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23-08-2003, 09:22 AM

(Kristen) wrote in message ...
) wrote:

Why would you need fishless cycling in the first place?

Although I wouldn't have put it exactly like that, I've got to agree
that when it comes to general planted tanks, fishless cycling isn't
usually necessary. Plants prefer ammonium first as a food source over
nitrate, so it's a great way to start a tank with fish from day 1 (as
long as you set it up properly so the plants thrive, or else the whole
system could collapse.)

Plants will do quite fine without _ever_ adding NH4.
This preference in the whole scheme of things is small. I'm perhaps
one of the few folks in the hobby that's run tanks with NH4 and or NO3
from inorganic salts on test tanks with no fish/critters.
You'd be very hard pressed to show a way to supply a significant
amount of NH4 without adding a much larger amount of NO3
inorganically, to the point where the added NH4 is very subtle at
best. It can be seen, but it's subtle and needs a well monitored tanks
to be sure of what it is that you are seeing.
You'd have to add 3ppm a day for some tanks of NH4. This would/does
cause fish death/algae blooms even if dripped in slowly over the
course of a day etc.
I've done it. Great for algal cultures, bad for plants/fish.

But anyway, fishless cycling certainly does have a place, IMO, in some
non-planted tanks or special situations where you need to add a large
bio-load all at once, as someone else already mentioned. In specific,
many newbs setting up community tanks make the mistake of assuming
plants are difficult, time-consuming, or expensive, so they start out
with plastic. And since they're the ones most likely to create an
over-crowded, toxic-waste dump in a tank with their impatience and
greed, mentioning fishless cycling at every turn in hopes that they'll
read about it before killing a bunch of fish isn't all that bad of a
policy, IMO.

Sure, so will fish tank water changes which is a heck of lot easier to
do and explain to a newbie(Change 30-50% a week of your water, add
dechlorinator).

NH4 eventually turns into NO3 which at high levels causes grief too.
Fix the real underlying problem, not just a band aid.
Only a few things fix this NO3 issue like removal resins/plants and
water changes and a coil denitratifiers. About newbie habits: we all
know they over feed. That food even if there's a great bacterial
culture turns to NO3, after sucking up a fair amount of O2 in the
process(more NH4 waste, more O2 used).
Good cycled tank does not deal with that.

This is no cure for the rampant newbie overstocking a tank.
That's going to happen since not everyone listens.
More harm than good could become of the fishless cycling as I have
seen from folks going way overboard in a number of tanks.

The end result: they need to do a bunch of water changes.
Back to square one.
Go figure.

And key here against your arguments in other posts that fishless
cycling has no place at all in the hobby is the impatience and greed
for lots of fish that most newbies exhibit. Despite being warned over
and over about not stocking too quickly or overcrowding while doing
fish-cycling, a huge amount of them do it anyway, as evidenced by the
non-stop "why are my fish dying" posts in r.a.f.m. If we can just get
them to add a starter culture of bacteria and finish the cycle with
ammonia and not fish (done the right way, this takes as little as 1-2
weeks in my own personal experience doing cycling experiments for Bit
Nybbler a few years ago,) then a lot of the problems we see can
usually be minimized.

So this is easier than water change? Both for the ease and the
explaination and the cost associated with it?
I think not.

There's no way you are going to prevent new folks from doing bad
things, but you can make is simpler, water changes are VERY simple. A
simple method anyone can do is ideal for the general public. Yes, they
tell them to do that also and they fail, why would this not be
different, actually more complicated and expensive?

I tell folks how would you like to be in a small bathroom for a month
without flushing the can? Change the water often?! Would you rather
buy several test kits and test often or just do weekly water changes
and not worry about that?
And/Or toss some floating water sprite in there?

...why not run your filter on another tank a few weeks first,
then slap it on the new tank when you add the fish?

Because after that, neither filter will have a full bacterial culture
at the end of that time since they're splitting the food source, so
it's not a total solution. The new filter would have a starter
culture, but it would probably still need to be cycled some more in
order to handle the full bio load of another tank. And spending a
week or two doing this with ammonia rather than live fish in some
cases might be preferable, especially when starting with sensitive
fish like corys and no plants. People aren't cut out with
cookie-cutters, and neither are their fishkeeping situations; there
are plenty of times this would be a useful method.

I ain't heard one except the isolated aquarist yet.
Useful method's include overstocking a small tank is the best folks
can do here?

And plus, the fishless cycling method is usually targeted specifically
for newbies, who often don't have other tanks of their own or friends'
tanks to do this on or get cultures from. And if your only local pet
store is something like Petco, which is becomming more commonplace as
LFS's go out of business, don't count on them giving you doo-doo from
their own tanks (no pun intended.) If they want to insure they don't
kill fish in a cycling, plantless tank, this might be the most
comfortable way for them to do it. They don't even have to cycle it
all the way, even, so they can combine methods to shorten the time
even further.

Okay, now I buy some of this. But the water change, so simple and so
underated....
Is this easier than adding the NH4 and testing every few days?
I would have no issue asking for the mulm from any place wanting my
business, but few newbies would know of either the mulm, the plants,
or the fishless cycling.

And the water changes are soon forgotten, but hopefully after the tank
is doing well. Much like the fishless cycling which will not stop the
overfeeding etc. But water change habits are the best long term
solution to long term fish health, not fishless cycling. But I'll
concede some use if they cannot seem to bring themselves to water
changes.... but get some concern for the fish's environment through
testings with NH4, NO2 and NO3 test kits.

As an aside, another minor bit of information (since someone mentioned
something about adding huge amounts of ammonia somewhere along this
thread) is that you don't have to add tons of ammonia for
plantless/fishless cycling. All you have to do is make sure that you
constantly have _measureable amounts_ while cycling. Having 5ppm vs
.5 ppm won't make the bacteria grow any faster. So that's not a
problem.

Very good point that has not been brought up. I've seen (many) abuses
there.

I think this gets down to the build up of waste in a new(or an old)
tank, the water change is far more effective for a newbie than the
fishless cycling and prevents issues down the road as well.

So I guess if they won't listen the first few tidbits of advice(water
changes, don't over stock etc) suddenly they will listen to this and
start testing?
That's not much of an argument either.

Still unconvinced here it has a place in general.

Predicting a newbie will accept a 3 week empty tank and testing etc vs
a water change each week seems like a tough sell to me. Some might not
find mulm, but folks have the ability to not over stock and take other
useful advice as well.
The urge to add fish is very high and most newbies cannot deal with
the wait, hence the mulm and/or water changes advice that I proscribe.

Since this has sort of become a newbie issue:
Having worked in LFS's in the distant past, I gave the same advice
then as I do today. Folks that did not do the water changes were the
one's bringing back the dead fish(along with a water sample or no
refund). Very few got refunds.
Sal****er folks tended to be worse, they hated water changes and
mixing the sal****er up. Even if FC was around then, these folks would
still kill the fish with high NO3's. Their tanks had cycled, but still
killed fish.

Regards,
Tom Barr

See ya,

Kristen