Help Nitrate Still High

[bravehart]

Yes, when I think of RDD's fishless cycling article I think of it as the 80 or 90% base, with a number of other RDD "facts and tips" added on in other threads he wrote that are not in the article at all and then I take all that RDD combined baseline and add to it a bunch of stuff that MW,BTT,rabbut, yourself and I have been manually adding on for a year or two (hope you could follow that OM.) Despite all that I don't feel ready to say we should attempt a new one yet, as one of the big problems with FLC instructional articles is the trade-off between completeness vs. simplicity-for-beginners. In fact, that's usually a huge writing problem for all our reference articles I feel. WD

Perhaps then, there should be another article for what comes after the big water change, but it definitely feels, from my perspective, like there is a big gap there and an article along the lines I mentioned before might help plug the gap. Another point maybe to include is despite being cycled you still need to add the fish slowly and monitor how the water and fish react before adding more.

Tim

 

[chrisbassist]

If you add the fish slowly you lose the benefit of a fishless cycle. And potentially expose your fish to mini cycles.

If you're dozing 5ppm everyday the the bacteria will grow to process that level. If you then only put in a couple of fish which will only provide 1ppm a day, then the bacteria will start dying leaving only enough to process that 1ppm. So what happens when you add more fish? Mini cycle.

Whereas you do a fishless cycle, you fully stock the tank, and if you're really unlucky you might get a short mini cycle but only the one. Much safer for the fish. Since you're unlikely to get a mini cycle. So don't add slowly! Do it all at once!

 

[waterdrop]

Yes, I would agree with this. A well-done 5ppm fishless cycle is designed to handle an immediate full stocking by the rough inch guideline. And its wise to try to take some advantage of this capability.

In practice however, its quite rare here on TFF, despite fishless cyclers knowing its a possibility, for them to actually -fully- stock. Its much, much more common to fall somewhat short of this, usually somewhere around 75% stocking. The most common thing for beginners is that some fraction of their stocking plan consists of species that do better in a more mature tank. One of the most common examples is wanting a shoal of neon/cardinal tetras, where the wise thing to do is to wait 6 months before introduction. Panda cories are another example along with a few other more sensitive cories I believe.

Another thing that makes people give some species an added wait is if the fish are significantly more expensive, making them perhaps the "centerpiece" fish of the tank. Its often wise to let the tank get more into that 6 month to 1 year "sweet spot" of maturity before risking the more expensive fish, depending on your resources of course. In fact there are example that are both (somewhat expensive and pretty sensitive) an example of which would be GBRs (German Blue Rams) in my opinion.

I just thought I'd throw this out there as the model I've seen working the best over hundreds of first introuctions in the last few years. Its obviously not set in stone. "Species" tanks (all one species of fish) for instance can be a prime example where you could fully stock on first introduction. And there are indeed people whose circumstances just leave them unable to get a big initial stocking and they end up slowly adding 2 or 3 fish every few weeks. These people still benefit from a good fishless cycle though because any time you have ever build up big healthy bacterial colonies, they will stay in better shape despite dropping back in size to match a smaller bioload.

~~waterdrop~~