Adding Ammonia to a tank is completely illogical considering Ammonia kills fish. Why add something to a tank that will kill the occupants of the tank. I would never have been able to manage the fish rooms I have in the past, if every tank I set up I had to go through this Ammonia process. The whole process may work, but is flawed in a number of ways.
And in that answer is why I don't know how I have managed to keep fish alive for 46 years.
We used to set up tanks using water from other tanks. we used to use filters from other tanks. I ran about 30 bare bottom tanks in my fish room never thought about all the stuff you are thinking about. I bred hundreds of fish without thinking about cycling tanks before introducing fish. Those fish bred without any problem. This hobby is becoming so complicated that I can't even understand it and I have been breeding fish for 46 years.
That's another way of starting up a tank, but few newcomers have access to mature media which is why it isn't mentioned very often.
So explain to me why, putting live plant in your tank and then adding fish slowly isn't promoted as being the best way to "cycle" a tank.
That is great, but just maybe members should be encouraged to have live plants in their tanks rather than be given ways of not having them. I am sure the fish would rather have a live plant tank rather than a plastic plant tank. We need to think of the wishes of the fish rather than the humans that want to keep them in glass boxes.
This is probably why it isn't easy to recommend the silent cycle wholeheartedly in good conscience, although I rarely see a post where the option is not highlighted. When a beginner with planted tanks, I had to buy, and kill, lots of types of plants to find which ones thrived in my tanks and how to nurture them. If I had to start off with 30-50% of the tank planted and actively growing I think it would have taken me months, as well as being very expensive.
Slow down with the wood!I'm reading so many different things it's confusing.
Me and my girlfriend went to the reservoir tonight, came back with loads of rocks, i'll clean them tomorrow in hot water and leave them for a few hours, my pump never arrived, it should be here tomorrow, i'll fill the tank up, switch the pump on put all the bogwood/driftwood and rocks in and then read what to do next
)
Slow down with the wood!
It'll need soaking for at least a week, if not two. This'll be to make sure there's nothing nasty in it, such as creatures or fungus and to leach out some of the tannins.
It's also to make sure it's not full of air...you'll never get it to stay sunk, otherwise. ('Drift'wood drifts for a reason.
