Cycling new tank

[lilhurleybunny]

If I play my cards right i may be getting a new 10 gallon tank soon. I'm going to do a fishless cycle but i was wondering if the heater and the filter need to be in the tank during the fishless cycle. Would it hurt if they werent? If they have to be in the tank then what do i do with the fish during the fishless cycle? I'm trying to stay away from buying another filter and heater because i am on the "parent budget" .

Thanks!!

 

[marks69]

you could skip the heater, but you need the filter to build up your good bacteria in it, also the moverment of the water will help.
gl
mark

 

[bogusmove]

Sounds like you are planning on moving all your fish to your new tank then and stopping from using the old tank? At least I assume this since you are only going to be running one tank with one filter really......

If so, you could set up your new tank, let it settle a bit, make it the same temperature as your existing tank, and then move your fish and filter over at the same time (your filter must be moved straight from one tank to the other, not allowed to sit around and/or dry out, as the friendly bacteria in it will die if that happens). Taking the water from your old tank would be a very good thing too (discarding whatever amount of water you need to from your new tank).

One of the primary aims of cycling is to get a nice colony of bacteria in your filter which will convert your ammonia to nitrite and nitrite to nitrate... So if you cycle a tank without a filter you won't get this. You will however get bacteria colonies on your gravel, but that most likely won't have alot of filtration capacity, especially if there is very little water circulation (which may be the case if you have no filter and no air stones to move your water around). However... if you did cycle your tank like that, and then put a filter in, the filter would be colonised quite quickly, so you could probably do it. Might take a long time to cycle a tank like this though, especially if your tank is cool because of the lack of a heater. That could slow it down alot of your temperature is low.

 

[lilhurleybunny]

Your post sparked an idea, bogusmove. So if i got my new tank i would fill it with water, put the heater in that i currently have in my temporary 5 gallon, the filter in, the fish in, and put new gravel in( right now i just have marbels -.-) and that might jump start the cycling? I could throw in a few of my old marbels if that helped..

The point is is that i dont want to kill my fish lol. I've been waiting for them to die since all my others did so i figured if they all died i could just do a fishless cycle and get new fish. However these two guys i have seem to be quite healthy and livley (even though they are from wal*mart ) and i have grown quite attached to them so i dont want to throw them to their death lol .

If this idea works without killing my fish then thats great!!