Any Alternate To Fishless Cycling?

[Confused]

I am a starter and am finding fishless cycling too complicated to follow. I have a question. If I keep a 10 gallons tank with sand, plants and water (without fish) for around 15 days or 30 days, would the bacteria grow itself? I could add the fish later after 15 or 30 days. Or are there any alternates to fishless cycle?

Also, I understand that tanks can’t even later be cleaned with tap water as this would wash away the existing bacteria from the tank. They should be cleaned only with the existing water (after removing half of it). Can someone please suggest some reading or links on cleaning of tanks?

 

[Tsi_User]

I know it can be quite confusing. It was almost impossible to follow when I first started. Let me try to break the two different ways of cycling

Fishless cycling:
-You manually add 4-5ppm of amonia to your tank
-Use a water test kit to monitor amonia levels, once amonia goes down nitrites go up, once nitrites go down nitrates goup and over time will go back down
-You basically watch your different parameters and once you can add 4-5ppm of amonia to your tank and the amonia levels are back down to 0 in a short period of time you tank is cycled
-Do a big water change and stock fish!
Pros-No stress on fish, you can add all the fish you want to your tank and don't have to slowly add species and let the beneficial bacteria to build up because there is already plenty of established bacteria
Cons-A little hard to follow at some times

Fish Cycling:
-Set up tank, add a few hardy fish (such as zebra danios)
-The hardy fish's waste will make the amonia levels go up, then in turn nitrites and nitrates
-Once Amonia is 0, Nitrite is 0 and Nitrate is low you can add a few more fish
Pros-Simpler than fishless cycling
Cons-Can stress/kill fish

As far as cleaning tanks, it depends on how your tank is set up. Yes, it is true that you want to use tank water to clean gunk off of your filters and not tap water.

Our 30 gallon planted community tank is quite simple to clean. Once a week I do a 20% water change while vaccuming the gravel, trim a couple plants and wipe off the inside walls of the tank (gunk and algae).

There honestly isn't much more you'll have to regularly clean on a tank

 

[ox5477]

A little note to go with either doing the fishless or the fish cycling.....use a peace of mature filter media if you have an established tank already or have a friend who has one and will let you have a peice. this will cut down on the amount of cycling time immensily. Also, in my opinion, a fishless cycle is much better because your not causing any fish, hardy or not, to go through the checmistry changes in the tank...but just my opinion

 

[dwarfgourami]

I am a starter and am finding fishless cycling too complicated to follow. I have a question. If I keep a 10 gallons tank with sand, plants and water (without fish) for around 15 days or 30 days, would the bacteria grow itself? I could add the fish later after 15 or 30 days. Or are there any alternates to fishless cycle?

Also, I understand that tanks can’t even later be cleaned with tap water as this would wash away the existing bacteria from the tank. They should be cleaned only with the existing water (after removing half of it). Can someone please suggest some reading or links on cleaning of tanks?

The bacteria will only grow if they have something to feed on, that is ammonia. Two ways you can introduce ammonia into the tank: by adding it from a bottle (fishless cycling) or by adding a few fish (cycling with fish). The disadvantage of the latter is that only a few species of fish are hardy enough for this process and you are then stuck with those fish; and even for hardy fish it is a stressful and potentially damaging process.

If you do nothing about adding ammonia, the tank will just sit there and the bacteria will not multiply.

As for cleaning- it's the filter media (the sponge bit or whatever in the filter) that has to be cleaned with old tank water and not with tap water. Common maintenance procedure is: once a week you use a gravel vac (cheap plastic tube+head from lfs) to hoover the substrate and remove c. 20-25% of the water from the tank. With this you occasionally rinse the sponge by swishing it around gently in it (you don't want to clean all the dirt off the sponge, just anything that might stop water trickling through). You replace this water with dechlorinated tap water, which you can bring up to temperature if you like by using some water from the kettle (not absolutely necessary). I use a plastic measuring jug for pouring the fresh water in. Don't forget to switch the tank electrics off before starting a water change- and don't forget to switch them back on afterwards!!!