Quick Question About My New Tank Cycle

[boog3ee]

greetings to all! I am new to this but quickly becoming a rabid fan of this hobby!
So, i got me a 310 Litre tank that is now ready to be cycled, I live in Amman Jordan and for some reason it has been proving pretty #41#### hard to find any pure ammonia to perform a fishless cycle so i came up with this plan and tell me if it can work:
My pet shop owner has a tank identical to mine in which he keeps his gorgeous precious discus, the thank has a gigantic filter that has 4 different large sponge like filter material and some ceramic cylinders inside it, the guy agreed to swap one of his sponges (full of bacteria) and some of his ceramic cylinders with my brand new one in order to give the cycling a head start, i will use that and introduce 16 tiger barbs to the tank to get the job done, does this sound like a good plan?
thank you!
Boog3ee

 

[BIG BAD BARRY]

Welcome to the forum!

By doing what you suggest it will give you a start but you are likely to end up as fish in cycling.

You will need to test your water parameters daily, especially ammonia and nitrite and keep them as close to oppm as possible. This will mean doing large volume water changes with dechlorinated water daily.

If you have not done so already, i would advise you to read the articles in the beginners resource section:

http/www.fishforums.net/index.php?/topic/277264-beginners-resource-center/

Most people on this forum would prefer you to go down the fishless cycling route.
Have you tried the chemists/pharmacies and hardware/diy stores for ammonia?
Just make sure it has no additives.
Hope you find some, as fishless is the way to go


Tiger barbs can be fin nippers. Be mindful of what other fish you are going to keep. Here are some links to fish info:

http/www.seriouslyfish.com/kb.php
http/www.aquariumlife.net/
http/tropicalfishgallery.com/species-gallery/gallery_catfish.html

I wonder if you get better quality and different fish in Amman?

Good luck and keep us posted

 

[boog3ee]

Thank you for the fast reply!
Excuse my ignorance about this, but why do you think i would end up with a new fish in cycling process if i am already introducing live and functioning bacteria to the process? especially if i make sure that the Ph parameters in my tank are identical (if not higher) to the ones in the shop's tank? and the number and volume of fish im introducing are well within the capacity of the fairly large tank.
As for the Tiger Barbs, im using them because i read they were hardy fish that can withstand the process if they had to, and the shop owner, who is a friend, agreed to swap them with any other fish if i decide after the process is done not to keep them.
There is a surprisingly large variety of fish in Amman, you'ld be surprised, anything from arowanas to tetras to discus to piranhas, and they are surprising cheap in comparison to the prices im finding on the web, and i live on a street that has over 20 pet shops most of which have fish!
I will look some more for ammonia, but im not very hopeful!
thank you again!

 

[KittyKat]

boog3ee, what you suggest has worked for me every time and I have tried it in the region of about 50 odd times so far. The trick is to realise that the sponge will contain not as many bacteria as a fully cycled filter, so stock slowly (no more fish in the first month). It really helps to add a lot of plants too. At the first sign of ammonia, water changes (although my stocking was always slow enough that I never got any ammonia readings).

The other method I have used (when ammonia was not available to me) is the frozen shrimp. Take a pack of frozen prawns and put some in the aquarium.. this involves a lot of guess work (to get the ammonia level right) and will make the water absolutely stink. But, it does work if you have a good test kit and don't mind the smell.

 

[waterdrop]

KK, for a 310L/82USG sized tank and an unknown sized mature sponge, he is suggesting 16 tiger barbs... perhaps you are like me and find yourself wondering what actual number of barbs would make a balanced Fish-In Cycle so that the water changes wouldn't go crazy the first few weeks? Thinking about I just have no idea - maybe 6 barbs? (thinking that that would be about the minimum so that they didn't nip each other to death during the fish-in period) (and of course the sponge is a big unknown, could create an almost cycled situation or could need a couple weeks of heavy fish-in water changes...)

~~waterdrop~~

 

[BIG BAD BARRY]

If i am wrong then hopefully somebody will correct me!

The filter in the shop will have bacteria sufficient to cope with the level of fish in it assuming it stays relatively the the same.

You will only be taking a proportion of that bacteria and putting it in your filter. You can therefore only stock the quantity of fish that can be handled by that bacteria. If the media from the shop tank is kept wet and transferred to your filter where the water is at the correct temperature relatively quickly, then you should not get any great bacteria loss.
The question is judging the level of initial stocking. Getting this wrong could cause a fish in cycle if the fish load is high.
It will take time for the bacteria to seed from the shop media to the media in your filter.

If you go down this route you should set up your filter in the recommended fashion and put the shop media closest to where the water enters the filter so that the flow of water can transfer the bacteria to your new media on its flow out of the filter.
New fish would need to be introduced slowly or when the filter is cycled.
Regular water testing will be important.

Great having so much choice of fish near to you!

 

[boog3ee]

Thank you Kitty, you raised my spirits! as for the frozen shrimps, the idea of a smelly tank in my living room where i receive business clients all the time does not sound very appealing.
As for the number of barbs, i came up with the number 16 from researching in fish cycling and found in many articles that the proposed number is 3 fish for every 10 to 20 gallons, so im introducing less what was proposed, but i also dont want to start with much less in order not to end up with a weak and too slow cycling process due to not enough ammonia for the bacteria to process... does that make any sense?

All this said, i do not plan to add any more fish before i know that the cycling is mature, and i dont mind doing the water changes and whatever it takes!

 

[waterdrop]

The beneficial bacteria will continue to enlarge in numbers and "cycle" even when our good liquid test kits read zero ppm. There is no need to push very much ammonia at them. More often the opposite case is your problem. Remember, when you fish-in cycle the main game is using a good liquid-reagent based ammonia test kit (and nitrite(NO2) kit) to determine whether you've crossed over (spiked) the 0.25ppm threshold where all the permanent gill damage begins. Unfortunately, the fish can begin to get this gill damage before they show any symptoms of distress, so measuring is the only way to keep tabs on this (this is written up in our fish-in cycling article I believe (any mature media move with fish is essentially a fish-in cycle until proven otherwise.)

So the reason I'm discussing the number of fish is that the easy guesstimates for how many are rarely very good at predicting how the fish bioload and the bacterial colony size will actually balance and any small amount too much of fish will cause you to have to do huge and frequent water changes (with conditioner and temperature matching) to avoid the gill and nerve(nitrite) damage.

Don't forget that another alternative is to still keep up an aggressive search for the right type of simple weak ammonia!

WD

 

[boog3ee]

Thank you all! i will keep everything you said into consideration! very happy to have found this forum!

 

[KittyKat]

I wasn't sure about the numbers either, actually.. 16 does seem like quite a lot, but if the filter will contain 1/4 of bacteria which are needed for a fully stocked discus tank, then maybe that's quite a lot.. I would personally start with 6 and add another 2 every week thereafter, assuming there are no ammonia or nitrite readings.