Customising The Fishless Cycle?

[frogmarch1987]

Hi, this is my first post. I've been lurking her for about a week now and have recently joined.

I'm going to be setting up my first tank in about a week and after reading up on a huge amount of info, I understand the fishless cycle etc.

As far as I understand it, the fishless cycle would theoretically allow you to fully stock your tank immediately as the 5ppm ammomia that you cycle with is more than your fish could ever produce.

However, I would like to add a few fish at a time, as I'll get more pleasure out of extending the 'new fish' period rather than adding them all at once. Considering this, if I added only a couple of fish after the cycle and waited a week or so between adding each new group could I speed up the 'add and wait' fishless cycle by only using 1ppm ammonia (dropping to 0.5ppm after the initial ammonia has been converted), which would mean there would be less nitrite to process and less time to wait for it to disappear?

I'm thinking that it would be pointless to spend the extra time cycling the tank with 5ppm ammonia, only for most of the bacteria to die off when I only add a couple of fish that only produce a small amount of ammonia.

What do you all think. Would cycling with 1ppm/0.5ppm ammonia be sufficient to handle say 3 endlers (not planning on breeding them), with tetras etc. coming along in 2-4 weeks?

Thanks for all the help

 

[Verminator89]

Hi, and welcome to the forum! Baptism by fire time

Your playing with fire with that theory if you ask me. Personally fishless cycling a tank should be done over a 30 day perdiod - thats my rule of thumb and its what i stick to religiously, others may differ.

From what your saying if you did this and added all the fish at the end your tank will crash, simple as. You have to build it up slowly, they recommend not adding more than 7 (i think) fish per week to the tank to allow the bacteria to build up and colognise your filter. I don't do numbers and all that waffle so i can't judge your theory in that sense, only from going by what i do and believe.

As for it being pointless spending extra time cycling the tank with 5ppm, its all about maturing the filter to cope with the fish you add, you make sure the tank is over prepared to add a few fish without running the risk of crashing the tank and either losing the fish and/or algae bloom. The tank then adjusts to the fish you have and allows you to add more slowly causing less of a shock to the system. Patience is everything in this hobby. It infuriates me when people buy a tank and then they have fish in 7 days later

If it were me and this was a brand new tank i would set it up and do water changes every second day to 10-15%. I would continue that for minimum of 3 weeks, preferably 4.

Oh and never, EVER dump in your full stocking into a tank after cycling. Oh boy if you didnt have issues, however small you'd be lucky.

Hope this helps(ish) James

 

[Gvilleguy]

I wish the forum could come together and agree on a method for "stocking your tank after your fishless cycle is completed". There should be a link for it in the beginner's section. I've seen all kinds of recommendations on this issue -

1. stock as much as you want (so you don't lose your good bacteria)
2. stock only a couple of fish every few weeks
3. stock 50% at first, then slowly add more
etc.

I don't think I've seen consensus on this particular issue.

 

[PDSimon]

It's an interesting subject. I don't think the forum will ever come together and agree on something completely haha

A good point is that the people who know most about fishless cycling, designed it to allow you to stock 100% of your fish if you complete the cycle sucessfully. This means you could add say, 26 fish in a 125ltr tank in one day but it often takes atleast a month if not two to complete a cycle.

I agree though, if that is how this fishless cycle is designed, then surely you could say, add 1ppm with the add and wait method and only stock your tank 20%. I also prefered to build up my fish rather than stick them all in one go. I don't think its the end of the world if your fishless cycle lasts less than 30 days. Being in a fish-in cycle isn't the end of the world, and if done sucessfully is just as effective as a fishless cycle. Even a few members who have completeled a fishless cycle to some degree have had problems with spikes. If you carry on testing twice a day after completing a cycle with less ammonia than normal, and do water changes accordingly I think it would be ok. Would be interesting to see how it went too.

 

[Tolak]

We have seen plenty of posts where a new fishkeeper is given incorrect information, and stocks a tank without cycling at all. I recall seeing plenty of 1-2ppm ammonia readings at the beginning, but don't recall anyone having a stocked tank with fish living in it posting an ammonia reading of 5ppm. This would lead me to believe that a fully stocked tank, within reason as fully stocked is interpretative, would result in 1-2, perhaps 3ppm of ammonia daily.

There are two ways to go about coming to something definite; look over all the topics where there are fish in an uncycled tank, and taking stocking into account average the daily ammonia readings 24 hours after a really large water change. The other way is to set up a tank with no cycled material at all, stock it as an average community tank, and take an ammonia reading after 24 hours.

