fishless cycle and carbon pads and plants and and and

thefirethief

thefirethief

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Feb 15, 2006
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Scotland
Right folks, I started my fishless cycle a few days by adding pure ammonia so Im just waiting for it to start dropping. Ive also put a carbon pad into my filter to try remove the discoloration from the bogwood. Just wondering whether the carbon will affect the cycle at all?

Also, Im going to plant the tank before I add any fish. Is it a good idea to wait till nitrates start appearing before adding any plants, or is there any even any point in doing a fishless cycle when Im going to have it planted anyway?


Any advice would be brilliant!

Cheers!
Mark
 
I've been told so many different opinions on the fishless vs. planted.

50% of people say plant heavily and wait for them to fill in before adding fish (no ammonia dosing let the plants do the work).
50% tell me to do a fishless cycle then add my fish and then my plants. I went with this option as I was already a couple weeks in and still didn't have all my plant equipment yet. I think I might be done (the true test is tonight, yesterday was all perfect readings) so I'll add fish tomorrow maybe and then in a couple weeks I'll add plants. I figure there is no going wrong with this method...but many people sware by the plant method if you get lots of nitrate absorbing plants.
 
Thanks for the help! I know what you mean, Ive read so many different ways and opinions about pretty much everything. Even things like fish's Ph ranges vary from book to book and site to site. I was wary about adding fish then planting it because I'd rather not disturb the fish once they are in.

I guess experience is the only real way to learn.

I think I might start planting just now. Just not sure how plants will cope being in a tank when my ammonia is 4ppm.
 
I'd water change the ammonia out and read about doing a planted cycle. I think you have to do a heavily planted and add fish pretty close together (or maybe dose nitrogen?) as you don't want to be dosing ammonia during a planted cycle.
 
I fishless cycled with plants and if I had to do it again, I would have rather cycled without plants and then added them after I knew my fish were disease free. I wiped out one of my treasured vallisneria plants (I know these are cheap and easy to find but this specific plant was very dense and leafy like no other vallisneria I've ever seen) during a salt treatment before (accidental overdose). Once the plants are in they will absorb ammonia out of the water and the biofilter will adjust to meet the lower demand.
 
Excellent. Cheers for the response people. Ive read up a bit more on planted cycles and think I'll wait till I get a few fish in first and carefully start building up the plants.

The carbon filter pad wont affect the cycle will it? It doesnt seem to be doing much in terms of getting rid of the discolouration, but its only been in a few days so need to wait and see.
 
Bogwood Discoloration

From what I've read (and I'm a new bogwood person), the tannins, which cause the brown coloration to your water, won't be removed from your tank by the carbon in the filter. My carbon certainly didn't filter it out. The way I understand it, aquarium lovers can either have the bogwood and like the yellow color, or just remove it.

You can soak it in a container of water for a long, long time and let the tannin leach out (dumping the 'tea' occasionally). If you have the wood in your aquarium for the benefit of tannin loving fish like tetras, though, leaching out the tannin in a container defeats the whole purpose of having it.

When I got my bog wood, I boiled it for a long, long, long time, and I'm still getting the yellow coloration in my aquarium. I'm sure it's less than I would have had if I hadn't boiled it. (My house smelled very organic that day.) Though I don't like the tannin color very much, I've decided that since the neon tetras and the panda cory cats love it so much, I can put up with it.
 
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