Is All This Necessary?

[buck_wildest]

Hello,

I am in no way tring to start a argument I would just like to know everyones oppinions about some things I have read on this site.

This is my first time reading about fish. Usually all the information I know is from my LFS (local fish store?)
and people I know who have or had fish experiance. So please feel free to correct me.

My experiance: I work at a tropical fish farm in Central Florida. Its privatly owned by my Moms cousine.
We raise/breed gourmies -reds, blues, pink, gold, kissers, and dwarfs also-, common pleacos, tiger barbs, oscars -all but veils-, and our specailty, Angels. We have over 200 breeding pairs. I have been working here for almost a year now. I work personaly with the outside ponds keeping the walking catfish and the trutles out, but I also pull orders and do shipping. At home I have a few tanks, a 40 gallon cichlid tank, and a 60-70 gallon tank with 2 huge oscars. Resently I started breeding guppies as a hobby. I have raised many guppy fry to adulthood and am trying to eventually make my own type of fancy guppy. Plus its great food for my oscars!

Well after all this time I have spent on my fish. I have never heard of cycling untill I came here. I can honestly say I have never let a tank cycle before adding fish to it. And at work I have never seen it done before. We are very succesful with the methods we have. The most I've ever done is condition the water(with aqua pure) and decorate before adding the fish. Most of the time I dont even let the fish acclimate to the water. And I usually have great success with fish. I maybe lost one cichlid out of the 10 I have in my tank.

Am I just lucky or is cycling really something that needs to be done. I dont think so. It probably helps if your fish are really really stressed, but I think its a waist of time. By the way, I bought a expensive test kit to check the pH, nitrates, nitites, and amonia levels and were about normal. Even a small 1 gallon tank I use to keep feeders in I just set up a week ago.

I have other isssues like this but i'll get to those later because this is getting really long. I dont think anyone is going to read it. Thanks for your replies.

bUck

 

[bogwood]

'Cycling' is all about establishing the 'beneficial' bacteria needed to remove/nutralise the continual waste produced by your fish and any dead/decaying plant matter/uneaten food etc...

...over time, in an 'uncycled' tank, the waste produced by your fish 'will' feed these slow-appearing beneficial bacteria (similar to cycling 'with' fish... not ideal either)... until this starts to happen though, the fish in an 'uncycled' tank will be living in 'stressed' water that is high in Amm, Ni and Na... they may survive and 'look' healthy but it is definately 'not' ideal... it's irresponsible and a little cruel 'imo'...

... ultimately, it's the individuals choice... it seems you are happy keeping your fish in conditions that are not 'initially' as near as perfect for them as you could achieve...

 

[annka5]

Science shows us that fish die where there is significant (above zero on average test kit) levels of ammonia or nitrite present in their water. Some species are more susceptable than others, but it is toxic to all ornamental fish that I can think of.
Fish produce ammonia through gills and when their poo rots.
Cycling establishes the bacteria that breaks this down from ammonia to nitrite to nitrate.
If you beleive it's unnecessary, then try having a read through posts on the "emergency" section, where there are plenty of people struggling to keep fish alive because of a lack of "good" (nitrifying) bacteria.
I can't explain why you manage to set up small tanks and stock them fully immediately (i.e. uncylced) without ever finding ammonia or nitrite. Unless you're adding nitrifying bacteria when you set them up - e.g. adding filter floss from an established tank - then I've no idea how it can happen.
However, a brief search of the forums of people with new tanks will show that those who have not cycled have problems -proof that it is necessary, if any were needed beyond the scientific explanation.

 

[SamUK]

and isnt the minimum tank size for jus one oscar 75 gallons?


and u have 2 HUGE ones in a 60-70?

 

[Ben]

and isnt the minimum tank size for jus one oscar 75 gallons?


and u have 2 HUGE ones in a 60-70?

could be an established pair,
never jump to conclusions.


I've never cycled a tank either, its been running since i started fish keeping and some of my orgignal fish are alive too, such as my keyhole cichlid.
with my other tank/s i just clone them using filter media and substrate from the other tanks.

If its worked for you, great! but it does NOT mean it will always work for other people, and many people i know have lost A LOT of money due tonot cycling.

each to their own i guess

DD

btw, to the forums!

 

[voycey]

If you have zeolite in a filter (most fish farms do) then the tank will cycle quite happily whilst that keeps ammo down - admittedly not to ideal levels but when its cycled that will!!

Matter of choice really - i personally do!

 

[karlp]

If you have any doubt, just look at the emergency section of the forum each day. Every day there's new postings from someone who's just bought a tank and their fish are dying.

Yes, cycling is necessary.

There are two possible exceptions

Where there are lots of plants (e.g, in a pond or heavily planted tank) the plants will use the ammonia produced by the fish.

Where old sponges / filter media from existing filter systems are used when setting up a new tank, which transfers the needed bacteria across.

 

[lljdma06]

To play Devil's advocate. I have purchased fish from just such a farm in Miami, FL. They did extremely well, and I'm sure the tanks didn't cycle in the traditional sense. They specialized in large cichlids, anabantoids, and livebearers. Their anabantoids looked the best because the conditions in the pond were pretty close to the wild conditions. Angel fish were observed breeding. And the staff was knowledgable and friendly. I haven't been there in over 5 years, since goldfish were the last fish I owned there, but it was a good store, if you could call it that.

