Different Theory From A Old Fish Keeper....

[Tiger Tiger]

Right here goes.
I would like to point out this is a repeated discussion that i had and not put into motion but your thoughts on it.

This guy has a Fish shop. I will obviusly not mention the shop but it's been there over 25 years and his experience goes back further. This is your little local guy with a regular custom base and not some big all over the country 'Just sell the fish' company.

So....

He is offcoarse old school but is still very passionate to the point he will not take the fish out of the plastic bags until 1 hour after it's been floating in the bags so it gets used to its own shop tank conditions. Go in there in the morning and the bags are all floating in the tanks

So he does care.

His theory on a new tank is Fish in.
Lets take a 200ltre tank. 1 fish and no water change for 4 days but gravel from another established tank. Check readings, Forget about Amonia. Just test for nitrite every day, if it starts to go up then water change but only if it starts to go up, and not a big change at that, about 20% and no more.
Theory....Every water change sets back the build up of bacteria and is firmly against any water change in the first 3 days.
Just keep checking Nitrites and doing water changes, if only say 8 inches of fish is ahered to for 2 weeks there will be no problem. Then introduce fish slowly checking nitrites. ......
Amonia testing is not required and a waste of money, in such a big amount of water the fish will not be harmed but constant water changes ESPECIALLY in the first few days of the fish in a new tank will stress the fish especially half the tank everyday.

Yes it's slow but he completely disagrees that in the long term the original fish will be harmed and has showed me fish that have out lasted others who came years later. He has two tanks of his own pleasure using them as an example.

'Why is everybody in a Hurry' nowadays and 'If it works why change it'...He is also a great undergravel filter lover and externals, these internals are just modern crap he rumbles.

So there it is Victor Meldew but i know this guy after 30 years can tell you every latin name of every fish there is, try testing a m********d A******s worker that.

So......Stick that on the forum he said.

Well i have.....Now don't have a pop at me but it's a forum so it's worth discussing

 

[Rooster]

Just where DO you start ? This is such old ground now.... "The Earth is flat" springs to mind !

 

[Tiger Tiger]

 

[SharonCC]

I actually agree with the guy in regards to doing massive and frequent water changes if cycling with fish. I see no point in keeping Ammonia at 0ppm, or close to it, as the cycle cannot progress. Obviously, water changes have to be done to keep fish comfortable, buy I don't believe that there needs to be a panic with a .25ppm ammonia, or nitrites. Just my opinion....

 

[Corleone]

My grandfather did things the same way for decades. He can show fish that lived 20 years after going through cycles, but he also can show you the logs of the hundreds of fish that didn't make it through or died long before their time after being in a cycle.

Fish are tough, though, "alive" and "Unharmed" are a long way apart. My grandfather also has fish that have lived many years with severe damage - not just usual cycling stuff, either. He has a frontosa that lost an eye, gill flap, tail, and one pectoral fin after a cat managed to get it out of the tank and it's still alive and breeding almost eight years later later.

Unfortunately, the results in the hobby speak volumes different. Just reading this forum for a month scared me off fish-in cycling forever, even though we know it can work, and can be done to minimize the risk to fish. Without even going all the way down the front pages in the new to the hobby and new to the forum sections, I counted six fish-in cycle threads, none of which are going well, and at least one of which is a full-blown disaster, not to mention several likely NTS threads. And things have been sort of quiet the last couple weeks.

Then there's the fact that the science, which advanced immensely in the 80's and 90's, speaks against some of his firmly held beliefs. Water changes don't set back the bacteria at all, as they aren't free swimming. In fact, they tend to help - as Dr. Hovanec posted when he was on the forum recently, the ideal growth rates were around 0.14 ppm, which is half what ammonia and nitrite is generally kept to in a fish-in cycle.

There's people on the forum with longer experience than your friend, not to mention professional breeders and at least one recognized author, who'll also disagree. In any field that's changed as much as most animal keeping hobbies has, experience means fairly little - In my profession, if you've been working for 30 years, chances are you have less useful experience than the new greenhorns finishing graduate school and working for peanuts. I've been out of college five years and need to spend half my salary on classes to keep ahead.

 

[SharonCC]

Water changes to reduce Ammonia to 0ppm means that there is little or no food for the bacteria...I wasn't thinking that water changes actually remove any bacteria. I'm not saying that cycling with fish is a good option, but people will do it. Does it not make sense for them to at least do it properly.

 

[rhostog]

One fish in a 200 litre tank seeded with gravel from another mature tank - quite possible the ammonia wouldn't even get to harmful levels! This is a bit different from sticking 10 tetras and 6 danios in a 50 litre tank with no mature media - what one of my local shops recommended.

Pliny the Elder (famous ancient Roman) knew Latin names for animals (well he would, wouldn't he! and he was also considered a very knowledgeable natural history expert for many years after) - but he also suggested dried lamb's dung as a cure for sore throats, hare's brains rubbed on the gums for teething babies, and pigeon's droppings in oil as a treatment for burns. Personally, I think I'll give his advice a miss...

