Mystery Cycle Revisited

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Nolapete

Monster Tank Builder
May 29, 2007
5,274
1
0
New Orleans, LA
I responded to Corax via PM when he inquired about how I cycled in 5 days, but after typing the response I thought it would merit a post.

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I had the tank setup with just the oscar dither fish I had for my festae. He had survived the power outage after Katrina and also survived me not knowing he was alive for four months after the storm. How he lived, I do not know.

Anyway, after he died I just left the tank running. I eventually drained it, but there was still water left in two AC 500s.

This is where the mystery begins. I think I may have turned those filters back on after I refilled the tank and didn't clean them for a day or two, but that's all. After that, I had noticed that they were filthy, so I thoroughly cleaned the filters and hosed out the sponges with chlorinated water out the tap.

According to someone on the forums it takes 20 minutes of contact for chlorine to work, so I'm assuming that some of the bacteria survived.

I used Prime and was conned into buying Cycle before I read that it is useless. I'm not totally convinced either way though as bacteria has a dormant form it goes into. I don't know if that requires refrigeration like the active stage does though.

I did have 4 radicans and 2 anubias barteri, so not really a whole lot of plants for a 110.

I had 9 fish; 3 swordtails, 2 kribensis, 2 pearl and 2 dwarf gouramis. I only lost 1 swordtail female due to jumping during the cycle.

The other thing that I doubt did it, but may have contributed. I added the completely dried, but not thoroughly washed natural gravel on top of 100 lbs of Eco Complete. Most people thing the Eco Complete does nothing to help the cycle and sure the dried out inert gravel doesn't.

That's the mystery of the 5 day cycle.

The best way to cycle quickly in my opinion is to seed gravel and/or filter media from an establish tank.
 
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