Fishless Cycle Using Fish Food

[white9870]

Can anyone give me a bit of help on fishless cycling using fish food. I was wondering if when doing it by adding food into the tank daily, instead of leting all the food disperse all over the tank and get stuck in all the gravel and everything else, if i suspended a fish net in the middle of the tank and droped the food into there, so the food would only be in the net which is in the water in the middle of the tank, would it still work? Becasue it would be soo much easier without having to clean all the food off the gravel and other things. any infomation would be great, thanks.

 

[KkAaNnEe]

Dont do it that way, its a mess ad its hard to control the ammonia

 

[fluttermoth]

While I agree that using household ammonia is easier to control, the fish food method works perfectly well.

Yes, you can hang the food in a net to make is less messy, if you want to use that method.

 

[KkAaNnEe]

I really wouldnt recommend it though, i never saw any Ammonia in 3 weeks of adding fish food, my tank looked dreadful aswell. Do it in a net if you want though

 

[fluttermoth]

My first (and only) fishless cycle was done with fish food and it went fine

 

[white9870]

I am thinking about doing it using pure ammonia, where can i get that from? I was going to do it using the food way as i have a very vast ammount of food which i dont need at the momment, and its a 60 liter tank too.

 

[KkAaNnEe]

Just saying about when I did it... I switched to h.ammonia and it was complete in just under 4 weeks. Cant recommend ammonia enough

 

[fluttermoth]

Boots (you have to order it online and collect it instore or have it delivered), Homebase and, I think Robert Dyas, all do household ammonia.

You never know; if terrorists don't stop using ammonia, we may all have to use the fish food method at some point

 

[white9870]

where can you normaly buy it from?

cheers, thanks

 

[XeroTolerance]

Boots (you have to order it online and collect it instore or have it delivered), Homebase and, I think Robert Dyas, all do household ammonia.

You never know; if terrorists don't stop using ammonia, we may all have to use the fish food method at some point

I couldn't imagine a cycle without ammonia !

 

[fluttermoth]

where can you normaly buy it from?

cheers, thanks

Boots or Homebase

Boots (you have to order it online and collect it instore or have it delivered), Homebase and, I think Robert Dyas, all do household ammonia.

You never know; if terrorists don't stop using ammonia, we may all have to use the fish food method at some point

I couldn't imagine a cycle without ammonia !

Well, the fish food rots down to produce ammonia; chemically it's exactly the the same.

 

[Scott MacAdam]

I've done one fish in cycle when I started my first 10 gal (go bettas) and ever since then I've just been moving around filter media from tank to tank.

From that one 10 gal over the years I'm now running a 50, 40, 30 and 10gal tank all from the same initial culture. If you have a tank you can grab some mature filter media form just do that and skip the fishless cycle phase. If not, some LFS will give you some (especially if it means you are going to buy their fish. lol)

I mean, it's never a perfect fix but you can start with a small bio load soon and then just monitor the water stats over the next 2-3 weeks to make sure the tank is stable.