When Can I Add Live Plants To My Tank?

[rpgmomma8404]

I just recently purchase a 10 gallons tank. It has not been set up for 24 hours yet. I am going to do a fishless cycle before I put any fish into it. When would be a good time to add plants if I decide to go that route with live plants. They would have to be easy to take care as I am just beginning again after not having a tank for almost 16 years. So, I am learning everything over again and learning stuff I didn't know, lol. Would having plants in the tank also help cycle it faster?
 
Thanks! 

 

[Blondielovesfish]

Some people do think that it makes it cycle faster, however, most people experience algae blooms if they have plants in their tank while cycling.
It's up to you really, you could wait until the ammonia stage is over and then add the plants while the nitrite bacteria is growing, or, you could add them before or after. One positive about adding them after is that you won't have to have your tank lights on.

 

[TaurineLittle]

I agree with Blondie, I've set up 4 tanks; 2 with plants in it during the cycle and I haven't experienced any difference is cycling speed between them. I think its all personal preference, with plants in while its cycling it would look a bit better than having a blank tank with water in it, other than that I don't really see any other benefit and if there is I doubt it would make a whole lot of difference in the long run. With algae blooms, I haven't experienced anything different between the tanks either. So I guess it really depends on personal preference.

 

[BubblesLotsOfBubbles]

Some people do think that it makes it cycle faster, however, most people experience algae blooms if they have plants in their tank while cycling.
It's up to you really, you could wait until the ammonia stage is over and then add the plants while the nitrite bacteria is growing, or, you could add them before or after. One positive about adding them after is that you won't have to have your tank lights on.

 
"most people experience algae blooms if they have plants in their tank while cycling."
 
Why is this anyone know?
 
I am going to do a fishless cycle but my green fingers are itchy to get some nice mosses on mesh, rocks and wood. But I don't want ugly algae blooms.

 

[TwoTankAmin]

Always plant first, then if you need any additional bacteria after that, you can do a small fishess cycle. This may or may not be needed.
 
You plant first for a few reasons:
1. The plants need to establish and this can be hard or impossible with many fish you might put into a tank.
2. Substrates with plants roots are completely different in their biology than unplanted.
3. Plants take up ammonia, which lessens the need for bacteria in handling ammonia. The more plants one has, the less bacteria they need.
4. Plants arrive with some level of bacteria already on them.
5. Planting after cycling reduces the amount of bacteria in a tank as they are not all needed. This method takes longer than planting and then cycling if needed.
6. Plants use ammonia faster than bacteria.
7. Plants usually arrive well fed and with some stored nutrients. Unless one has a high light o2 added tank, there is not a lot of need for ferts (ammonia being one) initially.
 
Cycling with plants may cause algae because of the excess nutrients in the water and algae will use ammonia just like plants or bacteria do.
 
If one needs to have bacteria colonize because the plant load is small, one should use less ammonia than in a fishless cycle without any plants. Some plants can not handle excess ammonia which will harm or kill them.
 
Different plants as well as different planting levels can affect ammonia uptake amounts and times.
 
How do you know how much cycling may be needed and how much ammonia should you be adding for a fishless after planting situation? You have planted the tank and given the plants a couple of weeks to settle in. Now add 2 ppm of ammonia to the tank and test in 24. if the numbers for ammonia are low and for nitrite or similar or even absent, you can wait for them to 0 out and then start to stock gradually. If they are more in the 1-2 ppm range then you need to get a bit more bacteria developed. In order to be able to add a full fish load in one go the tank must still be able to turn 2 ppm of ammonia to 0 and also show 0 nitrite in 24 hours.
 
Because I have multiple tanks, both planted and unplanted, I am able to set up new tanks and have them instantly fully cycled by moving over both plants and bacteria from other tanks.
 
