Tank cycling

[Roy619]

Im still a rookie, Is it ok to do water changes when cycling a tank? I've heard not to do that because you remove ammonia and slow down the build up of bennificial bacteria. Therefore never completing th cycling process. I've been waiting for my ammonia and nitrites to drop to 0ppm before doing a water change. (I am doing a live cycle)

 

[Essjay]

With a fish-in cycle, you need to do a water change whenever you have a reading for ammonia or nitrite above zero. Both of these are toxic to fish and will shorten their lives, if not kill them, if they remain in the water. Water changes are your friend when cycling with fish. The water changes need to be often enough and big enough to keep both ammonia and nitrite as close to zero as possible. Even trace amounts in the water will encourage the bacteria to grow.

There are things you can do to help.
Add Tetra Safe Start or Dr Tim's One & Only. These contain the bacteria we want to grow and will speed things up.
Use a water conditioner which 'detoxifies' ammonia. Seachem prime also detoxifies nitrite. The detoxification only lasts 24 to 36 hours so you still need to do the water changes but the water conditioner will keep the fish safe between water changes. Ammonia and nitrite will still show in the tests with these water conditioners.
Feed the fish once every 3 days. Less food = less ammonia making it easier to keep the two poisons very low.
Put live plants in the tank. Plants use ammonia as food and they don't turn it into nitrite. Floating plants are particularly good for this.

 

[PheonixKingZ]

@essjay nailed it.

Hello and welcome to the forum!

 

[utahfish]

The way i cycle my tanks is a little unorthodox but it works for me. In my filters i use just filter floss and lava rock, lava rock has a lot of pourous surface area to grow beneficial bacteria. I then buy lots of plants put my water treated with prime for dechlorination turn on the filters and lights increase temp to encourage growth i put in lots of wood because wood also has lots of surface area for beneficial bacteria then i go to the pet store and say give me a bunch of your unwanted pest snails which they gladly do then i dump the snails in and dump a bunch of fish food in and get that tank real dirty some snails die some live either way they create ammonia and waste that feeds beneficial bacteria, after about 2 To 3 weeks of this i do a huge water change squeeze out the filter floss in the bucket wait another day do a partial water change about 50% get my temp where i want it and go buy my first round of fish then do weekly partial water changes for life This method has always worked for me it may not be super scientific or even practical but it works for me and saves me the trouble of buying ammonia in a bottle and testing every five minutes and so far the fish loss in the first weeks that i experience has been minimal to none i fully subscribe to the KISS method, "keep it stupid simple" and so far over 15 years its worked for me. Good luck though!