New Tank

[katykaye]

Hi guys

I have just bought a second small tank for my office and am about to do my first fishless cycling!!

One very quick question - I have read the fishless cycling threads and *think* I understand it all except one bit...

Do I cycle it from day 1 or do I wait for the water to clear before I start?

Thanks

 

[bagu]

I started from day 1

 

[OldMan47]

If you have a second tank, you have a first one. You can start the cycle right away but you can also jump start the process by cloning your existing filter and maybe cycle in a week or less.

 

[waterdrop]

yes, you're definately going to want to discuss cloning here and try to get the benefit of moving some of your bacteria from the previous tank and it wont hurt the tank to run for a day or two before you start cycling but it doesn't matter one way or the other.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[greenscooby]

I agree with waterdrop.

Speak to Waterdrop, Truck or Fatheadminnow(FHM), thier advice is invaluable.

 

[katykaye]

yes, you're definately going to want to discuss cloning here and try to get the benefit of moving some of your bacteria from the previous tank and it wont hurt the tank to run for a day or two before you start cycling but it doesn't matter one way or the other.


Yes - I did that with waterdrops help for my big tank but I am not in a hurry with this one (wheras I had to move fish quickly last time) is it still worth doing?

 

[loraxchick]

CLONING IS always WORTH DOING...SAVES LOTS OF TIME AND HEADACHES. ary bout the caps/

 

[waterdrop]

Yes, unless your first filter is especially delicate for some reason (ie. sometimes we get people who are still fishless cycling their first filter or have just barely finished doing it) then its always extremely worthwhile to use mature media from it. We can talk about it. The basic rule to be stated first is that you always want to keep at least 2/3 of the biomedia still intact in the first filter so that its tank won't suffer a mini-cycle. But if you follow that rule, you're quite safe as far as I've seen and heard. Its especially easy if you have ceramic rings, ceramic gravel or bioballs in that the biomedia is then just a loose commodity and you can replace what you take by just pouring some fresh brand-new media into the old filter to fill it back up. This is yet another reason why these biomedia choices are so good. But really a sponge is not much harder as it always yields to scissors.

Unless you have a big mishap and entirely lose all your filter media, the very first time you fishless cycle is really the only time you'd ever need to do it without mature media, as from then on you should always have some. Reminds me of sourdough bread starter in San Francisco... someone's always got some!

~~waterdrop~~