Should We Move On?

[brian1]

What if you can get a nice scrumptious bag of filter media from your lfs as I did,and add fish to keep it fed, would you say that's ok?......!!

 

[Dieses Madchen]

Yes. If you trust your LFS. I would rather clone my own tanks. I still am operating off the colony of bacteria i started 2 years ago.

 

[brian1]

Yes. If you trust your LFS. I would rather clone my own tanks. I still am operating off the colony of bacteria i started 2 years ago.

Wow, that's amazing......

 

[Staxx]

depends. ive spoken to a lot of people about this and equal amounts sway either way. some people say fishless isnt the way to go as it wastes time and why have an empty tank sitting for so long.

then other people say for the health of the fish, ability to full stock almost instantly and so on. go with fishless.

ive also spoken to people about stuff like silent cycling, seeding and some chemicals mentioned.

i think wether you choose fishless, bacteria in a bottle, fish in or silent. as long as your on the ball and are prepared to do the work,it will all work out eventually!

 

[brian1]

hey staxx, is silent cycling, doing it without plants in? then adding them after?

 

[Dazzler666]

Suppose wod be interesting to run some form of test. Thinking add this bottled bacteria then test daily for ammonia, nitrite & nitrate and see what the results show. Cant really think of a way for a definitive answer. Mind you, if it did work then is clearly a very big positive!!!

 

[brian1]

Suppose wod be interesting to run some form of test. Thinking add this bottled bacteria then test daily for ammonia, nitrite & nitrate and see what the results show. Cant really think of a way for a definitive answer. Mind you, if it did work then is clearly a very big positive!!!

Would be interesting to see what happened, I suppose it's having the guts to do it......if someone was starting a new tank up, that would be worth a try.....

 

[mossonthemoon]

What if you can get a nice scrumptious bag of filter media from your lfs as I did,and add fish to keep it fed, would you say that's ok?......!!

I did this for ten years, but with my own tank. From that tank, I made a dwarf puffer tank, upgraded to a larger tank, I moved four times, and made the current hospital tank I have. I have been forced to start fresh now though, because I don't feel my temporary tank is enough to restart my larger tank. I was always very successful with this method. As for the chemicals... Well, I wouldn't automatically reject something new on the market, but I wouldn't want to try it without knowing it is definitely valid. I would want to do tests without fish, but I don't have the time or spare money to run a cycle basically for fun.

 

[phoenixgsd]

Just because they survived it doesn't mean that it wasnt an extremely painful experience for them OR that they haven't been damaged from being poisoned and will live shorter lives.

Ammonia burns their fins and gills which affects their ability to breath and nitrite affects their nervous system and the ability of their blood to use oxygen. Your fish will have been exposed to high levels of both.

this isnt strictly true in every case, i did a fish in cycle and was useing prime, which according to most on here it temporarily binds ammonia and i did 90% water changes every day, yes it was hard work but i cant see how they suffered like you described because of the routine i had and the product i used

 

[Alm0stAwesome]

I was refering to the way in which that particular person "cycled" their tank. I'm well aware that it's possible to fish in cycle but after guiding several people through a fish in cycle where they were getting readings of 2-3ppm ammonia a day pre water change because they had at least nearly fully stocked their tanks (if not overstocked) from the start, i can promise you that those fish were poisoned.


Aaanyway, silent cycling is where you heavily plant a tank all from the beginning and then add fish. This does require heavy plant mass and will require water changes as well because that is what the tank will need at the beginning to prevent algae outbreaks.

 

[fluttermoth]

Yes. If you trust your LFS. I would rather clone my own tanks. I still am operating off the colony of bacteria i started 2 years ago.

Wow, that's amazing......

I can beat that; I've had my bacterial colony going since 1995

I'll reserve judgement on the 'bottled bacteria' for the moment; the odd bottle or two I've had over the years have certainly never done anything useful.

Doing fishless (or using donated media) for your first tank and cloning subsequent ones is still the best way to go, IMO. Ammonia is very dangerous, but not really in the concentrations that we use, as long as you use basic common sense.

 

[brian1]

Thanks for that on silent cycling, Alm0stAwesome,.... great info........

Wow again fluttermoth, after all that time I would start to love my Bacteria........

 

[Staxx]

yeah great info AA!

in short, the plants are used to absorb the ammonia and nitrate from the fish

 

[stu40]

Aaanyway, silent cycling is where you heavily plant a tank all from the beginning and then add fish. This does require heavy plant mass

we're talking >75% of the substrate & quick growing stems, Anubias & Java Fern aren't so useful in this scenario

 

[Staxx]

yeah. for silent cycle you need more plants than fish or water looool.

more plants the easier it is i presume, never done it myself