While 5ppm has to my knowledge always been the upper extreme of ammonia production in an incredibly overstocked tank it does provide a large margin of error. Cycling with less ammonia does not guarantee a quicker cycle, if 60 days could be called the average for cycling a tank with 5ppm ammonia it is not going to cycle in 6 days with 0.5 ppm ammonia.

 

[waterdrop]

Hi frogmarch and welcome to TFF!

I've watched hundreds of beginner fishless cycles now and we get -lots- of people that want to do what you're hoping to do and I don't recommend trying it.

The confusion comes from thinking that that's what the 5ppm is all about, that its about the initial stocking bioload. Its not. The ammonia dosing levels are also about getting the correct species of autotrophic bacteria to select out and proceed at an optimal rate and then to create a colony peak point that is robust enough that when you do the big water change and the ammonia drop-down, you don't then get mini-cycles from the first fish load. Its all about creating colonies of a high enough structural level that they will then hold up and be steady. While initial loads can make a difference, its really more about getting colonies of a certain maturity level.

Tolak wisely hints at another point: "Cycling with less ammonia does not guarantee a quicker cycle..." Changing the dosing amounts actually makes very little difference in the duration of the cycling process. The overwhelming factor turns out to be the bacteria themselves - these are just really slow growing bacteria (by bacterial standards.) What I believe 1ppm is going to give you is a fishless cycle that is more difficult to interpret, just about as slow and then a resulting immature filter that is likely to keep spiking unexpectedly on you, leaving gill and nerve damage.

On Gvilleguy's question about consensus on the initial stocking options I don't feel the same need to come together at all. I feel there is no question that a tank can be fully stocked (by the inch guideline) after a good qualification week, however I feel its quite rare that anyone would want to do that. The rare cases would be, for example, if someone wanted a "species" tank (a single species, all the same fish) of a species that was robust enough to be ok for first stockings, something somewhat odd like that. In the vast majority of cases, people simply can't find acceptable specimens of all the fish they want to include at the same time from their local sources, OR, they have some species they want to introduce later when the tank is more mature, or both. Sometimes they simply want to wait for the tank to be even more stable because they are going to spend more money on centerpiece fish and just want a little less risk. So most of the time this helps it all just work out better.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[Gvilleguy]

On Gvilleguy's question about consensus on the initial stocking options I don't feel the same need to come together at all. I feel there is no question that a tank can be fully stocked (by the inch guideline) after a good qualification week, however I feel its quite rare that anyone would want to do that. The rare cases would be, for example, if someone wanted a "species" tank (a single species, all the same fish) of a species that was robust enough to be ok for first stockings, something somewhat odd like that. In the vast majority of cases, people simply can't find acceptable specimens of all the fish they want to include at the same time from their local sources, OR, they have some species they want to introduce later when the tank is more mature, or both. Sometimes they simply want to wait for the tank to be even more stable because they are going to spend more money on centerpiece fish and just want a little less risk. So most of the time this helps it all just work out better.

~~waterdrop~~

I think it would be cool for what you just said there to be included in the beginner's section, since this issue normally raises questions from people finishing their cycle.

 

[OldMan47]

Who are you calling odd WD? Almost all of my tanks are stocked with single species. A few also have a few catfish to go with the other fish and one, count them one, tank has a mixed community in it. I do sometimes have a single something in a tank with a different species, like my population control betta splendens in the endler tank, but that is the exception, not the rule.
I would like to add a bit in here. You could probably get a decent cycle using just 1 or 2 ppm of ammonia, but why would you do that? Once that level of cycle is well established, you could double the ammonia addition daily until it reached 5 ppm and it would still be showing cycled. Why go to all that trouble with its uncertainties to save a day or two of cycle time?

 

[frogmarch1987]

Thanks for all the replies everyone and thanks for clearing up a few things. I supposed once you get over the 1-2-4-8-16-32 replications of bacteria and start getting into the 100 million - 200million - 400 million etc. it doesn't take long to prepare your tank for a huge increase in bioload.

I'll just stick to the standard 5ppm then, although I'll also be using live plants so that may play with the cycle a little, although I'm sure they can only help

(on a side note regarding plants: I presume that if you have plants in during your cycle and you enter a silent cycle, accidentally or purposefully, you still get a build up of bacteria in the filter right, although at a slower speed. Am I right in thinking this? Otherwise if this didn't occur, you'd enter a fish-in cycle if your plants died)

 

[waterdrop]

OM47 wrote:

Who are you calling odd WD?

oldman, I would *expect* you to be starting up species tanks, and I know the beginners know I'm usually trying to speak from their viewpoint. WD