plants in my cycle

[mux11]

I am wondering is it better to cycle without live plants or with. The LFS told me that with the plants I would never really finish cycling.
whats your input?

 

[Def]

Your LFS are on hallucinogenic drugs.

Sorry, you asked for my opinion.

Plants are neither here nor there with cycling. They will use up some nitrates in the water, but that doesn't affect cycling itself - the purpose of which is to build up bacteria to convert ammonia and nitrite.

If you're doing fishless cycling, I recommend you do it without plants. If you're cycling with fish, plants will just give your fish some places to hide (ie: security).

 

[mux11]

kewl, thats what I was looking for. Will cycle without plants.

Yea the LFS is quite funny actually the owner who is rather young cringes everytime i go in. You can see it on his face. After reading a book on Marine Husbandry that my parents got from his store that he recommended any Newbie read before jumping in, I got asking him questions and I found he was contradicting what was in the book. He didnt like that I was asking him about it.

 

[GSD]

you can do it both ways!plants will not affect your cycle and sometimes it is best to put the plants in before the fish.But it wont make a diffrence

 

[Danny Boy]

Wow, my first post where I'm contributing, rather than asking questions.

I've just finished my fishless cycle, with live plants, and it took 3 weeks in a 10 gallon. They seemed to cause no issues.

 

[Dubby]

It should probably cycle faster with plants as plant roots can often have nitrogen fixing bacteria. These should help contribute to the cycle.

 

[Vivienne]

I put plants in right at the start of a fishless cycle. Putting Ammonia in to bring it up to 5ppm sends the Ph sky high and in my case the plants really didn't like it. Now that the tank is nearly cycled and I'm adding half that dose of Ammonia daily and the bacteria is there to convert it, the one plant that's left in the tank seems happy enough. I'd wait until the cycle is nearly complete - it may save you wasting money like I did