Fish for cycling?

[gm72]

I am still wary of doing a fishless cycle (fear of the unknown I guess) and am wondering if a rainbow shark would be safe for cycling or if I should temporarily move more hardy fish, like my zebra dannios (perennial cyclers in my house) instead?

[sergo]

dont torture a poor fish. do they fishless cycle! it's faster and easy, i promise.

[Chrona]

Think of it this way, fish cycling takes on average, like 3-4 weeks. Fishless cycling takes about 2, and after fishless cycling is completed according to the directions, you can add (almost) all of your fish at once.

[sergo]

gm72 i want to send you a pm that has step by step fishless cycling but you're not accepting pm

[Incredulous_Ed]

Don't use a rainbow shark for cycling. I reccomend fishless cycling, but the zebra danios are your best choice if you do fish cycling.

[gm72]

I have read about fishless cycling, there's a sticky on it. I guess I'm just really nervous about messing it up. BUT, there's so much support here, why not? The filter/heater/etc. should be here in a week. I'll go for it! (trumpet fanfare swells in the background)

[Drumachine09]

I have also heard that fishless cycling supports a bigger bioload.

[kimmers318]

If you don't want to do fishless cycling, why not clone from your other tanks??? That is super easy and as long as you have a test kit you should be able to start your new tank quite easily. Get some filter bags or mesh bags (even clean nylons will do) and fill them with gravel from established tanks. If you can swap out a bio wheel like I did for my 29 life is really grand. My magnum filter and the filter on my 29 take the same size biowheel, the magnum uses 2 so I put a used biowheel into the 29 and the new biowheel in the magnum set up and had an instantly cycled tank!
When you are ready for fish put the used gravel "bags" into the tank to sit for a couple of weeks and the established bacteria will quickly cultivate itself in your new tank. Check your water for ammonia and nitrites daily so that if you see even a smidgen of a reading you can quickly grab some more media from another tank.
Another method is to run the filter for the new tank in your existing tank for a week or 2, or you can put the gravel you want in new tank in mesh bags in established tanks and then they are ready and cultured when you are ready to start your tank. With several tanks running starting a new one is surprisingly easy, just make sure you have your test kits so you can act if you have any small spikes. I haven't ever seen any, but it is always better to be safe than sorry.

[Faith_at_Large]

I cycled my first tank with Zebra Danios and only lost fish to the filter, not to the cycling; however, I am cycling my second tank fishlessly and it is going surprisingly easy.

I use a generic bottle of Ammonia from the bottom shelf in the cleaning isle in my grocery store. This bottle has only two ingredients, water and ammonium hydroxide, water is the first ingredient. With this source of ammonia, I dose my tank with an oral syringe (for administering medicine to babies, available at any drugstore) and I have been experimenting with amounts - I find that one (1) millilitre per day works very well (I have gone over and under without any difficulties).

I started on March 7, 2007, and my ammonia test readings were fairly stable at 4.9 using the Mini Master Test Kit from Nutrifin, and it has now dropped to 2.4 today, March 12, 2007. I will be reducing my dosage to 0.5 millilitres over the next few days and continue testing. Once my ammonia gets a little lower I am going to start testing my Nitrites again until they start going down (they were reading very high at the beginning), and then I will be testing my nitrates. Once the Ammonia and Nitrites are back to zero, I will be continuing my lower dosage of ammonia until I am ready to add fish. I will also be doing a water change to reduce the nitrates and start prepping my tank for lifestock.

It took many weeks to cycle my tank with my Zebra Danios, but this is going way faster. I am going to have to hurry up with my stocking plan so I will know what fish to add when my cycle is done.

Note, the ammonia I am using is diluted which is why I am dosing with 1 millilitre instead of 5 drops. Since there are no fish involved in this process, you can experiment with less risk than you could with fish. There are guidelines on this website to walk you though the fishless cycle process.

[Chrona]

I cycled my first tank with Zebra Danios and only lost fish to the filter, not to the cycling; however, I am cycling my second tank fishlessly and it is going surprisingly easy.

I use a generic bottle of Ammonia from the bottom shelf in the cleaning isle in my grocery store. This bottle has only two ingredients, water and ammonium hydroxide, water is the first ingredient. With this source of ammonia, I dose my tank with an oral syringe (for administering medicine to babies, available at any drugstore) and I have been experimenting with amounts - I find that one (1) millilitre per day works very well (I have gone over and under without any difficulties).

