Fishless Cycling Shortcut

[RTR]

The current fishless cycle technique is that proposed by Dr. Chris Cow in AquaSource magazine:

http://www.aaquaria.com/aquasource/cycle2.shtml

That article calls for dosing at 5ppm levels of ammonia only during the intial phase until nitrites are detectable, after which the dosage is cut in half, so to 2.5ppm only. Most folk seem to maintain a dosage at 3ppm as that is more easily read than approximating the reading, but one-half the initial dosage volume will work perfectly well.

But accuracy is hardly to be expected in this thread or proposed technique which is now revealed to have killed the majority of the fish initially added to the tank.

 

[carpguy]

Originally posted by Luca Brazzi
Fishless cycling using new media can take up to 2 months or more.

My fishless, with no seed material, was done in 4 weeks plus 2 days at double zero. By most accounts thats a little on the long side. Most folks, seems to me, report 3-4 weeks.

The current Fishless cycling method out there says you must continue to add ammonia till the 2nd bacteria colony establishes itself enough to consume all of the Nitrite produced by the daily additions of 5ppm ammonia, and your Nitrite goes to 0.

We were both in a thread a ways back where we discussed the dosing for fishless. We talked about the halving and about maintaining at 5ppm vs. repeating the initial dose daily. Most folks seemed to favor the maintain at method. MP had what seemed to me to be the best informed response:

Originally posted by MP (in the other thread)…I, however, could never see any reason to do it this way, so I just add enough ammonia (to about 5ppm or so) and wait till it starts dropping.…
Daily dosing in the beginning of cycle serves no purpose, IMO.… Overloading with ammonia will only lead to extra headaches with never disappearing nitrites later or some other problems like pH depression in poorely buffered tanks or depression of the second colony by the excess of ammonia.

I discussed it with Chris after he published the article, but, for some reason, he decided to leave it as is.

It seems to me that RTR has advocated this elsewhere as well, but I can't find the thread (wouldn't want to put any words in his mouth ).

Maybe you'd have better results with the modified method.

If you want to try to let the bad blood go by the wayside I think you'll have better results with the board. Your obviously a creative guy with a lot to offer, and a stubborn guy with a tremendous capacity to raise the tempers.

In either case, your call.

 

[Luca Brazzi]

The guy at the LFS where I purchased the feeders told me the following when I purchased them from him: "I dont have really good feeders right now, most of them will more than likely die within a couple of days." Hence, he gave me an extra net full of mollies. I told him, that it was ok because A) I wasn't planning to feed them to a fish and B) I wasnt planning to keep them very long anyway. I guess he thought I was planning to take them home, put them in a quarantine tank for some period of time, then feed them to an Oscar or something, so he was letting me know that they probably wouldnt survive long.

 

[RTR]

And that of course makes an excellent and well-controlled study certain to be repeatable - yes, certainly it does.. not.

 

[Luca Brazzi]

Sure it does... fish are fish... the all generate ammonia, event the dead and dying. If I would have put 40 (pet quality) fish in there I wouldnt have lost a single one. Next time I do this thats what Ill do.

 

[ChilDawg]

Hmm...seems like we are planning on wasting money on 40 pet-quality fish for "next time." I will gladly retract this comment if there is scientific proof that 40 pet-quality fish survive in your tank using this method, but I let it stand for now.

Why don't you try sharing this method with a magazine such as TFH, AFM, or FAMA and see what they think?

Also, aren't there two types of bacteria used in tank maintenance? (One for NH3 to NO2 and one for NO2 to NO3.) How would starving one set make the others work better? Eventually, won't they all die for lack of work? A whole lot of dead bacteria because of this method isn't much better than a whole lot of fish poop. I think that you are creating anoxic conditions in your tank.

But I have an idea...this is going nowhere right now, because nothing can be proven with this new tank. Tell us how well it works in three months, and then we might start to believe in your strange tenets. Let us know if it worked for your pet-quality fish. (I urge you not to try it with any more fish...however, if you are going to do it anyway, let us know how it works.)

