Cycling A Tank With Fish Food?

[MisssMarie]

I've heard about people cycling a tank with fish food but not fish? How does this work? It sounds like something I'd be interested in trying thanks!

 

[AN1M343V3R]

wouldn't that work out more expensive than using ammonia?

 

[Louiseness]

wouldn't that work out more expensive than using ammonia?

Probably, and the issue with fish food is it gunks up the tank and goes mouldy, plus you can't be sure of the actual amount of ammonia it;s releasing and over what period of time.

It IS possible but if you're doing a fishless cycle (which this would be) you may as well use ammonia.

 

[Xraymark]

Use ammonia and at the start a few fish flakes to help kickstart the process.

 

[BigbruiserAl]

Using fish was the old school way of doing it back in the day, still is usefull if you have mail order your bottled ammonia you can get the ball rolling by adding a pinch of food. however keep the ammonia levels just using fish food will be hard and much more work and you will still have to stock the tank very slow i would assume.

 

[fluttermoth]

It works because the fish food rots and produces ammonia. A prawn works as well; you need to put it, or the fish food, in a piece of cloth so it doesn't gunk up your nice new tank too much.

My one and only fishless cycle (nearly 15 years ago now!) was done with fish food. The big disadvantages are that the ammonia level is unpredictable, and you can't cycle to a high enough level to add all your stock at once.

If household ammonia gets any harder to get hold of (thanks for that, terrorists ), we might all have to do fishless cycles using this method...

 

[Deano37]

i am new to this hobby and i tryed for a week or so with food but it is very very slow and messy water went very cloudy so i went to homebase i bought household ammoni for around £2 and only needed a drop a day much better method even though i never finished cycling but trying to get back into it now

good luck

 

[The Taffy Apple]

I had to use fish flakes for 12 days during my fishless cycle due to me not being able to get hold of household ammonia... my cycle (using bottled ammonia) then only took 18 days... wether this was because i was adding fish flakes daily will continue to be a mystery

Terry.

 

[fluttermoth]

There is a hypothesis (please don't ask me where I read it, because I can't remember!) that cycling with fish food/prawn gives you a 'better', more robust, bacterial colony than using pure ammonia, I suppose because you get a more complex array of substances from the breakdown of a more 'organic' waste than the ammonia provides.

 

[OldMan47]

Organic waste decay in the form of fish food or prawns or almost anything else will cycle a tank in about the same time as using pure ammonia. The real issue with using fish food is that the ammonia produced is hard to predict and control.

In my own case, I rarely start from scratch, since I have lots of mature filters, but I do prove my clones before adding fish. I bought a gallon of ammonia about 8 years ago for around $3 and still have all but about a cup of that remaining. Even though the ammonia loses its potency over time, I think I may still have a lifetime supply of ammonia.