Lighting

[LionessN3cubs]

Is lighting important during fishless cycling?

way back at the beginning I had removed my hood because it was heating the water up to 89 degrees or more after being on for a couple of hours. I decided to go with a heater and just remove the hood for stability. Now that Im getting closer to the end of cycling (ugh) Im wondering if it would speed things up to put the hood back on.

Im asking because it seems like Nbacs aren't processing anything overnight when its dark in the room...its always midafternoon when I reach 0. Even if say at 8 pm I have .50 nitrite...the next morning it will still read .50-.25..yet by afternoon...its down to 0

 

[kj23502]

I would guess that lighting won't affect it, but I don't know for sure....Maybe it takes that long for it to "eat" the ammonia or nitrite b/c the cycle isn't done yet and has nothing to do w/lighting . I know when everything is processed and converted w/in 12 hours the cycle is done. hmmm....good question. I look forward to reading an answer from a more knowledgeable person.

 

[Miss Wiggle]

nah won't make a blind bit of difference Lioness. If you think about it, the bacteria growing in an external canister filter would have no light at all and that will still cycle so they can't need it.

I think it's just slow coming hun.

 

[kj23502]

So my answer wasn't too far off, Miss Wiggle!!! That was an educated guess.

 

[waterdrop]

nah won't make a blind bit of difference Lioness. If you think about it, the bacteria growing in an external canister filter would have no light at all and that will still cycle so they can't need it.

I think it's just slow coming hun.

Oh, this is a fun one!

MW, I have to agree with the end result of your statement.... In the case of our particular chemolithoautotrophic bacteria, both species, that we want, I feel that ultimately they develop just fine in total darkness, like down in our external cannister filters... so as far as the Lioness question, the advice is totally correct and we are done with it (everybody get that?)

BUT, its certainly not clear, to me at least, that the question of light stimulation in bacterial development is a factor fully understood by us hobbiests or clearly communicated. One of the things I've been trying to look at in the three Hovanec articles are hints in the methods sections about how these bacteriologists think... what they learn to care about... when they come up with their recipes for growing particular species of bacteria. Because it certainly looks to me like that somehow, from somewhere, those scientists find and use various procedural recipes for growing bacteria. Temperature, pH, substrate and even light are all frequently mentioned when you read these types of articles. I still hold out hope that there may be further assistance for our hobbiest world, specifically for fishless cycling, from the world of academic microbiology, of which bacteriology is a subspecialty. I'm at a university myself, so someday I may knock on some doors, but for now I haven't done enough homework in it!

(Lioness, special apology for more waterdrop sciency stuff cluttering up your thread!! Haven't we done a lot of that over the months? )

~~waterdrop~~

 

[iankent]

in addition to what waterdrop said, the lights could have an effect if your fishless cycling with live plants in your tank (the more plants, the bigger the effect) - the lights being on would encourage the plants to grow, which would use up ammonia and nitrate, making your tank appear to cycle faster when the lights are on!

edit - waterdrop, have a look on this site and also this one - if you have a look around, there's some excellent journals and plenty of good info (peer reviewed too), but it can sometimes be hard to find the info your looking for! i'll post some links relating to bacterial growth if I can find them again

 

[Dave Spencer]

in addition to what waterdrop said, the lights could have an effect if your fishless cycling with live plants in your tank (the more plants, the bigger the effect) - the lights being on would encourage the plants to grow, which would use up ammonia and nitrate, making your tank appear to cycle faster when the lights are on!

This is a good point. I set up high light, CO2, and EI dosed tanks with heaviy planting of fast growing weeds, and never cycled a tank yet. The efficiency of the plants to clear the water column of ammonia means I add fish practically from day one.

Admittedly, I wait a day or two for the plants to show signs of growth after their initial disturbance from planting. Then, despite what a lot of people recommend, I am able to add Amano shrimps and Ottos without any problems as part of an anti algae crew.

This is a huge advantage to people who keep `hi tech` planted tanks that isn`t always utilised.

Sometimes, I can`t think of anything more off putting to new people in the hobby of fishkeeping than spending weeks on end testing water parameters, and no fish.

Dave.

 

[iankent]

in addition to what waterdrop said, the lights could have an effect if your fishless cycling with live plants in your tank (the more plants, the bigger the effect) - the lights being on would encourage the plants to grow, which would use up ammonia and nitrate, making your tank appear to cycle faster when the lights are on!

This is a good point. I set up high light, CO2, and EI dosed tanks with heaviy planting of fast growing weeds, and never cycled a tank yet. The efficiency of the plants to clear the water column of ammonia means I add fish practically from day one.

