waterdrop
Enthusiastic "Re-Beginner"
With time and practice you will get used to reading the API tests. You can't get all that accurate with them but you figure out that you don't really need tighter numbers and they get you close enough. I agree its hard to feel you're the shade over 4ppm that you want to be, versus being close to 8ppm, where you don't want to be. Note that the 5ppm figure is really only important to acheive in the last week or two of fishless cycling and 4ppm will be fine prior to that (in fact, 2ppm and 3ppm are often recommended during the "nitrite spike phase" just to help you possibly "see" results better (not to make the cycle any better/faster, just to satisfy your curiosity some.) The 5ppm figure being used throughout just makes the whole article and concept easier to understand and follow.
I feel like the ideal fishless cycling temp is 84F/29C, but I admit I can no longer pull up the documentation that got me slightly worried about the 85 and up temps (it was either some Hovanec science stuff or some threads here but I can't remember. I know that some have experimented with temps higher than 84F and rdd has mentioned being interested in that too.
The fishless cycling process is almost entirely and most importantly involved with the media in the filter (the ideal environment where fresh oxygenated water and ammonia are constantly flowing by.) The beneficial bacteria will indeed grow on anything, including the substrate, decorations and plants, but as long as you've got decent filter media volume, those other contributors can really be considered insignificant. The real issue that gets people debating about what to put in the tank during fishless cycling is algae. Ammonia plus light is a great invitation to algae and often any plants, decorations and substrate in a tank during fishless cycling will get covered with it eventually, although it doesn't -always- happen by any means, which just helps to gray the question.
Often the decision is made by the children or other housemates in that they are dying to "see" something in the new tank and to a small extent, plants and decorations can be a bit of a substitute. The opposite extreme is to do a bare tank cycle with no lights and with the tank blacked out by taping black plastic bag material in a double layer to block any ambient light, although often the light is turned on during testing just to make things easier. Another approach is to just buy cheap bunches of plants and throw the algae-covered things out once the cycle is over. At the same time the decorations can be pulled and cleaned with a brush etc. There is no scientific literature apparently that has ever bothered with whether light might effect the algae growth one way or the other but of course the algae seem fine in the dark and blacked out tanks have cycled just fine in the past.
Don't let all that talk about "blacked out" necessarily make you think its the way to go. Its really probably not a very big deal one way or the other and lots of people enjoy playing with their aquascape some during the long weeks of fishless cycling. If you go with just substrate and decorations then only turn on lights a minimum amount, such as when you are home in the evening for a while. If you go with some plants then start them only receiving 4 hours of light at first as a way to make it harder on the algae.
~~waterdrop~~
I feel like the ideal fishless cycling temp is 84F/29C, but I admit I can no longer pull up the documentation that got me slightly worried about the 85 and up temps (it was either some Hovanec science stuff or some threads here but I can't remember. I know that some have experimented with temps higher than 84F and rdd has mentioned being interested in that too.
The fishless cycling process is almost entirely and most importantly involved with the media in the filter (the ideal environment where fresh oxygenated water and ammonia are constantly flowing by.) The beneficial bacteria will indeed grow on anything, including the substrate, decorations and plants, but as long as you've got decent filter media volume, those other contributors can really be considered insignificant. The real issue that gets people debating about what to put in the tank during fishless cycling is algae. Ammonia plus light is a great invitation to algae and often any plants, decorations and substrate in a tank during fishless cycling will get covered with it eventually, although it doesn't -always- happen by any means, which just helps to gray the question.
Often the decision is made by the children or other housemates in that they are dying to "see" something in the new tank and to a small extent, plants and decorations can be a bit of a substitute. The opposite extreme is to do a bare tank cycle with no lights and with the tank blacked out by taping black plastic bag material in a double layer to block any ambient light, although often the light is turned on during testing just to make things easier. Another approach is to just buy cheap bunches of plants and throw the algae-covered things out once the cycle is over. At the same time the decorations can be pulled and cleaned with a brush etc. There is no scientific literature apparently that has ever bothered with whether light might effect the algae growth one way or the other but of course the algae seem fine in the dark and blacked out tanks have cycled just fine in the past.
Don't let all that talk about "blacked out" necessarily make you think its the way to go. Its really probably not a very big deal one way or the other and lots of people enjoy playing with their aquascape some during the long weeks of fishless cycling. If you go with just substrate and decorations then only turn on lights a minimum amount, such as when you are home in the evening for a while. If you go with some plants then start them only receiving 4 hours of light at first as a way to make it harder on the algae.
~~waterdrop~~