While the term cycling refers to the bacteria and the nitrogen cycle, the real goal in a tank is to make it safe from ammonia. To the extent that ones plant load removes some amount of ammonia, they are effectively reducing the amount of ammonia bacteria might normally have to handle. To this extent plants are doing the job of cycling, but in a different way. When plants use ammonia they produce no nitrite and this means no nitrate either. So the cycling directions in the article here become impossible to follow since the levels of ammonia, nitrite and even nitrate will be completely different. They were never meant to apply to seriously planted tanks.

 

[BubblesLotsOfBubbles]

Thank you for your reply but colour me stupid

  but if plants tend to bring in beneficial bacteria and also reduce the ammonia faster than bacteria and produce no nitrite (=no nitrate) to me that would say an unplanted tank would be more prone to blooms not that planted tanks have blooms?
 
I know you advise planting prior to cycling but many of your reasons don't apply: I'm not planting heavily at all to beging with (I want to try a few different mosses and see which I like best to start off with); most (all) my stuff will be bits of moss tied down to mesh or wood; I'm going to stock very lightly likely with a betta or a pygmy puffer; and I was reading your cycling page last night and thought it a bit daunting so  (tho I read good reviews last night too about Tetra Safe Start) so I'm not too sure what to do.  I am tempted to think if I lead with trying to get the cycle done as plain and easy as possible then everything else should fall into line rather than complicate it - the mosses being the complication as a user of ammonia vs the population of beneficial bacteria using it,  thus producing nitrite,  and thus nitrate and corresponding bacterial populations for each which I actually want colonisng the tank as my main Nitrogen cycle.

 

[TwoTankAmin]

Bubbles, if you are having difficulty understanding cycling and that article, I am more than happy to answer any questions you have about the subject.
 
By way of experience what I can tell you is I have been cycling tanks fishlessly since my 2nd tank, in 2001, about 75 tanks ago. I have cycled them with plants, without plants and even in acid water that normally halts a cycle completely due to low pH. So I am fairly well versed on this topic. I also run my own bio-farm to keep extra filters cycled or to cycle new ones.
 
If you do not want my help then at least consider that if all you will put into a 10 gal. tank is one betta or maybe 2 pea puffers. You can use 1 ppm of ammonia as your basic addition and .33 ppm as any snack dose for a fishless cycle. That article is written using 3 ppm to insure that anyone starting even an African Cichlid tank and planing to over stock it to mute aggression can do so. It is intended to insure anyone doing a full fish load will be 100% safe, so it has a margin of error built in. So it is "overkill" for a 10 gal. tank with one small fish and not needed. Cycling to 3 ppm in your case wont hurt anything, it is simply a waste of time and effort.

 

[BubblesLotsOfBubbles]

Thanks for your reply. I understand the cycling but I have real problems with numbers  - I cannot even add up things like 7 and 8 without using my fingers. Nobody believes me when I say that - untill they see me in action

.
 
Having slep on this I suppose its that I'm wanting to walk before I can run. With your experience maybe you think I can run and that running is easy and you are probably right. It was just that I would feel more comfortable looking at one thing at a time and honestly I felt bad you replied with so much info I -  I mean you spent all that time. And that article is already there and likely its quirks will be mentioned if I get a quirk following it. So I can follow that without taking anybodies time up. Then if I'm still unsure about which fish I can do as you say...plant it up and let things settle. It also looks like there may be some sledgehammers taking up a concrete floor near where the tank is to be situated so it all still in mothballs as I continue to plan ahead. I don't want to risk a mishap with the workers and a full tank.
 
I don't follow your waste of time and effort though? If I'm following the same schedule but using 1ppm as a basic addition and .3 as a snack then I'm going to be using the same time and effort. Just the concentrations will be different, unless I'm missing something?
 
Thanks again for your reply.

 

[TwoTankAmin]

Yes you are missing something. Cycling means making a tank safe for fish from all the nitrogen compounds- ammonia, nitrite and nitrate. How much there may be to handle of all this stuff mostly depends on your fish load. This is not simply the number of fish one might have, but their total body mass. Mass is a fancy term for size here. One small Tetra does not eat, poop or breath as big as much a a great big oscar. But have enough small tetras and their total mody mass eventually is similar to that of the lone oscar. The amount of ammonia any tank produces is directly related the the total body mass of all the fish in it. Notice we have not involved any math here, only the idea the the bigger the fish, the more waste it makes.
 
