Cycling - Done Or Not?

[SteveVenezia]

I'll give a 'quick' history of my tank first. Bought it about 6-7 weeks ago then left it for 3 days before introducing 2 Zebra Danios (I only read about fishless cycling after this, sorry!). The shop owner told me to 15-25% change the water every 2 weeks, so 2 weeks later I did this and bought 3 more Danios.

I then find these forums and read about cycling with fish, and read about a guy changing his water every 2-3 days to make sure the fish don't suffer. So I start doing this, and 2 weeks later take my water to be tested. The lady at the LFS tells me I've been over-cleaning and I've been stalling the cycling process, so I don't change the water for another 2 weeks.

This brings me to a week ago when I went away for the weekend, leaving the girlfriend to look after the tank. I come back and find it covered in algae, which hadn't occured at all before. So I bring some water back to my LFS and tell them the story, a different lady this time tells me to change the water about 20% every other day for a week and that'll fix it, apparently I have too much nitrate.

So I've cleaned the tank up a bit (using tank water to clean the gravel and filter), made a 20% water change and introduced some live plants, and it already looks much better.

My question is, is the tank now cycled, and am I doing the right thing by making frequent water changes over the next week?

Many thanks for reading and any help you can offer, I know it's a long post but I don't want to put all of my faith into the LFS!

 

[geezer]

check the amonia and nitrite levels. if they both read 0 then they're being coverted into nitrates, which is a good sign.

a good biological filter shouldn't return any traces of either amonia or nitrite.

nitrates are ok as long as they don't get too high. your plants will like a bit of nitrates

 

[polypterus]

If you tank is cycled and running properly your ammonia and nitrites will basically read zero. Water changes are manly for getting rid of nitrates and any other crap that might build up. If you don’t have a test kit it’s probably a good idea to buy one. You really only need to do a water change if your nitrates are getting high. To be honest most aquarium owners don’t bother with it is much as they should. A store owner once told me that whenever he tests water for someone, nitrates almost always peg the needle. They aren't nearly as bad as nitrite or ammonia so you can get away with it a lot of the time. But ideally you should try to keep them down. Algae in the tank isn’t typically a problem. It does mean your nitrates may be high but algae itself it won’t hurt your fish.

As you know the best way to control nitrates is to grow live plants. Some suck up more nitrates than others however. Also good lighting helps. There are other products that are supposed to suck up nitrates. Some are a bit pricy though. There are ways to grow anaerobic bacteria which also gets rid of nitrates but they produce swamp gas and are generally a pain so I would stick with plants.

For future reference I’ve actually cycled tanks by taking a periodic piss in them. It sounds gross but it works. When you buy bottled ammonia at the fish store you are basically buying piss. Might as well use your own and save the money.

 

[SteveVenezia]

Thanks guys that helps a lot. And pissing in your tanks lol... I might try that sometime.