starter cycle fish

[sharpie]

i read that damsels are good fish to use while your aquarium is starting up. are there any others? that arent crazy priced?
thanks so much
- :spam:
size-between 30-55 gallons

[dorkfish]

Regardless of what the fish is, it's gonna go through a "living hell" while your tank cycles, unless your planning on doing dailly water changes of around 50%, so I would highly advise against using a fish to cycle your marine tank.

Google "fishless cycle".

[MonoSebaelover]

Another vote for fishless cycling here. The biggest problem with cycling with fish is it is not pleasant for them to go through but the even bigger one is that the tank cycles to that current bioload. So everytime you add more fish after the initial cycle, the tank goes through mini cycles. The best is to add a bunch of prawns (shrimp) from the grocery store and let them rot in the tank and let them cycle your tank. They will do a much better job! Hope this helps and good luck!

[Sonicblast12]

As was already stated, if you do a cycle with fish you have to stock much more slowly because you will get ammonia spikes. With a hard ammonia spike from a prawn or cocktail shrimp, you can go much faster with your stocking. The bacteria is capable of handling a much higher bioload. You can't put everything in there at once, but you wouldn't have to wait a month every time either.

Plus, you'll harm the fish, and damsels will harass everything to death anyway.

[Crown Royal]

Save the damsels a lot of suffering and the prawn for shrimp cocktail. Put enough live rock in a tank and it'll cycle for you as it cures.

[Marinemom]

Ditto on the live rock to cycle the tank. I did it this way and it worked beautifully. My tank was cycled in like about two weeks. I didn't believe it at first so I kept checking the water for about a week after that. From all my years of freshwater fishkeeping I had a hard time believing a tank could cycle that fast and without fish. One of the benifits of doing it this way is that you can add the fish you really want when the tank is cycled.

Marinemom

[sharpie]

sorry i wasnt going to try and use damsels to cycle the tank i was just going to use fish like damsels to see if the water is ready for other fish...so maybe like starter fish to see if the aquarium is good...is that still bad?
thanks so much-
-sharpie

[Marinemom]

Still adding damsels that you do not intend to keep is IMO a rather bad idea. The thing with damsels is that they are little terrors to any other fish that you want to add later. Also trying to chase them down with a net is a real pain if not nearly impossible when you want them out of your tank.

Marinemom

[Cheech]

Still adding damsels that you do not intend to keep is IMO a rather bad idea. The thing with damsels is that they are little terrors to any other fish that you want to add later. Also trying to chase them down with a net is a real pain if not nearly impossible when you want them out of your tank.

Marinemom


Completely agree. . . . .

[Colombian_Shark]

Many people use common mollies to cycle a new tank. A batch of uncured live rock will also do the trick.

[sharpie]

how much live rock would i need...can i buy a little bit at a time since its kind of expensive? :hang:

[Max]

Sure, you can ! You can also use things like dry coral rubble etc . to fill out your tank and save a bunch of $. You just can't stock as fast.
hth

[sharpie]

sorry, but what do you mean when you say "you cant stock as fast?"

[Max]

For example if you have a 50 gallon tank you need 50 lbs of live rock for filtration. You have 25 lbs of live rock and 25 lbs of dry coral rubble you can only stock the tank like it's a 25 gallon. You have to give the bacterial colony time to infest the new rock usually the bacterial population grows quickly in comparrison to other critters. It just depends on your budget and how patient you are.

[Crown Royal]

You probably should not "buy a little bit at a time" since you're going to have mini-cycles each time from the inevitable die-off you get from simply transporting the LR (even if it's pre-cured at the LFS) and it's really difficult to re-aquascape because you'll essentially be re-arranging a 3D jigsaw puzzle.

[dorkfish]

Crown royal, the rock can be cured outside of the tank and should be cured outside of the tank after the initial cycle, so the mini-cycle downside is removed.

[sharpie]

so if i buy 10 pounds now and then purchase 10 pounds later that wont mess anything up or kill or stress out any of the fish?

[sharpie]

?

[dorkfish]

so if i buy 10 pounds now and then purchase 10 pounds later that wont mess anything up or kill or stress out any of the fish?

Provided that you cure the rock outside the tank, then no, it won't mess anything up besides maybe your aquascaping.