Time, please.

[GaryE22 137]

I'm going to throw out some propositions for new aquarists, and see what people have to say!

No planted tank has more than temporary beauty until it is as least six months old. It could take years.

Cycling your tank is a necessary first step on a staircase that takes time to climb. It isn't the goal. It's step one.

Impulse buys are setbacks. Knowledge isn't power as much as it's the most common sense thing you can look for.

Marketing people are paid to sell, whether the product is useful or not. Find fellow hobbyists you trust for advice before you trust gimmicks and sales pitches.

Take your time. Pots of flowers at the garden centre always look great, but it takes a bit of learning and experimentation to make them grow at home.

 

[Barry Tetra2 2]

Cycling your tank is a necessary first step on a staircase that takes time to climb. It isn't the goal. It's step one.

Personally, I find the idea of cycling a tank to be quite useless, the adding ammonia method.

As I said in another thread that I tend to wait for a very long time, cycled doesn’t tells you if the tank is matured or not. I got the feeling that “seasoned tank time” might be something to explain to the beginner.

 

[GaryE22 137]

@Barry Tetra I'll slightly disagree with you - the cycle is step one. Having a healthy, functioning tank is more complex and it takes ... time.

A tank with plastic and resin ornaments and no plants, algae or biofilm can have all the ammonia it wants - it hasn't fully come to life. But it can support life while it develops a proper flora and fauna. I haven't ever dosed ammonia, and I don't test new tanks. But I also am not "alone" in my hobby - I live with other tanks around my fishroom. I have many long functioning tanks to keep me company, and I can get my tanks up and running with simple dechlorination and the addition of a seeded filter from another tank. I always run several extra ones. I get wild caught fish that are considered difficult to keep, and haven't lost one or had one look the least bit bothered by this system.

I'll never do a fishless cycle, or buy bottled starter bacteria, but I'm not starting cold, either. I did that a ways back, without test kits or ammonia bottles.

It's imperfect for sure. Just a filter is only part of it. But it's enough of a start that it works. Gravel (sometimes mixed with that of established tanks), decor and plants go in as well, and by about 3 months of running, I can increase population if the fish haven't bred and increased it themselves.

 

[WhistlingBadger19 1]

I often tell beginners, "Only bad things happen quickly in this hobby."

 

[Jennet2 60]

I'm just a simplistic woman who is not great at chemistry and such. I had 2 large 4 ft bow front tanks in the 70's and just one tank in the late 80's, both of which I started with dinner plate fish in the old fashioned way. They were all successful and had very few losses.

I have recently set up an 80 litre tank using the ammonia method, and am about to add fish. I bought a small 24 litre quarantine tank that I started just after the 80 litre tank and used some water from the big tank along with a filter supplied with the tank and a couple of squares of filter media that I had thrown in there to seed the tank to some degree. I have put plants and wood in both at different times. There's some floating plants in both, and initially all my plants went into the small tank, but a week or so ago I transferred most of them to the large tank.

Yesterday I went and bought a couple of cory's and a lamb chop rasbora to go in the small tank. They both appear fine today and are eating.

I will soon be receiving 8 chili rasboras and 4 celestial pearl danio's for the 80 litre towards the end of the week.

I feel that to some degree, unless I have completely missed your points, (which can happen with me as I get 'brain fog' from intense pain frequently), you are saying the same sort of thing in different ways.

You can set up a tank in different ways and get the same initial effects, you can keep fish in them. BUT - they still need to age in order for the fish (and plants) to start to thrive well.

Reading and using the Ammonium Chloride cycling information on this site, along with support from others answering my sometimes daft questions has helped me a lot to catch up with todays way of setting up aquariums. Researching other stuff has also helped.

I now have two cycled tanks, what I do not yet have is balanced system that will maintain successfully however many of whatever I choose to put in them.

This will take time to grow in, along with a few fish and plants, and with hopefully mostly successful introduction of others. And even when I have setbacks, these will bring me more knowledge from which I hope will lead me to be a more successful fish keeper.

Feel free to delete this ramble if it is a load of complete b******s, and is more confusing than not.

 

[GaryE22 137]

@Jennet - I agree with you. There are means to goal. A fishless cycle is one way to start. It's not wrong - it's just not exclusively the one.

Except you will never have a balanced aquarium. You may hopefully have a more balanced, less unstable aquarium, but like the rest of us, you'll be the one doing the (simple) balancing act.

