Cycle Cheat?

[piranha_trader]

Hey all-

Im in beautiful Honolulu and I just had an idea. I wanted to pass it through you guys first though and see what you had to say.

I just started 10-gallon fresh and I remember back when I had a saltwater, the fish store owner did me a HUGE favor because the tank wasnt cycling right.

He gave me a handfull of gravel from an established tank and within days, the tank was cycled.



Now Im thinking the same thing with my freshwater tank, except every storeowner here has denied my request (politely of course) but Im thinking about going to a nearby stream with a healthy population of smallmouth bass and other feeder type fish. I saw a nice gravel bed, and Im thinking about grabbing a small handfull from there. I know some of you will indicate your concerns about disease and parasites but Im thinking its worth the risk at this point.


So please....any comments you have on the topic would be great.

Aloha

 

[piranha_trader]

Also come to know that several of the tropical fish store employees that I visited cheat the cycle while fully stocking an aquarium.


They do this by constantly changing a portion of the water....every 2 days or so. Until the cycle completes.

 

[Musho3210]

thats not cheating a cycle (the second one, the one about the gravel is cheating), its just a fishless cycle, and a water change once every other day isnt enough for that.... People who fish cycle with very small amounts of fish still end up doing 50% once every 12 hours or something....

 

[piranha_trader]

maybe but most people dont go overloading a new tank with fish either....least I dont think.

 

[Musho3210]

we hope they dont

I wouldnt use gravel from the wild.... I just wouldnt trust it. Maybe you could take it out and leave it in its own tank/bowl with no fish whatsoever and let things die off without a host. But this would be pointless since by the time you are certain it is nastie free the tank would have cycled by then.....

 

[Ilya]

It would work if you had an under gravel filter .

 

[rdd1952]

Gravel will only help if it comes from a tank with an under gravel filter. Back in the old days of fishkeeping, those were the norm. Today, there are very few UGFs still in use as there are so many better filters out there. What you should try to do is get someone to give you some media from a cycled tank. That wouldn't immediately cycle you but would give you bacteria to jump start the cycle. Adding it and then using ammonia to do a fishless cycle would be the way to go.

I would strongly suggest you don't try the gravel from the stream. You don't know what type pollutants and other nasties may be in the stream and could intraduce something to your tank that causes major problems later on. And just as I mentioned in the UGF, there won't be any bacteria in the stream gravel either. Streams and rivers are cycled more by the plants in them than by bacteria.

Last but not least, you can cycle a tank with fish. Doing water changes every couple days usually isn't often enough though. You would need to test for ammonia and nitrite daily and do water changes as needed to keep the levels below .25 ppm. If you do go this route, only start with 3 small, hardy fish. The more fish you begin with, the quicker the levels will rise and the more water changes you will have to do.

 

[Musho3210]

there is bacteria on gravel and other tank ornaments etc, but it will be very very very low amounts compared to filters. Either way it is still something.

 

[piranha_trader]

I would strongly suggest you don't try the gravel from the stream. You don't know what type pollutants and other nasties may be in the stream and could intraduce something to your tank that causes major problems later on. And just as I mentioned in the UGF, there won't be any bacteria in the stream gravel either. Streams and rivers are cycled more by the plants in them than by bacteria.

Very interesting and significant point. Is that for real?


Did not know that.

 

[piranha_trader]

there is bacteria on gravel and other tank ornaments etc, but it will be very very very low amounts compared to filters. Either way it is still something.

That actually brings up another question that I have....if most of the bacteria is in the filter, then what happens in a fully stocked tank when you replace the filter's filtration packs? With the amount of fish in the tank isnt that unhealthy and potentially dangerous? How long will it tank for the new replacement to become fully active?

 

[SJ2K]

Thats why in all the topics about info for noobs, it says not to replace the media but to simply wash it in a bucket of old tank water.

 

[Samphire]

I have been cycling a fully stocked tank for 4 weeks now, 20% changes every day for two weeks now 20% every other day. My old tank cracked and I had to do it this way. Thing is I am still waiting for the origial filter for this tank to arrived, so even then I have to start over. Will use the media from current filter to help though. Never though of the gravel, when I changed the tanks over I used my old gravel, wonder if that helped with this one.

 

[rdd1952]

there is bacteria on gravel and other tank ornaments etc, but it will be very very very low amounts compared to filters. Either way it is still something.

That actually brings up another question that I have....if most of the bacteria is in the filter, then what happens in a fully stocked tank when you replace the filter's filtration packs? With the amount of fish in the tank isnt that unhealthy and potentially dangerous? How long will it tank for the new replacement to become fully active?

I never change the media, only the filter bag (on my HOBs). I lightly rinse them in old ank water as mentioned. When the filter pack does get so worn and tattered that the media is all but falling out, I simply get a new filter bag, pour the ceramic media (I don't use carbon for the same reason, you are throwing your bacteri away eery time you change it) in it and put it in the tank. I definitely lose some bacteria that is in the fiber of the bag but not enough to matter. Even if you lose half of the bacteris the remaining bacteria can double it's mass in about 24 hours to be back to full force.

The reason there is not significant bacteria in the gravel or even on plants and decorations is that bacteria need food, ammonia and nitrite. There has to be water flow to bring them food. Where is the most water flow? Through your filter. The amount of flow past decorations is not much except if it is directly in the path of the output. And there is only a very small amount over the surface of the gravel or sand (none down in it) so obviously, the bacteria are in the filter.

 

[Musho3210]

even at low amounts it is still something, and i did say it was low amounts compared to filter in my original post.

 

[rdd1952]

It is something but adding that gravel to the bottom of the tank where it won't be getting any water flow won't help with the cycle. Putting some from the very top of the gravel bed in the filter may help but I doubt it would be enough to matter.