Fishless Cycleing Using A Muscle?

[CheniseMummy]

Hello There is a man at our maidenhead aquatics shop who is quite knowlegable and keeps all the planted tanks at the shop. he suggested using a muscle to aid the cycling process along with the amonnia product. what you guys think.

 

[FishyWishie]

I'm not sure about this plan i'd have thought the ammonia would pretty much posion or kill the muscle it certainly would with fish but maybe someone else more knowledgeable could confirm if shellfish would be the same ?

 

[waterdrop]

a freshwater muscle?

 

[CheniseMummy]

From what was saying i could use even muscle meat so presumming it would be dead anyway. He said he used it for his tanks and got them cycled more quickly.

a freshwater muscle?

I'm not too sure they had them at the shop and he could give me one. I brought my lights today and am going back this week to buy gravel and plant substrate so im going to probe him some more. Just wanted to know if any one else had heard of this

 

[waterdrop]

Using any type of decomposing organic material (shrimp/prawns as well as the most popular: fishfood flakes) to cycle a tank has been around for decades. This is basically one of the systems that was more or less replaced in the modern hobby by the Fishless Cycling technique. When organic matter decomposes, what's really happening is that heterotrophic bacteria are using its materials and breaking it down into ammonia. The main problem with this for preparing a tank is that it is generally slow (its a whole extra step prior to having the ammonia) and even more than that it is very unpredictable and hard to control. Its very hard to get the amounts right. Its also very smelly!

Instead, controlled dosing of pure household ammonia goes straight to the step of growing the two needed species of autotrophic bacteria in the filter (Nitrosomonas and Nitrospira)

~~waterdrop~~

 

[OldMan47]

A dead mussel would work but it is so much easier to control things if you use some ammonia instead. In the UK or Australia they would use a prawn but in the US it would be a shrimp, same thing different name.

 

[CheniseMummy]

Thankyou that has cleared that all up. No need to bother with the muscle