Plants slow down cycle?

[SweetTart]

I'm curious if plants can actually slow down a cycle?
From what I understand, the bacteria that converts ammonia grows because ammonia is abundant in the water. If you have plants that suck up a lot of ammonia and keep it fairly low, can that slow down the cycle?

 

[seangee]

Yes that is true in the strict sense. If you have fish this is a good thing. Plants will also use ammonia without converting it to nitrite, again a good thing.

 

[Byron]

Agree. In any body of water within a home aquarium, the "cycle" will naturally occur; the nitrifiers will establish provided conditions are suitable [no need to get into all the issues of temperature, pH, medications, etc, that could affect this, we can just assume a normal aquarium start-up].

Having live plants will technically slow this down, but as seangee mentioned there are benefits to the plants in that fish if present will not be harmed at all. Fast growing plants, and here floating plants are ideal, are often referred to as "ammonia sinks" because of the high amount of ammonia they can assimilate. And nitrite is not a by-product.

Plants do take up ammonia faster than the bacteria, according to scientific studies, but some ammonia gets past them and the bacteria will use it. With our basic aquarium test kits, you will never see ammonia or nitrite above zero with fast-growing live plants, so the establishment of the cycle is often termed a "silent cycle."