waterdrop
Enthusiastic "Re-Beginner"
In the planted tank hobby of course, one is very concerned for the hundreds of dollars/pounds one has spent packing the tank absolutely full of expensive plants! One doesn't want them to die from the high levels of ammonia introduced during fishless cycling and its true that the high ammonia levels can be damaging, even though plants do absorb ammonia and use it. So its good to be aware that the planted folks have that as one of their concerns.. a little off from your question though.
For the average beginner we see here in our beginners section the situation is usually very different. Their question usually pertains to having a few clumps of plants and the plants may not have necessarily been all that expensive (although they might have been!) It takes a LOT of plants to have a big impact on the water parameters of a fishless cycle. In general, the absorbtion of ammonia (and to a lesser extent plants also absorb nitrates(NO3) and some species absorb much smaller amounts of nitrites(NO2) is not at all something that has any impact on the ammonia available to the bacteria or therefor the process of getting the filter cycled. The one minor problem area is in the interpretation of the daily test results. As the number of plants becomes greater, the person taking the readings must take into account that some of the ammonia loss is probably coming from the plants, not the bacteria! There is no helpful formula for how much either!
While I do feel that a "blacked out bare tank" fishless cycle is a very good way to go (in that you can minimize algae hassles) I don't really think having plants or not having plants is a big deal either way for fishless cycling and I'd encourage people who want to have an aspect of their tank to play with and to see and think about to go ahead and be working with and perhaps learning some about plants. On the beginner level I consider the plant topic to be somewhat more difficult than fish or cycling, but the info is there for the taking and the actions to good plantkeeping are not hard.
Two things that can make the beginner fishless cyclers experience with plants be better (from the cycling and algae standpoint) are to stay within a "medium" or smaller amount of plants (certainly less than 50% of substrate coverage) and to consider just getting bunches of cheap plants and considering them to potentially be "throw-aways" if they get covered with algae or don't do well.
Of course, to have the plants do well, one wants to start to master all the things that the planted tank members do so well. The light has to be right (for tank startups, the hours of light should often start down at 4 hours and work upward very slowly.) There very likely may need to be added macro and micronutrients (fertilizers) in there to counter the terrible sterile atmosphere of a new tank from a plant's standpoint. One may want to use liquid carbon, assuming one is not planning to do CO2, as most beginners are not (of course in the planted tank world we'd probably say this is the whole problem with the traditional hobby, lol). One might have an expensive "plant substrate" serving as a backup for missed days of fertilization. (seeing all this, you can see why I mention the throw-aways! of course, sometimes it all goes great!)
Hopefully I've provided some good homework reading for the night!
~~waterdrop~~
For the average beginner we see here in our beginners section the situation is usually very different. Their question usually pertains to having a few clumps of plants and the plants may not have necessarily been all that expensive (although they might have been!) It takes a LOT of plants to have a big impact on the water parameters of a fishless cycle. In general, the absorbtion of ammonia (and to a lesser extent plants also absorb nitrates(NO3) and some species absorb much smaller amounts of nitrites(NO2) is not at all something that has any impact on the ammonia available to the bacteria or therefor the process of getting the filter cycled. The one minor problem area is in the interpretation of the daily test results. As the number of plants becomes greater, the person taking the readings must take into account that some of the ammonia loss is probably coming from the plants, not the bacteria! There is no helpful formula for how much either!
While I do feel that a "blacked out bare tank" fishless cycle is a very good way to go (in that you can minimize algae hassles) I don't really think having plants or not having plants is a big deal either way for fishless cycling and I'd encourage people who want to have an aspect of their tank to play with and to see and think about to go ahead and be working with and perhaps learning some about plants. On the beginner level I consider the plant topic to be somewhat more difficult than fish or cycling, but the info is there for the taking and the actions to good plantkeeping are not hard.
Two things that can make the beginner fishless cyclers experience with plants be better (from the cycling and algae standpoint) are to stay within a "medium" or smaller amount of plants (certainly less than 50% of substrate coverage) and to consider just getting bunches of cheap plants and considering them to potentially be "throw-aways" if they get covered with algae or don't do well.
Of course, to have the plants do well, one wants to start to master all the things that the planted tank members do so well. The light has to be right (for tank startups, the hours of light should often start down at 4 hours and work upward very slowly.) There very likely may need to be added macro and micronutrients (fertilizers) in there to counter the terrible sterile atmosphere of a new tank from a plant's standpoint. One may want to use liquid carbon, assuming one is not planning to do CO2, as most beginners are not (of course in the planted tank world we'd probably say this is the whole problem with the traditional hobby, lol). One might have an expensive "plant substrate" serving as a backup for missed days of fertilization. (seeing all this, you can see why I mention the throw-aways! of course, sometimes it all goes great!)
Hopefully I've provided some good homework reading for the night!
~~waterdrop~~
