can ading too many live plants at once cause a cycle crash?

With a 100% water change and the removal of all detritus, there is no way your going to cycle the tank.

You need waste to break down which will cause ammonia to form. When ammonia breaks down it causes nitrites, which will then form into nitrates. When this cycle completes, plants will soak up nitrates as a fertilizer (or food).

No waste = no food.
 
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excuzzzeme said:
With a 100% water change and the removal of all detritus, there is no way your going to cycle the tank.
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the tank has been cycled for 6 months, and stable. but i do believe removing 1/2 the filter pad may have caused the crash and mini cycle to happen. instead of the addition of the plants, after having read the thread, that makes the most sense.
 
excuzzzeme said:
You need waste to break down which will cause ammonia to form. When ammonia breaks down it causes nitrites, which will then form into nitrates. When this cycle completes, plants will soak up nitrates as a fertilizer (or food).

No waste = no food.
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theres a betta fish in there for 6 months now
 
sorry. what i meant in the thread title was-will adding too many plants to an already existing cycled tank cause that tank's cycle to crash? oops, need to be more specific in the future. doh!
 
You are killing any good bacteria in your gravel and on your decor by swishing it out with tap water. That itself could cause a kind of crash. Its possible the bacteria in your filter pad isnt enough to keep the tank cycled.

Here is how I clean my desktop tanks every week (both have filters and are planted):
Buy a super cheap turkey baster. Soak in clean water with dechlor for 2 hours, rinse, soak again. They are supposed to be food safe, but I'm anal.
Use the turkey baster to blow water through the gravel, forcing waste and debris up, which I suck up with the baster. Repeat repeat repeat till 50% water is gone. Rinse baster thoroughly in tap water, then soak in dechlor for an hour while leting the filter suck up remaining floating debris. Take filter pad out, rinse well in the tank water removed, replace carbon if needed, return filter pad to the filter, wash hands thoroughly.

It might seem like a lot of work, but its much less stressful than removing the fish every week and much less destructive to my setups than swishing water around, especially since the plants are rooted. I also use the baster to feed frozen blood worms to the fish in those tanks, so they dont get stressed by having it in there moving around. They actually follow it, hoping a worm will pop out.
 
excuzzzeme said:
Rather than crash, plants are more likely to cause a cycle to "stall" or go into what I would call a neutral effect. They would soak up the very things you are trying to create. Plants can convert many components of the cycle into a sugars etc., they need for energy. Having a heavily planted tank, I overstocked it on purpose to see how far I could take things. I didn't overstock so far as to endanger the fish, but far in excess of what is sensible. With the heavy planting, I found that I could go longer than 6 weeks between water changes as the tank was in balance or neutral, if you will, with neither the plants not the fish able to have a dramatic effect on the other. I am certain I could have pushed it further but felt that 6 weeks was more than long enough. At some point I would have had to start adding fertilizer to the tank for the plants. Simple water changes was more than enough care for the tank as it stood, even though the values read 0,0,0 across the board. pH stayed about 6.8. I felt that is as close to balanced as I could get it.
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I had a 75g a few years back before we moved that was so heavily planted, I didn't touch it for over 3 years & never lost a fish, except when one got real old. I had some Black Skirt Tetras that were about 4 years old in that tank. The water was always crystal clear & parameters hardly ever changed. I would just replace the filter sponges in the Fluval 404 we had running on that tank.
 
vwill279 said:
You are killing any good bacteria in your gravel and on your decor by swishing it out with tap water. That itself could cause a kind of crash. Its possible the bacteria in your filter pad isnt enough to keep the tank cycled.

i understand how that could happen, but thats how i clean both my tanks for 6 months now and no problems in my other tank with ammonia or nitrites. i didnt remove any part of the filter pad in my other tank either. my line of thinking was: i went from 1 living thing in the tank to 5 living things (4 of which are plants) could that disturb the nitrogen cycle in some way? because looks like plants would give off some ammonia too, right? i was thinking maybe i shouldve put one plant in then wait a while before adding another. OR that maybe the plants were eating up all the ammonia and starving out the bb. but like i said before, after reading the thread, i think the ammonia was due to removing 1/2 the filter pad to make room for the baffle.
*EDIT: i didnt think at the time, removing 1/2 the filter pad would make that much of a difference.
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Unome said:
I had a 75g a few years back before we moved that was so heavily planted, I didn't touch it for over 3 years & never lost a fish, except when one got real old. I had some Black Skirt Tetras that were about 4 years old in that tank. The water was always crystal clear & parameters hardly ever changed. I would just replace the filter sponges in the Fluval 404 we had running on that tank.
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thats crazy! im starting to understand how plants work in conjunction with the bb and nitrogen cycle. its coming together now. its like plants & fish equal each other out. ok. well the plants are going back in then. thanks guys
 
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