Best Fishless cycle article I've ever read

[Shelby_Tempo_GT]

That would have to be pretty darn high. Half the time it can't even kill all the bacteria in the water itself.

if this is the case, then your municipal water isn't chlorinated enough.

 

[Reddog80p]

It is one of the better articles I've read, but there's one point which different sources debate or overlook entirely:


Conflicting advice is found here, for example:


Which is correct - never let ammonia drop to zero until the cycle is finished, or add ammonia every two days? :huh:

QUOTE]

Well both of those suggestions would be ok, as long as the every other day addition isn't letting your ammonia drop to zero. "Never let ammonia drop to zero" is exactly what it say's. Don't let it drop to zero.

Reddog80p

 

[Ichthyophile]

I'm sorry, I wasn't clear that my question was rhetorical ... I meant to emphasize that many fishless cycle guides give conflicting advice. If I followed the article quoted by the OP, I'd need to add ammonia to my tank at least every eight hours to keep the level above zero (many other guides suggest adding ammonia once every 24 hours).

 

[kellymarie1081]

a lot of the beginning of this article is about growing bacteria. i'm new at this so tell me if i'm wrong, but couldn't you just add live bacteria from the LFS and save yourself all of these steps? i started out with some bad advice so i did a lot of corrective cycling (still working on it) instead of during the initial setup. but i would like to know for the future.

 

[Reddog80p]

I'm sorry, I wasn't clear that my question was rhetorical ... I meant to emphasize that many fishless cycle guides give conflicting advice. If I followed the article quoted by the OP, I'd need to add ammonia to my tank at least every eight hours to keep the level above zero (many other guides suggest adding ammonia once every 24 hours).

If you can't keep your ammonia level above 0, after 12 hours and you have no Nitirite and Nitrates are present. I would say your cycled.

Red

 

[Squawkbert]

I've been reading stuff over at AA for a while - I like the site & info, but I think the people here are a little more convivial, so I post here more often. I'd have mentioned the article a while back (like when I added a post to the thread about using NH4PO4 at the start), but I figured I was far from alone in browsing both forums. Maybe people really so tend to stick to one or the other.

 

[wataugachicken]

you can seed your tank with gravel or filter media from the LFS or a friend's tank, but you do run the risk of introducing bad bacteria/parasites etc. into your system. You will still need to cycle, but done properly seeding will jumpstart it, saving you the first week or so of waiting for bacteria to just *appear*. even with that though, there will still be a nitrite stall unless the tank is seeded again when nitrites spike. oftentimes that type of bacteria starves before the ammonia-eating bacteria can produce enough nitrite to support it.

 

[artofwriting]

hi is kind of off topic but say i have an old tank that is a 20 gallon, no substrate, 10 plecos, and a powerhead with a sponge attached to it and i set up a new tank with same setup without the fish first and i transfer the powerhead to the new tank to help kick start the bacteria and put in a same powerhead but a new poerhead back in my old tank, would it mess up the cycle of my old tank due to the lost of all the bacteria in the sponge? thx

 

[artofwriting]

Help??? anyone? thank you

 

[mvigor]

My guess is that you would be removing at least 90% of the good bacteria from the old tank by removing the one and only sponge filter. The other 10% would need four life cycles to redouble back to full strength. 20,40,80,100+ You would be looking at a couple/few days of possible ammonia shock...a mini cycle. I don't know what kind or size of pleco you have, but that old tank sounds extremely overstocked. Maybe you could/should move some of the fish from the 20 into the new tank?