explain to me

[nightlife20]

how to do a fish food cycle?


is it a case of adding fish food once a day or twice a day? or once every 2 days?



u get the pick iv no idea... but im eager to learn as long as u put it in simple tearms.


doing it this way, does it still build up the ammonia levels needed to get the bactiria going?

if im wrong please correct me



Dawn

 

[Lithril]

Hiya Dawn its great to see you're not giving up, you can only do a fishless cycle if you've no fish in the tank already, you said in your other post that ones still left, so to do this you'd either have to take it back to the shop or carry on with water changes.

 

[nightlife20]

nah mate that fish died


so can u explain to me how to do it with the food, and does this mean i have to buy ammonia if i do it with the food?


Dawn

 

[Lithril]

Nope you either do it with one or the other, the fishfood will rot down into ammonia so it takes a little longer. In the new tank syndrome post in this section there is a link to fishless cycling, read that as it will give you a good idea of the process. I used ammonia personally but I think with fishfood you just sprinkle some food in each day.

 

[dunc_man_fishy]

Although I would add, doing it with fish food could be messy, lots of rotten food on the bottom. But friends have down it sucessfully.

 

[guppymonkey]

I have done a fishless cycle with food and its not difficult at all. Just drop in food once or twice a day and keep checking the water parameters every few days. It takes awhile (up to a month) but its a lot better than having all the fish die again. I just kept my tank running like it had fish in it, keeping the filter on and having the tank at the correct temperature.

There are some products that can (supposedly) speed up the cycle. I found one in my LFS called "Cycle" that I tried and it seemed to work pretty well. I finished the cycle in a little over a week instead of 4 times that long.

 

[Mamaschild]

I have done both an actual cycle with food and kept a tank cycled with food while it was empty. No problem. Just put in food as if you were feeding a tank with fish. The amount of food should about equal the amount of waste the fish would produce. I didn't test either one of these until I was ready to put fish in, so I can't tell you how long it took, just that it worked.