Fish In Cycle

[barbeds]

You may not have had an issue with it, but your fish may have, barbeds! Even tho it doesn't show now, their gills will have suffered ammonia burns and their lives will be shortened and could experience health issues in the not too distant future. Why choose a method that is labour intensive (daily water changes minimum!), that is also harmful to fish when the fishless way is much quicker and no fish are exposed to ammonia and nitrItes?
If you have mature filter media, coyemuse, in theory you can use up to a third of it to kick start the new tank without compromising the donor tank.
Good luck.

Mamashack I do not have a problem with my tank, it is fully cycled and during the cycle process I did not see ammonia or nitrite levels raised, my fish are fine because I feel I did it very steadily, two fish in 180 ltrs, then little by little.

 

[Mamashack]

Well you managed to omit in your first post the fact that it is a 180L tank, barbeds and coyemuse is setting up a 45L tank. That makes a huge difference - and it's not as easy as you made it sound. My point was and still is that it takes months to do fish-in cycling during which time fish are exposed to harmful toxins whereas the fishless route takes a few weeks with no daily water changes.
I hope you are right that your fish are ok - only time will tell.

 

[Noahsfish]

I can see where you're coming from coyemuse, you enjoy fishkeeping but have a busy life. Fortunately for me I get about 5 hours of sleep every night so I have plenty of time to run my life as well as do my favorite "pastime". Ok I phrased that wrong, but you get the general idea.. As said, you'll have your hands full doing a fish in cycle correctly, but it could be worth it if you're dieing to have fish in there...I'm actually totally against fish in cycles, but if you want to I say go for it..if you do decide to do a fish in cycle I'd do at least a 30-50% water change a day. As in a tank of that size ammonia will build up fast.

 

[coyemuse]

I moved some wood and plants over and some media from the big filter

 

[stanleo]

Ok this topic has bugged me since I started this forum. I had never heard of fishless-cycle before this forum and when I started my 29gl I did it with fish. I put the plants and décor and ran the filter for a month and then added 5 von rio tetres. I knew enough not to dump all the stocking that I wanted at the same time. I tested the water, did water changes every couple days and I swear I didn't see any spikes in ammonia or nitrites or anything odd about the fish. Its 2 years later and my levels never fluctuate, I still have 3 of the first five. About 18 months in two of them developed swim bladder decease and I had to euthanize them.
 
Phew, I'm glad I got that off my chest! I do think that I got lucky that I put in a piece of driftwood that leach tannins and did frequent water changes to get rid of that tea colored water. But I knew what fish would be hardy enough and waited 2 months before I put anything else in that tank. And knowing what I know now its likely the 2 fish that got sick was because of this cycle. And now that I have a mature filter, I will transfer media from it to other tanks I get. I have MTS bad.
 
But I am still not convinced that fish-less cycle is the only way to go. Its the best obviously IF you have the time to add the ammonia, test every 12 hours do the frequent water changes and have the mind set to do this is in a boring empty tank. Not everyone is going to go for that especially when most LFS won't recommend it.

 

[TwoTankAmin]

The effects of exposure to ammonia and nitrite have been studied extensively in a laboratory setting. There are many such studies. These studies do not support the sort of statements seen so often here and many other fish sites about what levels of ammonia or nitrite exposure may be toxic and what damage both temporary or long term are caused.
 
For example a study on silver perch (Bidyanus bidyanus) exposed for 39days to various ammonia concentrations:
"Concentrations tested were control, 0.03, 0.04, 0.07, 0.14 and 0.36 mg l-1 UAN (control, 0.29, 0.5, 0.8, 1.7 and 4.3 mg l-1 total ammonia–nitrogen [TAN])"*
 
Note: 4.3 mg l-1 total ammonia–nitrogen would read 5.5 ppm on an API kit. The ammonia levels tested were all over .25 ppm of ammonia on the API kit.
 