Now for the next part. The more waste a tank may have made in it, the more waste must be filter out. In terms of the ammonia etc. this means the more bacteria that are needed to handle the job the greater the amount of ammonia being created. Basically, the more ammonia that must be handled, the more bacgeria that are needed to do the job.
 
Now comes the math. If you have two identical tanks which differ in just one respect, how many fish will go in, then you know the amount of ammonia created in each tank will be different. Keeping it simple, lets say that there are twice as many fish in one tank as in the other. What this means is one tank will need twice as much bacteria as the other. And common sense (not math) tells us that the more bacteria one must develop, the longer that must take.
 
So now you should have learned that the amount of time it takes to cycle any given tank depends upon how much cycling it needs. The more fish that will be going in, the more bacteria it will need and the longer it will take to develop them.
 
Or, it take less time to establish bacteria able to handle 1 ppm of ammonia than the number of bacteria needed to handle 2 ppm, etc.
 
Mow you are lucky here as almost no math is involved for you to do. You must be able to count so when you put the drops used in testing you put in the proper number. The test results do not involve any math, you need to match colors not multiply. Finally, even the math needed to calculate amount of ammonia you should add is made simple here because we have a calculator for this on the site. Again you do no math, you merely enter the numbers you know- like the volume of your tank, the strength of your ammonia and the desired level (i.e. ppm and usually 3) and the calculator gives you the answer.
 
If you can read, if you can count and if you can see in color, you only need to do one tiny bit of math to know how much your snack dose should be. You divide the amount of your full dose by 3. If you are unable to do this you can ask for help here.
 
Basically, to cycle one needs two set of skills- the ability to use a test kit and to measure a few ml of liquid. If one is unable to do this or to get help doing this, I would advise against keeping fish at all.
 
My offer still stands. I have yet to fail when working with any new fish keeper one on one to help them get their tank cycled. If you can follow directions,
[media]https/www.youtube.com/watch?v=qztuEucrNBc[/media]
 
 

 

[BubblesLotsOfBubbles]

Thanks for the reply.
 
I had the idea that higher concentrations of nutrients would lead to faster bacterial population growth to the higher bacterial biomass needed for highly stocked tanks, while limited nutrients would limit the bacterial pop increase to the lesser amount needed for a lightly stocked tank. Why? Because I've read tanks typically take a certain time to cycle I figured both sceanrios would lead to being cycled to their needs in an approximately equal time.
 
There is another idea I had. If I'm stocking very lightly, nutrient buildup will be slow (= low conc). Maybe so slow the build up of corresponding bacterial populations will follow quite closely behing the curve (of N conc increase over time). Add in regualr water changes, is there a need to fishless cycle a lowly socked tank at all?

 

[TwoTankAmin]

Yes there is a need to do it fishlessly. There are many reasons. But the simplest one to understand is when something does go wrong during a cycle- would you prefer seeing it do so in a tank with or without fish?

 

[BubblesLotsOfBubbles]

Fishless I guess.

 

[SO19Firearms]

The cycling stuff seems well covered, but while everything nice and shiny and new it's worth noting -
 

and produce no nitrite (=no nitrate) to me that would say an unplanted tank would be more prone to blooms not that planted tanks have blooms?

 
Nitrate, Phosphate etc don't cause algae

 

[BubblesLotsOfBubbles]

Hi I have been away because of the work that needed doing the other side of a door right next to the tank. I'm glad I held back. Percussive drills to take the concrete up (to a depth of what must have been iro  10 inches) and then ashphalted. The ashphelting I had no idea about and am pretty annoyed about because they never told us it created any smoke - and boy did it smoke. It filled the house. So any fish missed out on lots of vibrational shocks and possible poisoning. The latter assumption may be OTT but man so much smoke and smell of 'tar'. Yuk.