Fishless tank.

[Waylander]

Can plants grow alright in a tank with no fish in it?

I ask because I currently have a new empty 30 gallon tank that I want to do something with. But I don't really want to stock in with fish before I go on holidays in January.

 

[Ghost_knife]

yeah, dose with ferts tho

 

[Waylander]

Cool, since I'm not worrying about fish for a few months I may even tinker around with some DIY CO2. I will also be dosing some ferts. This is bearing in mind that I have hood lights so I'm fixed at about 1.3 wpg, but my 15 gallon is doing just fine with this much light, so I think I should be right.

Is a planted cycle a legitimate/recommended way to go? How easy is it to accomplish?

 

[FreddytheFish]

Planted cycle is a legitimate way to go, unfortunatley the only resource on it that I know about was Daveeka's cycle article, but he pulled it from here, and is currently only at AB.

So all I really know is that it involves heavily planting a tank, and then slowly adding fish. The plants would than absorb many of the toxins produced by the fish until the denitrifying bacteria were established.

 

[Ms.Bubbles]

Is a planted cycle a legitimate/recommended way to go? How easy is it to accomplish?

I'm guessing you're referring to a "silent cycle"--a way of bypassing the cycling process through the use of live plants in an aquarium of fish?

The way to do this is to begin with a large number of fast-growing, nutrient-eating plants which will consume the fish's ammonia output. You also need to balance the plant-to-fish ratio so that you have enough plants to cover the fishload in the tank. Usually, this requires a fairly light stocking of fish in the tank, and a lot of plants.

This method is not really "cycling" because you don't build up much of a bacteria colony in the filter, since the plants are using the nutrients. Should the plants die (or you remove them), you would definitely see an ammonia/nitrite spike.

It's not hard to do as long as you have enough lighting for the plant species, the right plants, and a fairly light fishload. I'm accomplishing it in both my tanks, although I feel my 10 gallon's lighting is a little on the low side, and could probably benefit from another 1 wpg.

 

[Yoemen]

hmm

well.... if you aren't going to have fish I really don't see why you would mess with cycling. You are going to have to add ferts to make up for no fish, so you definitely don't want to cycle the tank.