Quote Originally Posted by TAHGAC View Post
Blane, unless you already have, please do not put table shrimp in your tank. Your tank is cycled. LIVE ROCK OR LIVE SAND instantly cycles a tank, as evidenced by your zero ammonia and nitrite. Anytime you add a fish the tank takes a short time to accomodate the new load, that's why adding slowly is important. This is no different for your tank than it is a six month old tank. Don't waste your time by RE-cycling your tank with a decaying ball of dead animal. Continuing your current water change schedule is a good safeguard IN CASE OF a spike, which is VERY UNLIKELY unless you add 10 fish at once. Add ONE fish, make sure it does fine for a week, keep testing parameters, and go from there...

I respectfully disagree.

I think he's showing no ammonia because there isn't enough life dying off to cause a large cycle. Without enough of a decaying biomass, the tank will sit in the status it's in. With just the decaying bacteria to go, the bioload is so small, it's cycled to handle the biomass it's at now. You add a fish and there will be no more then enough bacteria to handle it. As we are finding out, sand plays a small part, the huge ammonia processing comes from live rock. Considering the live rock was "dead" the bacteria have to repopulate.

Nitrifying bacteria are only a part of the cycle, how can a tank be considered cycled without going through the diatoms, green algae, etc? That shows a maturing tank because the organisms are reaching a state balance. Without that being reached, adding life will throw the tank for a whirl.

I'm always up for learning more, so if you have any research that helps support your view, please feel free to link it here, i'd love to read it. I am not saying the above statement sarcastically either, if it's out there i'd like to read it. The vast majority of literature out there (combined with the experiences of most people on this board and others) show that it takes a long while to cycle a tank. There are products out there that claim to help speed up a cycle, and that's partially true. But that only is with the ntirifiying bacteria. It does nothing for the other life, etc in the tank (algaes, pods, etc).