For the most part the only "harm" they noticed at the end of the study was:
 
"No gross pathology of gill tissue was observed. The filaments of all fish were straight and the lamellae were arranged evenly and parallel. Mucous cells were located distally in all preparations. No chloride cells were observed. Examination of histological material, however, revealed changes to gill filaments following exposure to ammonia Table 3.. The most significant change was an increase in the percentage of filaments exhibiting epithelial lifting."*
 
Now this might be significant until one reads at the end of the study:
 
"Epitheliocystis observed in the present study occurred as a benign infection and had no apparent effect on survival or growth rate. Subsequent histopathological examination of cohort silver perch retained at NSW Fisheries’ Grafton Research Centre showed no
evidence of epitheliocystis (Frances and Nowak, unpubl. data)."*
*from http/directory.umm.ac.id/Data%20Elmu/jurnal/A/Aquaculture/Vol183.Issue1-2.Mar2000/61096.pdf
 
So the minimal effect in gills they noted was reversed, i.e. not permanent.
 
I can quote and cite more such research not only for ammonia, but for nitrite and even nitrate. What they show is that it isn't possible to make a blanket statement about what levels of ammonia or nitrite exposure will cause harm. It is definitely species specific and also age and fish size specific. What the research indicates is that it should be possible to do a fish in cycle which allows the levels to rise well beyond .25 or .50 ppm on API kits and not cause the fish any permanent harm or long term damage.
 
I can also find research showing that stressed fish do not handled ammonia or nitrite as well as when stress is minimized. Can anybody show that daily water changes in a tank cycling with fish in it is not stressful to the fish? It can be easy to assess- if the fish bolt- they are stressed, if the fish hide, they are stressed. In fact, the flight reflex is one of the reactions studied to show the effects of elevated toxins.
 
The upshot of this is that doing a fish in cycle requires using those fish that are most resistant to the effects of ammonia and nitrite. Fish in cycles can be done without causing permanent harm/damage to the fish.
 
Despite all of these facts, I will still always suggest that people opt for doing fishless cycles. There are any number of reasons for this, but the two best are it is faster and, if one makes a mistake, no fish suffer or die. The risk in doing fish in cycles are not when they are done right, but when things go wrong. And for an inexperienced fish keeper, things can go wrong in a hurry.

 

[barbeds]

Ok this topic has bugged me since I started this forum. I had never heard of fishless-cycle before this forum and when I started my 29gl I did it with fish. I put the plants and décor and ran the filter for a month and then added 5 von rio tetres. I knew enough not to dump all the stocking that I wanted at the same time. I tested the water, did water changes every couple days and I swear I didn't see any spikes in ammonia or nitrites or anything odd about the fish. Its 2 years later and my levels never fluctuate, I still have 3 of the first five. About 18 months in two of them developed swim bladder decease and I had to euthanize them.
 
Phew, I'm glad I got that off my chest! I do think that I got lucky that I put in a piece of driftwood that leach tannins and did frequent water changes to get rid of that tea colored water. But I knew what fish would be hardy enough and waited 2 months before I put anything else in that tank. And knowing what I know now its likely the 2 fish that got sick was because of this cycle. And now that I have a mature filter, I will transfer media from it to other tanks I get. I have MTS bad.
 ah could not have said it better,my thoughts exactly, it does get a bit much listening to the constant ongoing fishless cycle line, its nice to know that some can be open minded.
But I am still not convinced that fish-less cycle is the only way to go. Its the best obviously IF you have the time to add the ammonia, test every 12 hours do the frequent water changes and have the mind set to do this is in a boring empty tank. Not everyone is going to go for that especially when most LFS won't recommend it.

 

[the_lock_man]

Another idea would be to run the filter for the 10 in your 75 for a few days to let good bacteria build up.

 
That won't do a great deal to help, to be honest - the amount of bacteria growth on the small filter will be negligible, because the bacteria in the large filter will be dealing with the ammonia on their own. The small filter will not see significant amounts of ammonia.

 

[coyemuse]

well the 10 gallon has been set up with some media from the big tank and everything. I put 8 guppies in there. the first day 2 died (not uncommon for the fish bought from the lfs here). the other 6 are swimming around n they're eating and not hiding. no signs of illness and I make it a point to observe them for 20 minutes in light and 20 in dark to note behavioral changes.

 

[Noahsfish]

Have you been testing the water?

 

[coyemuse]

ill test it tonight when I get home