Aquariums in homes are too small to ever be truly balanced. We're comparing them to water bodies with millions of litres of moving water, and to me, that lacks seriousness. We muddle along, doing water changes and enjoying the rest of the game.

 

[Chickadee3 23]

Was this post inspired by my impulsive plant purchases at Petsmart? Either way, it's good advice. I've never been a patient or tempered person. When I started knitting, I bought every type of yarn that appealed to me. Took on projects way beyond my skill level. Then I got burned out with it. Gardening - I go to the plant nursery every spring and buy every flower, shrub and tree that catches my eye. Then I kick myself because now I have to figure out where to plant them all. I am my own worst enemy.

Today I'm returning a few other things I bought at Petsmart (air stones, tubing) that I have no use for at the moment. If and when I have a need for them, I can easily go online and get what I need, when I need it. I will just focus on the two tanks I have running at the moment. Just wish they'd cycle. It's the waiting that makes me do impulsive things. Now I've got the Tom Petty song in my head again...

 

[Jennet2 60]

@garry I agree, which is why I am really having to rein in my desire to have bigger fish at this point in time. In the past I had space for bigger aquariums. Still just glass boxes, but I believe it is beholden on us to consider what we do in order to acquire the best we can for any life we choose to put in there.

I adored my Malawi's and would love to keep them again, but simply don't have the available room space without hiring several skips and getting rid of a whole load of cr*p acquired, along with a lot of furniture.

Ho hum, and here's to future dreams.

 

[gwand22 138]

All my fish are 3 inches or less by design. I do not like large fish. I can’t articulate why. It is a visceral reaction. But there are so many beautiful and interesting small fish.

 

[GaryE22 137]

Was this post inspired by my impulsive plant purchases at Petsmart?

No, although the "waiting is the hardest part" rolling around my head for so long is your doing, and it may have contributed. We had a local aquarium club meeting last night and I ended up in 2 conversations with people trying to manage impulsive mistakes. In their cases, fish that couldn't live together. And if you go back through posts here - you are in impulse buyers anonymous now.

Every hobby gets people excited and they impulse buy, but this one's harder because it's based on biological processes that don't care what we want. They move at their own pace, and we want results, now. It's a lot like have a garden outdoors. We have to give things time, and avoid the temptation of filling the ><:" thing with plastic flowers.

 

[Jennet2 60]

Is this' part of an age thing I wonder?? From what I can gather on here, a fair number of us are retired or close to. I am still just as impulsive as I ever was. What has changed though, is that I can now better manage the impulse to do it 'right now'.

I have learned from many, many errors over time, to take a beat, take a deep breath and walk away, get in the car, drive a while, and maybe go back home to get a coffee, and not the nearest place there is (so I don't have to drive past the place on the way home again). This way, I am less likely to jump in feet first without going again to do some research, or ask further questions of people with more experience, and THEN jump right in, if it's not going to get me in too much trouble.

 

[WhistlingBadger19 1]

I have actually never done an ammonia cycle. All my tanks are variations on the Walstad style, and I silent cycle them: Plant a crazy amount of plants, wait until they're growing actively, then gradually start adding fish.

 

[Jennet2 60]

Now that's what I call patience.

 

[Chickadee3 23]

Is this' part of an age thing I wonder?? From what I can gather on here, a fair number of us are retired or close to. I am still just as impulsive as I ever was. What has changed though, is that I can now better manage the impulse to do it 'right now'.

I recently retired early and couldn't wait to get the fish stuff out again. So it is partly that too, but mostly just my impulsive nature and getting too many ideas churning around in my head that I can't possibly execute all at once.

 

[Essjay22 137]

I didn't start by doing any type of cycling as I had fish before I had a tank - my teenaged sons won goldfish at the fair. Once they outgrew the tank we bought (within a year) we gave them away to someone with a pond and I bought a heater and tropical fish. My main tank has been upgraded a few times, always by transferring the filter and decor - no live plants for a few years just plastic then silk.

I have done a fishless cycle though on a small tank for a betta, just to see how TwoTankAmin's method worked. I felt I couldn't really help anyone if I hadn't done one myself. Yes, it is only the first step on the staircase; cycling with ammonia is just the beginning.

Plants can take a lot of patience when first trying them. At first every plant I tried died, then I discovered epiphytes - Java fern and a couple of species of anubias were the first plants I has success with. I still have epiphytes on wood. Later I had too much success - the hornwort I kept took over the tank in a tangled mess so it had to go. More recently I have have discovered cryptocorynes and have several species growing well, if slowly.