Plants And Fish

[newtothis26]

my tank is 200 ltr roma which i set up yesterday with 13 bunches of various plants, i currently have a 65 ltr tank iv had running for a year which is doing brill, i took sum media from the filter and put it in the new one, iv read on here that if you have a well planted tank you could add fish to the tank straight away as long as its well maintained with water changes so any one can give light to this i would be gratefull thanks

 

[Honeythorn]

Plants have very little to do with cycling and certainly won't allow you to stock a tank if your filter is not cycled.

If you filled your new filter completely with mature media, then you can stock straighaway. If you only put a bit in and added fresh new media on top, then you should feed the bacterial colony with pure ammonia as you would in a normal fishless cycle, and test with a liquid test kit. When the bacteria are prcessing ammonia and nitrites in 12 hours, then you can do a big water change and stock SLOWLY , building up the stock until you have the fish you want.

 

[Assaye]

If you move the media across and don't add fish or pure ammonia within a few hours, the bacteria will die anyway and you'll just have an old bit of sponge.

Yes, you can add fish straight away with plants and some mature media HOWEVER you won't have enough media from the 65 ltr to full the filter on the 200 ltr. If, say, you added 1/3 of the media from the 65 ltr you could put in the same number of fish as 1/4-1/3 of the stock in the 65 ltr . . . as there is about enough bacteria to cope. From there, you will need to test daily for ammonia and nitrites until you are sure that these are staying at zero, and then add a tiny number of new fish. Rinse and repeat =)

If you add plants, these will consume some of the ammonia but unless you are planning to permanently run a very light stocked, very heavily planted tank, don't rely on plants. They will help, sure, but you still need to cycle your tank properly.

 

[Mikaila31]

If you lightly stock(a few fish to start with) and very slowly work up adding a 1/3 the bioload every 2 weeks you can avoid the cycle in a planted tank. The filter will slowly establish, while the plants take care of the excess ammonia.

However I would give your newly setup tank some time if you want to go this route. New plants are not as helpful as a established planted tank...