Pinned Topics On Cycling

[jonnyf84]

Hi,

I have just stripped my community tank, bought a new filter and will be starting to cycle in a week or so, my plan is to scale down so my breeding trio of bristlenose and my nezzie's will be going into this tank, i need to be able to add all the fish at the same time.

I have read both these posts on fishless cycling:

http/www.fishforums.net/index.php?showtopic=113861 - RDD
http/www.fishforums.net/index.php?showto...l=water+changes - BIGNOSE

My question is with bignose's method of fishless cycling - adding 1ppm ammonia every day with no water changes (20 days) - will i be able to add all my fish at the same time?

With rdd's method of 'add daily' i will be able to add all my fish straight away but it doesn't say how long the cycle will take, does anybody know?


Many Thanks,
Jonny.

 

[Bignose]

All that matters at the end is the rate at which the bacteria can consume the ammonia and nitrite.

It doesn't really matter in the end, how the ammonia was put into the tank in the first place. At the end when you are "done" the tank should be about to process 5 ppm of ammonia and the resulting nitrite in one day. Then, you can add regular tankful of fish. 5 ppm is more than even a slightly overstocked tank would generate in one day, but it is a good to shoot for 5, as it is incorporates a nice safety factor.

Also, please note that in that post, the tank wasn't fully cycled. That wasn't really the intention of that post. The intention was to demonstrate, both theoretically and in practice that doing water changes while cycling with fish lowers the maximum concentration of exposure to ammonia and actually allows the tank to cycle faster. In that demonstration, I didn't do the full cycling, because I didn't test (nor care about) nitrite. The point is about lowering the maximum concentration fish would be exposed to if you cycle with fish either on purpose or by accident (i.e. your accidentally kill off your filter). The 20 days isn't a hard an fast results, either, that just happens to be how long it took in that experiment. It is highly dependent on your local water conditions.