"Doing the cycle with fish is ultimately poison for the fish but now that you have started it, you have to let them fight through higher levels of ammonium I think."
I think this accurately reflects the attitude found in the hobby for many decades, but that it is one we are slowly trying to move away from. I suspect in the years up through the 1950's the hobby gained this from the farming and many other areas where man was used to using animals to meet a human goal or purpose and the animal was thought of as an object in the process.
Listening to the analogy of "fish fighting through" brings to mind the "boys need to take a few bruises" image that I'm sure is still extant in many schoolyards and neighborhoods. We all anthropomorphize, we can't help it, but for the animals, it is a poor approach to understanding the world from their perspective I think. To continue to anthropomorphize a minute longer, perhaps a better analogy would be the following:
Your child somehow gets shut in to a closed garage with a running vehicle that is putting out exhaust. Instead of immediately going in and turning off the engine (re-homing the excess fish) or opening the garage door and windows (performing large enough water changes to bring ammonia and nitrite down to 0.25ppm or below) you decide it would be better to let your childs lungs soak up the poisons and hope that he won't be too worse off for the wear later in life, if he makes it through the episode.
The ball of cooled molten rock that spun around the sun somehow developed an incredibly thin little wisp of moisture and atmosphere and a stunningly beautiful garden of colorful creatures of all shapes and sizes and vulnerabilities evolved to sustain and entertain those of us lucky enough to observe them. As we begin to attempt to understand whether this thin little shell of life will continue forward forever on the spinning rock, rather than be used up by ourselves, we are often left grasping at how we can change our attitudes in ways that will make us better stewards...
(sorry, clear morning sky making me feel a rare bit poetic, please excuse
)
Just to say however, the choice of whether the health and life of the fish or the process of quickly growing a biofilter is OURS... (to have and to hold, as they say.. for ultimately it is not just our spouse, but our children, our neighbors children and the whole living earth around us that we must find a place in our hearts to care about, if we want to survive.)
Just my 2 cents,
~~waterdrop~~