I may be over-generalizing here, but I think that perhaps the fish sold at the farms are either more hardy, or less stressed since they were never sent to a LFS. They never have passed through a middle man. It's kind of like getting fish whole sale. On the other hand, where most people get their fish, a LFS, these fish arrive after a stressful trip through our postal system. Crammed into bags for shipping. Then they are thrown into display tanks with other fish, with lights blazing and people staring. I would be stressed too. If I get a cold after periods of stress, it would stand to reason that LFS fish after being exposed to that would be more suseptable to ammonia spikes, illness, and less than ideal water conditions; the emergencies that we see so often in the Emergency section. Now a farm fish, if well cared-for, may not be as stressed and therefore able to cope with a tank in the process of cycling. This is just my theory. This is precisely why when I purchase my fish from a LFS, I wait a week, sometimes two before I'll purchase a fish. It gives them time to adjust, and they are not as stressed when I bring them home.

I have used fishless cycling, fish cycling (zebra danios rock!), and have not cycled at all because of heavy plant load. All three methods work, if you are careful and do weekly maintenance.

Welcome to the forum, Buck.

 

[annka5]

... do fish farms not involve truely gigantic bodies of water with what is effectively constant water changes? In which case, you wouldn't need to cycle the "tanks" to the same extent.
But I just cannot believe that any fish in a domestic tank which has nothing to remove ammonia and nitrite will not suffer poor health as a result of poisoning. Just look at the causes of 90% of fish illnesses posted in the forum - new tank syndrome.
Hardiness of the fish might mean they manage to survive a cycle-with-fish, but thats not the same as them not suffering any ill-health.

 

[SamUK]

and isnt the minimum tank size for jus one oscar 75 gallons?


and u have 2 HUGE ones in a 60-70?

could be an established pair,
never jump to conclusions.

wasnt jumping to a conclusion. i think even a pair should have atleast 100G to swim in.

 

[lljdma06]

... do fish farms not involve truely gigantic bodies of water with what is effectively constant water changes? In which case, you wouldn't need to cycle the "tanks" to the same extent.

Well, not gigantic, but they are rather large and they are not quite as heavily stocked as the LFS. At least that is the experience in the farm where I used to purchase fish.

But I just cannot believe that any fish in a domestic tank which has nothing to remove ammonia and nitrite will not suffer poor health as a result of poisoning. Just look at the causes of 90% of fish illnesses posted in the forum - new tank syndrome. Hardiness of the fish might mean they manage to survive a cycle-with-fish, but thats not the same as them not suffering any ill-health.

I don't disagree with you, all I said was that perhaps Farm fish, who didn't have to undergo the stress of the "middleman", do better in cycling situations than fish from LFS. We are not discussing the toxicity of ammonia, that has already been established. If Buck is having success without cycling in the common sense, it may be due to something he is doing to the tank that we may not be aware of. I know for a fact that Amquel renders ammonia non-toxic. There are other chemicals that have the same properties.

I'm not advocating cycling with fish. I stopped doing that as soon as fishless cycling came out, but I can say, I've never lost a fish to a cycling. That has to do with regular weekly tank maintenance and water testing, which any good fishkeeper should be doing any whether they cycle with fish, without, or not at all.

If you don't mind me asking, Buck, what is your maintenance regimen? I perform 30% water changes/vacumning weekly. I change my CO2 units weekly and I dose fertilizers twice a week. I tend to overstock by American standards (use cm/liter rule), but my tanks are all densly planted.

 

[steelhealr]

Hi...I'll side, in a sense, with lljdma06. Many fish are lot more durable than we give them credit for. However, similar to humans, I believe that if your immune system is 'down', then, you are susceptible to illness. Keeping fish in a stable water environment, with large volumes of water and with species of their own kind may indeed provide them with an environment that is infinitely better than what we provide.

By the time we get fish from our lfs, they've been bagged multiple times, subjected to large swings in temperature, dropped, netted and then mixed with multiple other species in a 20 gallon tank. Hit them with a little ammonia and nitrite and that's enough to kick them off the cliff. No wonder they are vulnerable to disease.

I think that a blanket statement questioning the value of cycling is inappropriate. You cannot extrapolate the Florida system to what we have at home. I would caution anyone reading this read as an 'OK' to go ahead with adding fish without cycling their tank. SH

 

[lljdma06]

I think that a blanket statement questioning the value of cycling is inappropriate. You cannot extrapolate the Florida system to what we have at home. I would caution anyone reading this read as an 'OK' to go ahead with adding fish without cycling their tank. SH

And you never generalize or make observations? I find that hard to believe, especially if I am talking to a human?

I will qualify. This is not the system in FL. Actually there are a lot of LFS and the quality generally sucks. I have really only found good quality fish in a handful of places, the farm included. I do not know how things are done in other states, I only know what I know from 17 years keeping aquariums in FL and IL. I am only observing and commenting on the apparent hardiness of farm-raised fish as opposed to fish found in some LFS, and maitaining that one needs a strict regimen whether they cycle a tank or not, though it is far, far better to cycle IMO. There, now no one can say that I encourage people not to cycle tanks.

Though, I really do not understand why it is thought that I am encouraging aquarists not to cycling aquariums? I am in no way encouraging people to do this. I feel like a broken record. If it is the way I have said something, please let me know, because I'm rereading my posts and I can't figure out how that can be garnered from my statements.

Buck, hurry up and answer my question about your tank regimen. Now, I'm really curious. Also, if you have a picture of your tanks, I'm sure we'd love to see.

 

[steelhealr]

You missed the post ll...the comment was aimed at the original poster...not you...I agreed with your post ll. Re read it. SH

 

[lljdma06]

You missed the post ll...the comment was aimed at the original poster...not you...I agreed with your post ll. Re read it. SH

Ah, then don't say, "in a sense" because that does not imply complete agreement. No problem, just wanted clarification. I did read the posts again, but remember both the original poster and I discussed FL, so you can understand why I thought it may have been directed at me. No worries.

Buck, where are your stats? I think we scared him off.