggs and that it can be dry for thousands of years and once they are in water again can hatch.

But to the OP as far as getting water to help establish a tank the benefits really would be fairly negligable as the majority of bacteria (nitrosomas and nitrobacter) we want in our tank use a substrate to grow on. Grab a cup of sand or live rock, or bioballs, or other biological media and you will get plenty of the good stuff to help speed up your cycling process.

[alton]

Everyone that posted here is correct, my daddy use to say there are 101 ways to skin a cat. Just like there are 101 correct ways to set up an aquarium, and like Bill said patience is everything. In todays market you can start with sterile live rock, sterile sand, and just about any type of good bug out there from the internet to add to your tank to keep it healthy. To me I love Phyto (everything starts with phyto dose my tanks constantly) Mysid Shrimp and Copods both are staples for newly added fish plus they do a pretty good job of clean up. Problems I have had by adding established live rock to my tank was adding a hitch hiker called a rock crab which is normally harmless until he grows to 3" and eats a puple tang, Clown Fish, and a bluespot jawfish before you can get him out. So it really depends on how particular you want to be? Good luck and welcome to MAAST. Oh yea back to your answer I love using old water out of my 300 to set up a new tank or a quarantine tank like I did just recently for a small adult blue face angel.

[excal]

well im staring fresh. my brother had my old tank and i wasnt happy when i got into town.. been gone for 8 months. someone was cleaning the tank for my brother. long story short i guess the price got to high and he stopped. high bio load no water changes for months. rock was covered in red slim. had worms everywhere. the most i hated was nudibranch sea slug which ate most the corals. i not safe with getting live sand or live rock due to the fact that all my problem came from that. my brother got live rock from his friends and thats where i got the nudibranchs from as well as bristle worms. killed all the live rock so i guess i have base rock now. for the most part i have to get some live rock to start thing going again.