hey guys im new to this forum and aquariums in general!
as like any other hobby i try to find a forum to join.
everyone seems a lot nicer than the forums im used to haha but any, i have a quick question
is the fishless cycle a must for the fluval edge?
and can i still run a cycle while having fish in there?
Hello merrr and Welcome to our beginners section!
We have a number of Fluval Edge hobbyists within TFF and if you are lucky you may be able to get them to point you to posts about how they have gone about things with the Edge. I believe once upon a time people did various hardware mods to try and help these kits work better. The filters on small tanks can sometimes be frustrating for beginners because the media beds are small and allow a lot of leak-through, making the filtering process less efficient and taking longer to cycle possibly. Likewise, smaller tanks in general are less forgiving for beginners because water chemistry changes happen faster in smaller volumes (especially as you move into the range of 20G/76L or less.) None of these things will slow down a determined new hobbyist though and we have people with beautiful Edge setups I believe.
When fish respire by pulling water through their gills, they give off waste ammonia (NH3) directly from the gills. This is their equivalent of breathing of course and unlike us, they have no need to retain water (we do not give off ammonia when breathing because our kidney/bladder system wants to preserve water since we are land animals.) Even small fish put off a ton of ammonia just by being alive. Then, to add to this, excess fishfood, fish wasted and live plant debris are all broken down by heterotrophic bacteria (not the ones we try to grow in our filters) into... more ammonia!
Ammonia, even in tiny amounts, causes gill damage and can result in permanent injury or death. The first specific family of bacteria we grow in our filters (call them the A-Bacs) will break this ammonia down in to nitrite(NO2) and as long as we have enough of these bacteria and keep them alive, they will do this on and on for years.
Unfortunately, nitrite(NO2) is ALSO a deadly fish poison, just like ammonia. Even in tiny amounts it attaches to the hemoglobin protein on red blood cells and turns those cells into brown mush, quickly causing suffocation, nerve and brain damage and subsequent death. The second specific family of autotrophic bacteria we grow (call them the N-Bacs) will process nitrite(NO2) in to nitrate(NO3), which is not nearly as deadly and can be removed from our tanks with the weekly water change.
The process of growing these two types of beneficial bacteria is what produces a "working biofilter," one of the three major filtration functions of a filter and the one that is most core to a beginner becoming skilled in the freshwater fishkeeping hobby. In our beginner section we pride ourselves in not just getting tanks started but in helping each other become skilled and at really learning our hobby. The use of good test kits is, more than anything else, part of the process that helps us see and learn this core skill more deeply, so that we can exercise our knowledge later with greater flexibility in different situations.
Getting a tank "cycled" as quickly as possible is cheating yourself out of this core learning and is contrary to the "zen" of the hobby (I feel) in that this hobby is unlike many others: it is all about slowing down and relaxing, as opposed to "more and faster." Your tank can be your haven away from the world you have left behind when you shut your front door in the evening. There is nothing quite like sitting in front of a nicely lighted tank in a dimly lit room! Agree?
What is so fascinating about the Fishless Cycle is that it allows us focus on learning about nature's Nitrogen Cycle and about how our particular tank and water chemistry respond to things -prior- to putting our fish in danger. Its simply impossible for beginners to make mistakes with the gills and nerves of their new responsibilities because the fish are simply not in there! When the fish are finally added to the cycled and fully functioning environment, it is sometimes the best water they've ever been in and it shows in their energy and vitality.
Real cycling, whether Fishless or Fish-In comes as a shock to many newcomers to the hobby. Either type of cycling can take 6 to 9 weeks of long frustrating work. Planned Fish-In cycling can be nearly as safe as Fishless Cycling if done well, but Fish-In cycling in general is usually harder work because you must be the manual daily filter for your fish, in addition to water testing, you must very frequently change the used water for fresh water, via sometimes daily gravel-clean-water-changes.
Good luck here in the forum and I hope you will enjoy your interactions. We have a lot of great members here.
~~waterdrop~~