I started on March 7, 2007, and my ammonia test readings were fairly stable at 4.9 using the Mini Master Test Kit from Nutrifin, and it has now dropped to 2.4 today, March 12, 2007. I will be reducing my dosage to 0.5 millilitres over the next few days and continue testing. Once my ammonia gets a little lower I am going to start testing my Nitrites again until they start going down (they were reading very high at the beginning), and then I will be testing my nitrates. Once the Ammonia and Nitrites are back to zero, I will be continuing my lower dosage of ammonia until I am ready to add fish. I will also be doing a water change to reduce the nitrates and start prepping my tank for lifestock.

It took many weeks to cycle my tank with my Zebra Danios, but this is going way faster. I am going to have to hurry up with my stocking plan so I will know what fish to add when my cycle is done.

Note, the ammonia I am using is diluted which is why I am dosing with 1 millilitre instead of 5 drops. Since there are no fish involved in this process, you can experiment with less risk than you could with fish. There are guidelines on this website to walk you though the fishless cycle process.

You want to wait until you get your nitrite spike before reducing to 1/2 dosage.

[Faith_at_Large]

Thanks Chrona. Being a newbie I have been double checking before making any changes at each stage of the game. I dosed with a full 1 mil this morning and I will be doing a full test of my parameters today to see where I am at.

When I tested earlier on, I already had maximum readings for both nitrite and nitrate, but this may have been affected by the higher than normal ammonia amounts due to this process and a higher than normal pH for some bizarre reason. My test kit is not reading in ppm, but mg/L - I do not know what the conversion is, but zero is zero with most test kits.

Still, this is far easier that I thought it would be and I am looking forward to putting my fishies in a nice stable tank. After my Ammonia and Nitrites are stable at zero, and my nitrates are reduced by a water change.

[Glasstapper]

I was also a little afraid of trying the fishless cycle, too, because anytime I read about it, the measuring part is what had me intimidated. You know what helps? At the drugstore, find yourself one of the droppers. You know the one that has the little rubber squeezy at the end? That one. Soooo cheap. I think I paid 50 cents for two of them. Anyway, you take that dropper and fill it with pure ammonia (the kind that doesn't bubble up when you shake it), and put in 5-7 drops per gallon of water in your tank once a day. Test your water every few days, and when you start seeing your ammonia drop and nitrites rise, on the next day, cut your drops in half. That's literally all you have to do. I was very much surprised at how easy it was, and all of my tanks in the future will be done this way. (It only took 12 days for my tank to cycle - I also added some old gravel in a piece of stocking I cut and tied off and an old filter from my other tank to help speed it up)

[kenyth]

You guys all make this so hard sounding. Clean the gravel from a dirty established tank on your regular schedule (preferably with an UG filter) and put the nasty dirty water in the new tank with the heater set high. A five gallon bucket of dirty water will have your new tank ready in no time at all.

The fish waste and bacteria will seed the tank heavily. The high temps will culture the bacteria quickly. It will probably be ready in a week, maybe two if something goes amiss.

[gm72]

Kenyth, do you mean to suggest that seeding the tank will not require the addition of ammonia?

[kimmers318]

Bingo, what I had tried to explain in my earlier post, which I must not have made clear enough.....if you seed a new tank from an established tank, you do not need to go the ammonia route. Using gravel, decor or waste from filter media in a new tank fills it full of all the "goodies" you want to try to culture with fishless cycling and you have a tank ready to go. You must still treat it delicately like any new tank and be cautious about overstocking and keep up with water maintenance, but it is like "cycle magic".
Or I have I just become persona invisible lately??????

[kenyth]

Kenyth, do you mean to suggest that seeding the tank will not require the addition of ammonia?

Yup! You want to establish significant quantities of beneficial bacteria in your new tank. Your established tank is a huge culture of said bacteria. You just need to move them to a new home. There are numerous ways to do it. I find dirty water from a siphon cleaning to be the easiest method personally, and/or a dirty cartridge from a power filter. The more bacteria and fish waste you can move over, the better. Some even say if you do a 50% water change on an esablished tank of similar size with gravel siphoning and put the dirty water in the new tank along with the used power filter cartridge, it is "instantly" cycled. I personally think they are probably right.

[kenyth]

Bingo, what I had tried to explain in my earlier post, which I must not have made clear enough.....if you seed a new tank from an established tank, you do not need to go the ammonia route. Using gravel, decor or waste from filter media in a new tank fills it full of all the "goodies" you want to try to culture with fishless cycling and you have a tank ready to go. You must still treat it delicately like any new tank and be cautious about overstocking and keep up with water maintenance, but it is like "cycle magic".
Or I have I just become persona invisible lately??????

I heard you! I think it's just that this method is so simple, nobody believes it really works.