New idea for Cycling

[jimbooo]

Hi All,

Just in the process of cycling my new 40G.

i put one zebra danio in last night (from my 10G community tank) and thought of an alternative way or getting the bacteria up without poisoning and torturing my poor fishies.

instead of leaving him in the new tank for 2/3 weeks is there any reason why i can't swap the fish in the new tank with one of the others in the old tank every day.

i have 7 zebra danio's in total so if i can keep track of which ones have been in which tank in theory i can swap the cycling fish every 24hrs so as not to cause too much stress.

is there any reason against doing this, i can't bear to leave one fish in crappy water for so long?

 

[JustinSane]

Great, then instead of exposing one fish to stress and poisoning, you'd be exposing seven. Moving and catching causes stress, being exposed to different water parameters causes stress, not to speak of the stress caused by the nitrite and ammonia

You don't have to bear a single fish of yours being slowly poisoned to death if you use fishless cycling.

 

[Cat]

Set my tank up after 4 days ,I put dannios in mine ,they cycled mine .none died.
edit

6 months later they are all still swimming about

 

[newfishies]

i cycled my tank with 4 danios and they are all still happily swimming along!

 

[jimbooo]

yeah, found out about that this morning. too late now.

are you saying it would be better to leave the one danio in throughout the prosess rather than swapping them?

 

[Cat]

I put 5 danios in and they survived it .

 

[CatLover]

What they're saying is that in reality, swaping the danios would cause more stress than just simply leaving them in there.
If you wish to do a cycle with fish, place more danios in the new tank. Bacteria will build up faster, and it will reduce stress for the lone danio because he won't be all by himself.
Cycling with fish rarely kills them, and it won't leave them physically or mentally handicapped.

An alternative is fishless cycling, which is what I did for my 75G. Just leave the tank set up for a few weeks without adding fish. This way no one gets stressed.

But if you still want to use danios, the best route would be to place more in there with the one already in there and just leave them there. Moving them every day would cause more problems than just leaving them in there.

 

[bunjiweb]

As long as the water temperature is stable and the water is clean, there are various fishes that usually always survive a cycle, provided that is that the fish shop you go to has good quality stock, and not just a bunch of inbred immunly deficient fish

I have cycled tanks with zebra danios and gold tetras, and none of them have ever died.

Ben

 

[clutterydrawer]

leave the danio in there and jsut do water changes if water quality gets too bad...which it shouldn;t, really, if you've added media/gravel from the 10g.


besides, i doubt you have two spare hours every day to spend catching danios.

if youre really worried couldnt you just put teh danio back in the 10 and fishless cycle the 40?

 

[Inchworm]

Hi jimbooo,

If you only have the fish in the 10 gallon tank to worry about, why not just take some gravel out of your 40, replace it with the gravel from your 10, take the filter from the 10 and run it on the new tank along with the new filter, and move all decorations and plants into the new tank too.

By doing this, almost all the beneficial bacteria from the little tank will be transfered to the big one and it will be cycled immediately, at least to the extent that it should support your danios. In a short time, the bacteria will spread and you can remove some of the gravel and the old filter (and other misc. items) and set up the 10 gallon tank again, which will be ready to go right away.

If you do this, gradually add new fish (just a few each week) and the bacteria will increase to support them as well.

 

[jimbooo]

thanks inchworm,

unfortunatly i have recently had problems with the 10G. i have had a shark catfish die after eating a rainbow with cloudy eye. i'm sure somethings wrong in the tank just haven't worked out what yet and dont want to cross contaminate. I know the danio may be carrying something but other than that i dont want to mess up the new tank before it's started.

i'm nervous about moving gravel/decor/H20 for this reason.

both tanks are Juwel and have internal filters of different sizes so that wont work either i'm afraid.

thanks anyway i think i'll just wait it out to be safe, spent too much to mess it up.

 

[Def]

An alternative is fishless cycling, which is what I did for my 75G. Just leave the tank set up for a few weeks without adding fish. This way no one gets stressed.

This will NOT cycle your tank, it will just waste your time. You need a source of ammonia...

 

[isu_guy]

Heres an idea I've thought about doing, but haven't gotten to try yet. this may or may not be possible for you. Tell me what you guys think of this idea.

Place your new tank that was on a stand right next to an old tank. get a syphon tube full of water with one end in each tank, secure it by whatever means you want. This will keep the water levels even in both tanks, if either one rises higher than the other the syhponing action will push water into the less full tank. Then with tubing rig up your filter (assuming its a hanging one) so that it pulls water from one tank and pours it into the other (or get both filters going, one pulling from the new into the old, one from the old into the new). The syhpon/pumping action will distribute the ammonia/nitrite into both tanks, but the cycled tank will eliminate it quickly. The additional ammonia will cause more bacteria to grow, which will no doubt grow on the places that is free of bacteria (the new tank). After a while, remove the syphon, and have each filter pumping water as it normally would and check the ammonia/nitrite levels for a few days. If there is no problem you'd have two cycled tanks.

What do you all think. This is just the engineer in my pondering possibilities.

 

[Angry_Platy]

Just think....as the nitrites and ammonia starts to rise, you will be adding fish from a cycled tank into conditions of extremely high ammo and nitrites. Kinda a shock huh.

Is far better in my opinion to cycle without fish.

HOWEVER, if you must cycle with fish, is better for fish in the cycling tank to get used to the rising levels gradually instead of being put into high levels rthere and then....

 

[FishDan]

Heres an idea I've thought about doing, but haven't gotten to try yet. this may or may not be possible for you. Tell me what you guys think of this idea.

Place your new tank that was on a stand right next to an old tank. get a syphon tube full of water with one end in each tank, secure it by whatever means you want. This will keep the water levels even in both tanks, if either one rises higher than the other the syhponing action will push water into the less full tank. Then with tubing rig up your filter (assuming its a hanging one) so that it pulls water from one tank and pours it into the other (or get both filters going, one pulling from the new into the old, one from the old into the new). The syhpon/pumping action will distribute the ammonia/nitrite into both tanks, but the cycled tank will eliminate it quickly. The additional ammonia will cause more bacteria to grow, which will no doubt grow on the places that is free of bacteria (the new tank). After a while, remove the syphon, and have each filter pumping water as it normally would and check the ammonia/nitrite levels for a few days. If there is no problem you'd have two cycled tanks.

What do you all think. This is just the engineer in my pondering possibilities.

This idea is probably more trouble than it is worth, especially if you can not or do not want the tanks sitting next to each other. It would be far, far easier to just transfer some gravel and/or decorations in a stocking or something. Also, I doubt the water loaded with ammonia/nitrites is going to be evenly distributed in both tanks. Furthermore, why risk higher levels of ammonia/nitrite in the already established tank? When possible (I understand the worry in this case) transferring gravel or decor is a far simpler and more efficient method to quickly (or even eliminate) cycle a tank.

\Dan