Fishless Cycle Question.

[fishygurl]

Before i say anything please do not tell me to read some article...I have read something like i think 41 of them and i just need confromation.

Is this right:

1Set up tank (Do i add my live plants now??)

2Let run for 2 days to make sure everything is in working order

3Add pure ammonia to bring ammonia to 5 ppm (how long after this should i test for nitrites?)Add cycle (i know its useless but it wont hurt to try....)

4repeat 3 when ammonia goes back to 0

5(this is the part im not clear on..)when nitrites goes up add more ammonia??/

6 when nitrate spikes the cycle is almost done??

7when everything is at zero the cycle is done???

[fishygurl]

oh and one more question.. Is it normal for a pet store to have a couple of dead fish? I mean with that many fish isnt it pretty easy to lose a couple?? Its just that i really want ot buy from my local store and everything else ther is great..

[Lydia]

That is correct. I'm not sure about the plants but I don't think you should add them until the cycle is over, because I am pretty sure they would slow it down. Someone else will tell you for sure about that. About the dead fish in pet stores, it is somewhat normal, but that doesn't mean it is good. Ideally there shouldn't be any. But if the rest of the store is fine and there isn't a better store around it would be fine to go to that one. If you do go to that store you should avoid buying fish from tanks with dead fish, but if you absolutely have to buy from tanks with dead fish make sure that none of the fish in the tanks have a disease and make sure the dead ones didn't die from a disease.

[fishygurl]

i dont think they died from disease two of them were cardinal tetras so i am thinking it was mabye PH and Hardness.. NO signs of ick or ich so ya...

Idont think the plant slow it down...

but mabye...

[fishygurl]

OK question.. the ammonia I have aroud .... if I shake it it only has like tiny litlle bubble on the top.. will this be OK??

[DavidDoyle]

I have fishless cycled a number of tanks and I do it using a different dosing method.

1. Set up tank and plant as you do. Plants eat the same thing the bacteria do, so you actually need less bacteria.

2. Raise Tank temp into the mid 80s.

3. Dose 5-6 drops of pure ammonia per 10 gals of water daily.

4. After about a week you can begin to test for nitrites. When they appear, reduce the daily ammonia dose to 3-4 drops per 10 gals daily until nitrites go to 0.

5. When nitrites 0 out the tank is cycled. Do a large water change, turn down the temp to desired levels and fully stock the tank. You should have nitrates at this point and the water change will lower them to safe levels.

One of the main benefits of doing a fishless cycle is it enables you to fully stock the tank all at once. If you can not add fish when the tank is cycled, continue to dose 3-4 drops daily until you do to maintain the cycle. In a fully cycled tank that amount of ammonia should be undectectible w/i 2 hours of dosing. Also, if you don't add the full fish load right away, you will then have to add future fish as if you had done a regular cycle with fish- ie slowly over time.

Do not add Cycle to the tank- it is a compete waste of money and may contain phosphates which will give algae a nice jump start in the tank.

The drops/gallon method was the original one used. The add ammonia til readings was later developed to allow for ammonia in different strangths to be used w/o problems. An old bottle of ammonia is not as strong as a brand new one. Having fishless cycled about 10 planted tanks I can say the drops method has always worked fine for me.

[Fishfirst]

sounds like quality advice to me

[fishygurl]

cycle comes with the kit so its not really a waste of money..

[TheOldSalt]

*sigh*

Don't use Cycle.
There, I said it. It contains the wrong species of bacteria, and these actually impede the growth of the correct ones. It should be pulled from the market and reworked. The only reason it hasn't been so far is that people still buy it. Yes, it will work eventually by accident, but you'll usually actually get faster results without it, so don't use it.

You probably already did, didn't you?

If you put the plants in at the start, then you will have already inocculated the tank with the needed bacteria, of the correct type, and without adding the extra junk.

[fishygurl]

no i didnt

[Fraser]

Some fish will die through stress in transportation or with coping with their new surroundings. A lot of the fish may have been bred in large fully furnished aquariums and when brought into smaller non-furnished aquariums they can also become stressed.