 

[OldMan47]

I know exactly what the fish in cycle looks like that your LFS uses. I used that and variations of it for many years and I had some fish survive it. If you go with a light enough load and a big enough tank there never is a dangerous build up of ammonia. How much ammonia can a single guppy add to a 50 gallon tank? I would rather continue to use the "modern" methods of cycling because I don't want to move that slowly at stocking a tank.
We also used to cycle a tank without the benefit of any testing equipment. A truly light load will never have enough ammonia develop to harm the fish or to cycle a filter properly. The second fish doubles the bioload in a single step and may or may not cause problems. The third fish is another big step up in bioload and so on. You actually know when you are going too fast when half of your fish die or look really bad. At that point you do a 20% water change and hope for the best. If nothing improves in a few days, you try another 20% change. If your fish start dying you blame it on weak fish and too much inbreeding.
Been there, done that. I do not want to go back to that kind of fishkeeping.

 

[three-fingers]

I actually agree with the guy in regards to doing massive and frequent water changes if cycling with fish. I see no point in keeping Ammonia at 0ppm, or close to it, as the cycle cannot progress. Obviously, water changes have to be done to keep fish comfortable, buy I don't believe that there needs to be a panic with a .25ppm ammonia, or nitrites. Just my opinion....

However frequent (daily) small water changes to dilute the ammonia are very important during a fish-in cycle, I didn't know people recommend frequent large ones?

 

[SharonCC]

I've seen advice given on forums to keep the Ammonia levels at 0ppm...and this cannot work. Again, I would always advise a fishless cycle, as it's less stressful for the fish and the fishkeeper. However, if someone CHOOSES to cycle with fish, they need to know that 0ppm Ammonia is not the goal. The key is to know when to do a water change before the fish are uncomfortable, That can be done, if proper testing is done. Unfortunately, often, the fishkeeper does not have any experience and gets into trouble because they really don't understand the process, fully. I tend to use common sense in fishkeeping...because an idea is old does not negate its validity...However I don't plan on using dung of any kind for a sore throat...although it may work as well as what I buy at the pharmacy!

 

[rabbut]

I both agree and dissagree with you Sharon. While a cycle cannot progress at 0ppm of ammonia, keeping the level of ammonia close to zero will not slow down the cycle from its pace where ammonia is at say 2ppm or say 4ppm, as if there is ammonia to be used, the bacteria will continue to multiply. It's a supply and demand thing. The bacteria will multiply just so long as there is a supply of ammonia to use, at a rate of doubling every 24 hours or so, regardless of how much ammonia there is to be had. The bacteria will only stop multipying once ammonia ceases to be detectable.

There is evedence to surgest that too higher ammonia or nitrite levels will slow the growth of ammonia and nitrite oxidising bacteria, so keeping levels of both low may well be in the interest of speeding the cycle, as will as in the interest of the fish concerned.

Please see the following link for a detailed description on how waterhcanges can acctually speed up a cycle;

link

All the best
Rabbut

 

[OldMan47]

Well put Rabbut. There is no reason to allow levels high enough to harm the fish in order to get a cycle completed.

 

[waterdrop]

"I've seen advice given on forums to keep the Ammonia levels at 0ppm...and this cannot work."

Sharon, I think this is a misunderstanding of what's going on in the tank. The liquid test kits we use in the hobby are not all that accurate. Just because we get to the Zero color on our hobby test, that doesn't mean there is no ammonia in the system. It just means we're low enough that the test doesn't show it. We're used to seeing zero ammonia showing in our tests of a well-cycled tank but we still know the bacterial colony is mature and being well-fed, right? That's because there is a small but steady stream of ammonia molecules flowing from the fish gills (and the other debris sources) straight into the filter where it is quickly processed by the A-Bacs.

Its the same thing in a Fish-In cycling situation. There's still plenty, more than enough ammonia, when our test says Zero, to steadily feed the growth of the colonies. To be sure, its slow, to the tune of 4 weeks probably, but Fish-In cycling works fine with ammonia and nitrite=zero readings all along the way. I think the significant thing about holding these poisons down between zero and 0.25 on the test readings is that it more closely simulates the environment that our well-cycled tanks have once they have mature colonies.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[Corleone]

Very large water changes are usually suggested for people who are already overstocked and still mid-cycle. Reasonable stocking, 25-30% daily is enough to keep .25. With many of the cases on the forum, you have to reduce ammonia to effectively 0 just to keep it from going over .5 to 1.0 in the 12 hours before your next immense water change.

As waterdrop said, "0" is a bit misleading - there's always SOME ammonia in the tank, no matter how mature or lightly stocked - the ammonia has to get from the fish to the filter, and not all of it gets removed the first time through.

 

[SharonCC]

Then, we basically agree...As long as there is some Ammonia in the tank, the bacteria grows. I've often advised not to let it get above .5ppm. I did assume though, that if the test said 0ppm, then that was too low for there to be bacterial growth....didn't think that a 0 reading wouldn't be an accurate representation, but that does make sense!