Admittedly, I wait a day or two for the plants to show signs of growth after their initial disturbance from planting. Then, despite what a lot of people recommend, I am able to add Amano shrimps and Ottos without any problems as part of an anti algae crew.

This is a huge advantage to people who keep `hi tech` planted tanks that isn`t always utilised.

Sometimes, I can`t think of anything more off putting to new people in the hobby of fishkeeping than spending weeks on end testing water parameters, and no fish.

Dave.

i think live plants are what helped my tank cycle quite quickly - throws the readings off quite a bit (sorta feels like your adding ammonia and its disappearing entirely lol)! sorta went plant mad at the start and kept adding more lol, glad I did now tho!

how heavily planted is your tank to completely offset the fish?

 

[waterdrop]

in addition to what waterdrop said, the lights could have an effect if your fishless cycling with live plants in your tank (the more plants, the bigger the effect) - the lights being on would encourage the plants to grow, which would use up ammonia and nitrate, making your tank appear to cycle faster when the lights are on!

edit - waterdrop, have a look on this site and also this one - if you have a look around, there's some excellent journals and plenty of good info (peer reviewed too), but it can sometimes be hard to find the info your looking for! i'll post some links relating to bacterial growth if I can find them again

Thanks for the links Ian, those will be interesting to take a look at.

And yes, I agree, we've always had to keep an eye on the effect on ammonia and nitrates, both, when dealing with heavily planted tanks. I wouldn't have mentioned it for Lioness because my memory was that she was not attempting the planted tank hobby and didn't have a very heavily planted tank during fishless, at least that was my impression (she'll tell us..)

~~waterdrop~~

 

[iankent]

Thanks for the links Ian, those will be interesting to take a look at.

And yes, I agree, we've always had to keep an eye on the effect on ammonia and nitrates, both, when dealing with heavily planted tanks. I wouldn't have mentioned it for Lioness because my memory was that she was not attempting the planted tank hobby and didn't have a very heavily planted tank during fishless, at least that was my impression (she'll tell us..)

~~waterdrop~~

as it happens, my memory is crap lol, so I couldn't remember at all, so thought I'd mention it just in case!

 

[waterdrop]

in addition to what waterdrop said, the lights could have an effect if your fishless cycling with live plants in your tank (the more plants, the bigger the effect) - the lights being on would encourage the plants to grow, which would use up ammonia and nitrate, making your tank appear to cycle faster when the lights are on!

This is a good point. I set up high light, CO2, and EI dosed tanks with heaviy planting of fast growing weeds, and never cycled a tank yet. The efficiency of the plants to clear the water column of ammonia means I add fish practically from day one.

Admittedly, I wait a day or two for the plants to show signs of growth after their initial disturbance from planting. Then, despite what a lot of people recommend, I am able to add Amano shrimps and Ottos without any problems as part of an anti algae crew.

This is a huge advantage to people who keep `hi tech` planted tanks that isn`t always utilised.

Sometimes, I can`t think of anything more off putting to new people in the hobby of fishkeeping than spending weeks on end testing water parameters, and no fish.

Dave.

Dave,
This is pretty cool, but I'm sure you'd be the first to want to emphasize to any beginners reading this here in the "New to the Hobby"(!) section that you are talking about a "Planted Tank" here, as in the sense of Planted Tank Hobby. I would humbly submit that the planted tank hobby is even a bit more advanced than the freshwater fishkeeping hobby, so you are describing a fairly rare type of newcomer.

My impression is that you are one of four or five wonderful planted tank members who actually look over here and give us newcomers some advice in "New to the Hobby!" I just think whenever we talk about this stuff its important to clearly spell out the context to beginners. A high tech planted tank carries a pretty high skill set to learn to get it underway and a planted tank that processes all the ammonia and nitrate of a given fish stocking can be a tricky thing to handle sometimes. If something were to cause a plant die-off and the filter had not been pre-plant-cycled or had lost its cycle due to the effectiveness of the plants, then the fishkeeper could face a sudden fish-in cycling situation.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[Miss Wiggle]

yeah true planted tanks are tricky and hard work, for anyone reading this not sure of the definition, your tank would only count as planted if something like 70% of the substrate is covered with plants. While there's nothing wrong with having a handful of plants in while cycling it doesn't have the same effect as a heavily planted tank.


The process of heavily planting then stocking immediatley is called silent cycling, but effectivley there is no cycle and it is just the plants that do it for you.

you do need to be careful with heavily planted tanks, we lost one of our favourite fish this way a few months back. did a heavy prune and the ammonia shot up, i was obviously having a dim day so I didn't think to test the water until the day after when the fish looked ill, water changes for 2 days and the tank was sorted but it was just unfortunate I didn't catch it in time to save my lovely angelfish.