Some stores dont tend to look after their fish that well ive noticed, with a dead fish in every 10 tanks or so. Its quite disturbing when you see 2 young plecs feasting on the wrotten carcass of a guppy. One of the stores I recently found doesnt have a single dead fish in any of the tanks so Im really quite sure Im going to get all my fish from him. The water conditions are somewhat better and the fact he doesnt allow recent fish arrivals to be sold straight away is quite encouraging

[ron v]

Fish die in fish shops. That's to be expected. They die in my tanks too, occasionally. My problem with some pet shops is that they don't get the dead fish out. There is no excuse for letting a dead fish stay untill it starts to decay.
Topic #2... Fishless cycle/ ammonia. Good advice in this thread. I would like to add that if you choose to measure ammonia, stay with about 3 ppm instead of 5. Ammonia is actually toxic to the bacteria you are trying to cultivate and high levely will inhibit the growth.

[RockabillyChick]

your nitrates will never reach 0. you have to do water changes to keep them below about 20-30 ppm. you add ammonia to 4-5ppm (around there, doesn't have to be spot on) and wait. test about every couple days for both ammonia and nitrites. when your ammonia starts dropping, your nitrites should be going up. keep an eye on the ammonia and add more to keep it at about 2ppm when it starts to drop below there.

when you can add ammonia up to 2ppm and it goes to 0 within 24 hours, and your nitrites are 0 as well, your tank is cycled. now, your nitrAtes will be through the roof. then you have to do a LARGE water change to get rid of the nitrates (get them below 30ppm, preferably below 20) and add fish right away, about half your stock, then keep an eye on it, and slowly add the rest of your fish, one at a time, over several weeks to make sure you dont re-cycle your tank.

[garfieldnfish]

Buy bio spira, instant cycle and you add the entire fish load you plan on having. Except for algae eaters since there will not be any algae for some time. Easiest way but more expensive.
Other then that buy lots of fast growing plants, a few minnows or zebra danios if that is what you would want to get eventually anyway and cycle your tank the "normal" way. These fish are hardy and can handle it. I cycled most of my 11 tanks with 16 minnows and still have 12 of them. Swallowtail shiners, they are supposed to die in their third season and this is it and 12 out of 16 are still here on borrowed time. Best fish I ever had.

[mousey]

speaking of dead fish in tanks at the fish or pet stores. i agree that some dead fish are to be expected after all the travelling they do, but to leave them in a tank is careless and a disease spreader. i suppose a lot of it boils down to the fact that the staff are expected to do too much in too short a time.
What irks me is this is the season for otocats in the stores. I only ever see them in December. the tanks are totally devoid of food and I do not know how the poor things will ever survive without algae. They desperately go up and down the sides of clean glass and starve.
I read they have a digestive bacteria in their gut that dies when they go without food and then when they do finally get something to eat there is no bacteria left in the gut to digest the food for them. Either way they starve to death.
It is plain wicked to abuse little aminals this way.

Ps our walmart store has a boy in the fish department that loves his fish and they are well cared for.

Mousey

[TheOldSalt]

This may come as a shock to some of you, but before opening time, most fishshops go through all the tanks removing dead fish. Don't let the absence of dead fish fool you into think a shop is good. On the other hand, the shops that don't even bother with this are indeed pretty crappy.

I'm glad that this thread got resurrected. It's a good thread. I'm going to make it sticky.

[TomCool]

what pure ammonia do you recommend? and should you let the filter run for a few days before adding? and how long from first day to last do these cycles usually take in a 55gallon? I was thinking around a month.

[honmol]

Even with a fishless cycle you should not add all of the fish at once. I have found that nitromax works well for fishless cycling as it actually contains the beneficial bacteria but after opening it you have to refrigerate it. Another way to fishless cycle is to put a shrimp (dead, like the kind at a grocery store) into the tank. As it decomposes it will provide the proper amounts of ammonia to cycle a tank and is less expensive

[ron v]

One of the advantages of "fishless cycling" is that you CAN add all your fish at once. As a matter of fact, you should add all your fish at once. At completion, if properly done, your tank support a full biological load of fish. If you don't completely stock your tank, some bacteria will die off from starvation.
I've never tried the dead shrimp thing, but I don't like the sound of it. I just don't like the idea of something rotting in my aquarium. Seems like there are things other than ammonia going on that doesn't sound good. Why not use ammonia? At the very least, you have control over the amount of ammonia to add each day...

[leveldrummer]

if you completly stock your tank at once, you can over load the bio-load. creating more ammonia than the bacteria can handle, im not too keen on fishless cycleing because i feel the bacteria dies off as you wait a month getting ready to stock your tank, i know its not good for the fish, but i prefer to get one of two hardy fish and just take my time cycling the tank.