Do you even need to cycle?

[thecoolguy]

ok - sorry for yet another post - but i thought it would be an interesting topic of debate

- lets say you are gonna setup a tank without any gravel or substrate - would you even need to cycle the tank before adding fish? my answer is no! granted you have put in water that has been purified and whose parameters are not insane in and of itself.....

heres why....

1) no gravel means that poop will accumulate visibly
2) with a siphon, you can vacuum out the poop every other day
3) the small amount of poo that does exist and create ammonia will not be enough given the amount of water (20gal and above) and filter media being used to harm the fish
4) in 1-2 months of doing this - the water will stay relatively clean and clear if you stick to vacuuming and by then, your filter media should have enough bacteria to accomodate for the limited amount of ammonia being produced in the tank
5) as for nitrites and nitrates, they should come along accordingly.....(the nitrite spike and subsequent nitrate spike should be quite minimal given the low ammonia load that is maintained)

maybe i am just straight up wrong here! but i am really want to know what the deal is.....

[Fishguy2727]

Gravel doesn't cause ammonia, fish do. So whether there is decor or not there will be just as much ammonia. Ammonia isn't just from poop, that causes ammonia at a later point, the immediate source of ammonia is the fish itself, ammonia is excreted in the urine and through the gills. If you have enough filtration there should be almost no poop in a bare bottom tank. My 75 has 4 koi and sometimes there is a little poop in one area, but in general there is none in the tank, enough flow will keep it moving and the filters will catch it.

[kimmers318]

Regardless of whether you use a substrate or not, you will experience a cycle. Doing frequent water changes will just make it take longer to get the cycle finished, and without substrate, there is less surface area for the bacteria to colonize on.

[Nautilus29]

unless you want to do a 75% water change every day on the tank you will need to cycle the tank.

probibly more than that. With my first tank I was doing 50% a day and my ammonia and nitrates still stayed sky high.

[thecoolguy]

Gravel doesn't cause ammonia, fish do. So whether there is decor or not there will be just as much ammonia. Ammonia isn't just from poop, that causes ammonia at a later point, the immediate source of ammonia is the fish itself, ammonia is excreted in the urine and through the gills. If you have enough filtration there should be almost no poop in a bare bottom tank. My 75 has 4 koi and sometimes there is a little poop in one area, but in general there is none in the tank, enough flow will keep it moving and the filters will catch it.

haha....i know gravel doesn't cause ammonia - i am talking about when some of the poop gets into the gravel and that causes ammonia....

it is my understanding that cycling is basically the formation of a necessary amount of bacteria that is capable of controlling the chemical balance of one's tank ---

if you remove a bio-load from the tank - then it is logical to assume that your tank does not need as much bacteria given that you do not add a new bioload to the tank--- now if your gravel was housing some bacteria, but it was also housing an equal amount of waste - then the removal or absence of gravel should not be a big problem i would think

but of course, your gravel in a perfect world is housing more bacteria than waste - but there are plenty of tanks i am sure, where it is quite the opposite

[hungryhound]

haha....i know gravel doesn't cause ammonia - i am talking about when some of the poop gets into the gravel and that causes ammonia....

it is my understanding that cycling is basically the formation of a necessary amount of bacteria that is capable of controlling the chemical balance of one's tank ---

if you remove a bio-load from the tank - then it is logical to assume that your tank does not need as much bacteria given that you do not add a new bioload to the tank--- now if your gravel was housing some bacteria, but it was also housing an equal amount of waste - then the removal or absence of gravel should not be a big problem i would think

but of course, your gravel in a perfect world is housing more bacteria than waste - but there are plenty of tanks i am sure, where it is quite the opposite

But you are using a false assumption to come to your conclusion. You have failed to take into account the amount of ammonia that is released directly into the water via urine, which you cannot suck up off of the bottom.

Therefore there is not an equal equation of in a normal tank. The equation that you are working under looks like this.

Feces decaying on the bottom = bacteria in gravel

It looks more like this

Feces + Urine in tank = Bacteria in gravel and tank

what you are suggesting is removing the feces and the bacteria from the tank leaving you with this equation.

Urine = ????? (With nothing to cancel out the urine you will get high ammonia levels.)

[thecoolguy]

But you are using a false assumption to come to your conclusion. You have failed to take into account the amount of ammonia that is released directly into .....

Urine = ????? (With nothing to cancel out the urine you will get high ammonia levels.)

urine dealt with by the bacteria in the:

- driftwood/bogwood (forgot to mention that no gravel doesn't mean no decorations and potential larger rock formations)
- filter media

[hungryhound]

I saw your pictures of your tank in the other thread. You do have a large surface area with the log and the rocks for the bacteria to grow so it might work.

But this defeats your question

would you even need to cycle the tank before adding fish?

Because the rocks and the driftwood would have to have been cycled in order to have the necessary bacteria needed to account for the ammonia in the water, your tank would have had to have cycled at some point.

One way or another your tank will need to build up the beneficial bacteria. Whether it is on the filter media of your filter or your decorations, you will have to accumulate a fair amount of bacteria to combat ammonia waste.

So in a sense your tank would still have to cycle.

[gm72]

You could add fish before the cycle, but you will eventually have to cycle to maintain a healthy aquarium environment. I think the other posts are clear on that.

[thecoolguy]

You could add fish before the cycle, but you will eventually have to cycle to maintain a healthy aquarium environment. I think the other posts are clear on that.

i see where my question may have been misleading....

1) yes - you will always need to eventually cycle

2) my original question referred to whether or not it was necessary pre-fish

3) this scenario does not involve putting in pre-cycled wood, rocks, etc...

to restate - in this hypothetical tank - it is a 100% new tank

also - i am all for fish being healthy and happy and would never intentionally put them under stress or pain --- the only reason i brought this up was to understand the biology of the tank and how it all works....of course, without doing a real world experiment - the true answer will not be known in detail..but until then - may fish live happily in cycled tanks!

haha....

[Drumachine09]

Yes........

[Fishguy2727]

In a relatively large tank, with a relatively small bioload you may not see any cycle. When I setup my 100 gallon years ago I added two small oscars and two small pacus. Because it was a 100 gallon tank and there were only four small fish in there, there was no noticable ammonia spike. The tank slowly cycled to the very small bioload, and as they grew the nitrifying bacteria colonies grew with them. This does not have anything to do with substrate, surface area of decor in the tank, or anything like that. The bacteria will grow on the BEST surface area in the tank, not any surface on the tank, so they usually lie in the filter because it has the high flow that will bring oxygen and food to them, the glass, driftwood, and gravel will not do this near as well, so although there may be some there, most will be in the filter.

In a new tank there will not be much debris build up in the gravel. And as stated previously even if it did, it does not break down to ammonia immediately, debris buildup is a long term thing. The immediate problem will be the ammonia immediately put in the tank via urine and the gills.