Again, if you can scientifically prove that it works for all sorts of varied tank situations, I will accept it. However, killing half-dead feeders and cycling a tank only constitutes one less-than-humane case.

 

[Botiadancer]

Question:

We know that you added fish on their last leg (fin?) to your tank.
We know that they nearly all died.
We know that you did 100% water changes.
We know that you added "good" fish to your tank right away.

Why would you add "good" fish to a tank that had just had fish with unknown problems without taking necessary precautions to prevent the possible spread of contagions? It seems your fish survived, but doesn't that seem like a bit of a risk? Isn't the whole idea of a fishless cycle is that you can add your healthy fish immediately without cause or concern of what might be in your tank?

I also question the whole idea of disposable fish, but that is another story indeed.

 

[Luca Brazzi]

ChilDawg...(sigh)

Is that with Onions, and Sauerkraut or what?

As to:

Also, aren't there two types of bacteria used in tank maintenance? (One for NH3 to NO2 and one for NO2 to NO3.) How would starving one set make the others work better? Eventually, won't they all die for lack of work?

Ok...

One more time...

This time read it reeeeeeeal slooooooooow... ok?

From the top....

And a one... and a two...

At the point I started doing water changes I had lots of Nitrites, and lots of Nitrates.

Now STOP for a moment... Take a deep breath.... then go back and reread the previous statement several times. Think about it for a while.... get a mental picture of whats going on, etc before proceeding.

Got it? I dont believe you! Go read it again.

Ok... now proceed to the next part...

I changed the water several times to get the Nitrites and Nitrates down to 0.

THEN I added the 40+ fish.

Let me repeat that...

I changed the water several times to get the Nitrites and Nitrates down to 0.

THEN I added the 40+ fish.

Now heres the hard part (you know... numbers and such)

Due to the fact that the Ammonia that the fish produced was FAR less than 5ppm (around 100 times less), the amount of Nitrite that was produced was also much less and the second set of bacteria that was already present (you know... the bacteria that generated the Nitrates in the 1st place?) was more than able to handle the Nitrite production from the .05 ppm ammonia generated by the fish.

Read the above over and over and over till it clicks.

If I had continued to the end (whenever that may have been) and added the same fish... they would have generated the same amount of ammonia/nitrites which would NOT be enough to support the bacteria colonies created by the 5ppm additions anyway.

So why grow it?

Capiche? Comprende? Tap, Tap, Tap, Testing 1-2-3, Testing 1-2-3.... Is this thing on?

This is not complicated Rocket Science. We arent trying to invent Cold Fusion or something, and we arent trying to mathematically prove the existence of Black Holes in deep space either.

Its really just a very simple way to shortcut the fishless cycling process. If you dont plan on way overstocking your tank at the end of the cycle, theres no need to wait the extra time (up to 2 times the time it took you to establish the ammonia eaters).

 

[ChilDawg]

Ha! For you it's with a side of kiss my ass!

Now, seriously, did that last post really make you feel better? I'm sorry if mine came off as rude, but yours came off as more than that.

I guess that I was not completely understanding what you were saying, but that does not give you the right to be insulting when I apparently need clarification.

I know that you put some time and effort into coming up with this method, and that it worked in this case, but I like scientific proof over many cases. I can't help it. I will accept the method at that point. Until then, I will listen to your ideas, but cannot accept them but with a grain of salt because that's how science works...if we didn't work that way, we'd still think that bags of grain magically caused mice to appear. Now go out there and find us those mice! (In a manner of speaking...how many mic taps do you need to understand this less-than-witty metaphor somewhat akin to yours?)

 

[jiggerpolebill]

i still dont get it.

maybe your fish did not produce 5ppm ammonia because they were dead.

do it about another 1000 times with the exact same results and you may be on to something.