Cycle With Fish [halp]

[Nick16]

thats crap m8. i used all the bacteria enhancers and had activated carbon in my filter to take out any metal nasties. maybe the fact i didnt lose fish means i did it right?!

 

[Tolak]

A traditional cycle with fish is old school, and used to be the only way anyone cycled, besides cloning. The guideline for a traditional cycle is one inch of hardy, slim bodied fish that grow to no larger than 3 inches, per 5 gallons of water.

For your tank a couple of zebra danios would be the best choice. You might want to look into someone who would donate some cycled filter media, you could post another topic looking for someone local, or look up someone in this topic; http/www.fishforums.net/content/New-to-t...ia-To-Newbies-/

I find testing water a bit easier than doing water changes, you will be doing daily water changes with a traditional cycle. Without water changes you will lose fish, a traditional cycle done properly is by no means the easy way out, no laziness in slinging buckets of water.

Ask your LFS, the one with the seahorses, if they carry pure ammonia for cycling. If they look at you as if you have grown a second head, they aren't that good. Your aquarist friend with 20 years experience sounds like she has cycled a tank once, 20 years ago. You have been given some good advice in this topic, more than you will find in any lfs I can think of. Your lfs is in business to turn a profit first. Nobody posting here is making a single cent off of helping you.

 

[Jeff Lange]

short of impatience and laziness, what reasons are there to cycle with fish...?

a cycle with fish can be faster and if done right maybe a little easier, i bought a tank to put fish in, and waiting 6 weeks now seems a little much for me, so i guess you could say im impatient. I don't understand where lazyness comes from though.

this one obviously knows about it, so there's no excuse.

thanks for you advice

At the moment i think im going to wait a bit (till friday) and go into my local aquarium store and ask in there, hes been trading a long time and looks after seashorses etc so im pretty sure he knows what hes doing.

Well, you said it impatience. But hey, thats ok many people still cycle using fish. Which ever way you go I wish you good luck, I just wanted to voice my thoughts as I did it both ways and just regreted the add fish and cycle method.

 

[humpy_the_humphead_wrasse]

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[@ombomb]

thats crap m8. i used all the bacteria enhancers and had activated carbon in my filter to take out any metal nasties.

bacteria enhancers, never heard of one of those that actually does anything and activated carbon won't effect the cycling in any way...

research really paid off there

 

[humpy_the_humphead_wrasse]

by bacterial enhancer he mean stability. I USED 2 BOTTLES ON STABILITY AND PRIME TRYING TO DO A FISHY CYCLE AND I LOST 4 GOURAMIES AND 2 GHOST KNIFES. DONT DO IT!!!!!

 

[Jodiem]

why is everyone so touchy!! im sure guppies will cope with a little ammonia in their life,

do water changes, try twice a week for a couple of weeks and they should be fine!! good luck!!!

 

[humpy_the_humphead_wrasse]

goodluck

 

[NonstickRon]

tell that too my ghost knives and 4 gouramies that got messed up. but by all means please post every single death that comes about. id like u to rub those in your workmate's face of 20 years fishkeeping as long as u do cycled after and learn your lesson. or u could just kill 40 or 50$ worth of fish. up to u


AND ALSO LOLS U FOOOL. DONT LISTEN TO YOUR LFS. DO SOME RESEARCH OF YOUR OWN AND BLOODY LEARN. first thing youl learn is you lfs will tell u any thing to get more money out of u!

Don't Gouramis have a rep for being very easy to kill? Even if fishless is the best way to do it, it isn't the only way to do it. There are modern chemicals that detoxify the ammonia and nitrites while leaving them available to the bacteria. Bacterias in the bottle don't always work, for various reasons, but they don't always not work either. (For instance, if someone buys a bottle and then dumps water that hasn't been properly dechlorinated in their tank with it...wasted bottle of bacteria).

With intelligent fish choices, detoxifiers, bacteria supplements (the right ones), frequent testing, and dedication to frequent water changes...you don't have to lose any fish doing a fish-in cycle. YES, most of the time peoples actions don't live up to their ambitions, and this leads to fish dye offs during the process. But if someone is willing to take it serioiusly, its definitely not hard.

I personally went with fish-in after not being able to find pure ammonia locally anywhere. After "doing my research" I found out that fishless is not the only safe way to cycle a tank...its just the easiest one.

 

[Nick16]

i didnt use satbility and it was 2 weeks before adding fish. anyway how many of you have lost fish when starting up a new tank???. yes the reaserach did help m8! glad i didnt listen to idiots.

 

[@ombomb]

glad i didnt listen to idiots.

you don't need to, you seem to be one in your own right

 

[Nick16]

original well done

 

[kadkins20]

i'd liek to clear up a misconception here:

clearly lfs's dont make money when you return a dead fish and get a replacement. them not knowing how to cycle a tank is not a money-maker - it's a money-loser. It's jsut a lot better for everyone involved if you know how to cycle a tank whether with fish or without. But the standard lfs advice of "let your tank sit for a few days before u put fish in it" isn't cycling.

If you're going to do a fish-in cycle, try to get some filter media/gravel from a friend (filter stuff is better) and get a few hardy fish that are compatible with eachother. Platies are good, so are guppies apparently, and so are danios. Expect to have to do at least once daily 25% water changes - this is rough with a 50 gallon trust me

if you get sensitive fish or if your water conditions arent right (say you have soft water) even some allegedly hardy fish will struggle in your tank - such as mollies.

i did a shortcut fish-in cycle with filter media and gravel and did twice daily 25% water changes and i still lost quite a few fish

 

[Corleone]

For most of them, it's a huge money maker, actually. I don't know of any that will give you a refund without a water sample, and even though while the fish are alive they'll tell you 3 ppm ammonia is just fine, when you're there for a refund, the slightest trace of green and you don't get it, but you are given an explanation of why they recommend cheap hardy fish at first, because by the old school cycling methods they give (fish in, minimal water changes, mabye some salt to help with nitrite poisoning) the first fish in are highly likely to die. Some of the "good" ones will give you a discount on some more hardy fish to continue the cycle. They're not entirely clueless. They know the cycle process can kill - that's been standard hobby knowledge for a century, and they make return policies that won't cover any water quality problem they can test for.

I'd also like to add, cycling with fish is not faster than cycling without, as the OP seems to have been misinformed. A fishless cycle can finish in 3-4 weeks. With fish regularly take 4-6, and are vastly more work.

At the end of one, too, stocking increase is slower, as well. Normally, as said, you use about 1 inch of fish per 5 gallons to cycle. Afterwards, you can't add more than about 10-20% of your current stock at a time without a mini cycle. I've done a fishless cycle, topped up ammonia for an extra week (whole process took 4.5 weeks, cycle finished in 3.5) and overstocked the tank right out of the gate with nary a hiccup (about 1.2 inches per gallon). I don't recommend stocking quite that quickly, but it's more likely to work than Nick's flawless cycle with fish. Browse on this forum, there are hundreds of threads, some of which were ongoing for months, of fish-in cycle disasters, and I'd say one in five had that sort of happy ending.

 

[dnn3]

6 week fishless cycle worked for me.