Cycling?

[Fish_mouth]

This has came to me many times and i cant understand it. My grandpa has been keeping tropical fish for 40 years and never herd of the word cycling your tank and all his fish are really hard fish to keep. Its the same with all the people in my town that keep tropical fish we all use rainwater but many people say that rainwater is acid rain for fish and will kill them. The pet shops which specialise in tropical fish never herd of cycling tank and they keep many fish for a long time. Ive been keeping tropical fish for five years and I cant find any shops that now about cycling tanks. So is cycling even necessary? Would the rain water be good to the fish and that's why they survived for so long? I live in South Australia and everyone i know doesn't know what cycling means. Is it just for other places in the world?

 

[rdd1952]

Do you know what cycling actually is? Cycling is the process of building a nitrifying bacteria colony in/on the filter media. These bacteria break down ammonia (a toxin to fish) that fish emit from their gills and also from fish waste and create nitrite (another toxin). A different bacteria breaks down nitrite and creates nitrate (a 3rd toxxin but only at high levels of over 80 to 100 ppm). You remove nitrate by doing water changes. Every tank must be cycled either with or without fish unless it is so heavily planted that the plants consume the ammonia. So even if the people there have never heard of cycling, their tanks are cycled.

Rainwater could either be good or bad. It definitely shouldn't hae any chlorine in it but it could have all sorts of other minerals that are eithr benificial or harmful to the fish. Rainwater definitely wouldn't stop a tank from cycling or eliminate the need do so. As for the acid rain, it really depends on the type fish you hae. Most cmmunity fish prefer slightly acidic water so they would be fiine in it. Others like african cichlids would not do so well as they prefer a higher pH.

 

[Musho3210]

its been scientifically proven that cycling is real, ammonia and nitrite is deadly, and it takes 2 areobic bacterias to convert ammonia to nitrite to nitrate and an anerobic bacteria to convert nitrates to nitrogen gas. The thing is even if your grandpa, fish store or whatever keeps extremely hard fish and stuff it doesnt mean they didnt cycle. You must cycle a tank if you have fish, the way that you do it is the thing that counts. You could do fishless, fish with water changes, fish with no water changes, no matter what you will cycle (with the exception of heavily planted tanks).