fishless cycle?

[demon_surfer]

ok ive read the posts and you have all talked about the fishless cycle and this seems like a great idea to me. It really bummed me out when i killed off most of the fish in my first tank by over stocking to fast, and not cycling it properly. But i cant find anything on how to do a fishless cycle!. I was thinking about it and do you just leave the water and ornemants with the filter going or what? but then how would the bacteria get anything to eat??? as you can see im a little confused on the subject but very intrested.

If anyone could see their way to telling me how to do this i would greatly appreciate it:)

[OrionGirl]

http://www.skepticalaquarist.com/

Has a great explanation, as well as links to Chris Cow's article on fishless cycling.

Good choice! You won't be disappointed.

[fishfreek]

There are a few ways to do this.

One method involves pure liquid ammonia from your grocery store. The people that use this method slowly add ammonia to the tank till they have a good reading of ammonia. Then they wait for the ammonia and nitrite to be gone.

Nother method of this is to use a bit of raw fish flesh. Place this fish meat (uncooked and unseasoned) into your tank to decompose. The fish flesh will decompose over a week or so and then the ammonia and ntirite should be gone a while after that.

[EagerAqua]

I am new as well and am at the tail end of cycling my tank after doing some unfortunate damage to my Dwarf Gouramis trying to cycle with them.

The link that OrionGirl gave is where I found most of my information. If you also do a search on Google for "fishless cycle" you will come up with some information as well. Also, search this forum and you will find a lot of info from people who have first hand experience.

Basically what I did was print off as many articles I could find, sat down and read them and came up with a gameplan. You will find some of the articles differ slightly in their approach but overall the process is the same: seed the tank with pure ammonia to 5ppm, bring the ammonia level back to 5ppm as it drops, test for nitites, when you can burn through 5ppm of ammonia in one night and have no sign of nitrItes, do a large water change, and then stock with fish.

Please keep in mind that I am new to this as well and learing as I go so my method may be flawed. There are many others on this board that can help you better than I can.

Your first step however is research, research, research.

Hope this helps,

Eager

[OrionGirl]

That's a great summary of the process! If no one objects, I'd like to make this thread a sticky.

[demon_surfer]

i dont mind and thanks alot for the advice! ;) :D

maybe others could post on what they used to fishless cycle their tanks?.

[EagerAqua]

No problem here...

I noticed OrionGirl that I called you OnionGirl in my first draft of the message. I have edited it to show your real name. Sorry:)

Eager

[NJ Devils Fan]

Why is this sticky? I see no point in it being sticky.

[OrionGirl]

It's a sticky because is has a great synopsis of how to fishlessly cycle, as well as relevant links. There is a lot of data here on the same topic, but this one covers it pretty well.

[NJ Devils Fan]

I still see no need because there are already 2 sticky threads that are sticky that have things in them about cycling.

[cdawson]

I'm currently using the rotting meat process with a jumbo freshwater shrimp. I was told it would be ok to add fish within 3 weeks.

[NJ Devils Fan]

Well, that time might be different. You have to test the water to know when you can really add fish.

[demon_surfer]

i just finshed doing this myself and a few things that are very handy

1) when picking out your ammonia make sure its pure...shake the bottle, if it foams put it back...make sure its not scented or anything like that

2) to put in the ammonia get a pippet that has ml measurements on it

3) get an ammonia test that is easy to use..like the seacham floating indicator or the dipsticks....the testube tests are a pain when you are doing them a couple of times a day.

4) when the ammonia is finally disapeering quickly and just before you add fish you need to do a massive water change..like 80-90% of the water to get rid of the nitrites that will have built up in the water

[Awestralian]

Can i put forth here that i have never fishless cycled my freshwater tanks?? Ill explain more if anyone is interested - but most people here seem to swear by fishless cycling. Hey, whatever works for each person.

[OrionGirl]

Actually, there are several people here who do not fishlessly cycle, they use established media, plants, and sensible stocking when setting up additional tanks. This thread, and the one on fishless cycling, are here to assist the first timers.

All tanks cycle. That is, all tanks require the establishment of a bacteria bed capable of processing the waste production of the occupants. There are many ways to get this to happen, but it must happen.

[wwinorth]

Okay, so, if I just let the tank run for awhile it will do all of this on it's own, with no interference from me? This all seems terribly complicated. I have a 5.5 gallon tank and just want to raise healthy fish!!! :confused:
thanks!
Mel

[OrionGirl]

Yes and No. Bacteria require a food source of ammonia, either from manual additions by the fish keeper, or from excretions from fish. The ammonia is toxic to fish as it reaches certain concentrations. If water changes are not done daily--along with testing to determine the levels--the fish will suffer gill burns and shortened life spans, and more sensitive species will die. Having a tank that is running--ie, filters on, everything in there, but no fish or no additions of ammonia will NOT develop bacteria colonies.

Check in the FW Newbie forum--there are several threads that outline both fishless and fish cycling in greater detail.