Cycling Fish

[FiSh123FiSh]

I have never really seen this in a thread so I wondered...

What fish if you were going to 'fish cycle' a tank would you use?

From what I have heard, you add in your live rock and what not, wait for NN&A to fall to 0 or for nitrates 0-15 then you add a CUC then add your first fish.
what happens if you did it like a FW system... 'Fishless cycle', add first hardy fish.

Any comments please if its complete rubbish please say.

Thanks in advance,

Tom.

 

[Hawkins]

I wouldn't recommend it. its cruel for the fish, using it to cycle a tank.. the fluctuations in water quality would not be good for it.

What's wrong with the normal method?

 

[Truck]

all the fish would die, no matter what species this would never work

 

[FiSh123FiSh]

Nothing is wrong with the normal method, I am going to use it but I was wondering after seeing the platies which I cycle my FW tank when every thing was reasonable low, no one died and there still alive after 4 years, breeding like rats aswell.

 

[Truck]

in freshwater it is ok but not marine

 

[Don Trinko]

I have done it with adding ammonia in a sw tank and I also did it with green cromis in a sw tank.
Before everybody gets uptight abought how cruel it is to do it with fish let me explain:
1.It was a 75g tank and I used 5 small green cromis.
2.I tested ammonia, nitrites and nitrates regularly.
3. I had Amaquel+ on hand incase the ammonia ever got too high. (It makes ammonia and nitrites into a harmless form)
The ammonia never got above .5 and the nitrites never went over 2.0. The fish never showed any sighn of distress and I still have them. 5 small fish in a 75g is why it worked. If I had put 20 in the ammonia would have built up to a higher level before the ammonia eating bacteria developed.
One disadvantage of this method is that you have developd bacteria for just a small bioload so when you add fish you have to do it slowly. ( 1 fish every week or 2).
I'm sure I'll get flamed for posting this but it can be done humanly if you use a small bioload (very few fish for the tank size) , keep the proper chemicals on hand to nutralize any possible ammonia/nitrite spikes, and test the water regularly. Don T.

 

[Colin_T]

You generally cycle a marine tank before adding fish due to the high PH of seawater (8.4). Ammonia is toxic in alkaline water and the higher the PH gets, the more toxic it becomes. Therefore a little bit of ammonia in a tank with a PH of 7.2 isn't necessarily going to kill everything, but the same amount of ammonia in a tank with a PH of 8.4 will kill everything.

You can cycle a marine tank with fish but you only have one or two small damselfsh in the tank and don't feed them more than once a week. It is something you can do if you are experienced but not recommended for a beginner.

 

[xxBarneyxx]

As colin said ammonia is more toxic in the higher PH of the typical SW setup. Yes you may not kill the fish right away but you are definitely going to do them a great deal of long term damage (put it this way do you think you could ingest ammonia for a couple of weeks without long term damage)?

If your using LR there really is no need for a fish in cycle, add your LR, wait for the spike to finish then slowly add your fish. Its just like having a mature canister filter.

 

[FiSh123FiSh]

Ok, thanks everyone!!