" wrote in message
om...
No.
If you are one of those folks that overstocks and over feeds and
does
not do water changes, well, no method/advice is going to save those
fish. But if you follow general good healthy tank guidelines, the
fishless cycling is of no use unless you hav no friends with fish
anywhere close by, no LFS's close by, no other tanks around, no
plants
etc.

This hasn't been my experience, I'm afraid. Mulm speeds cycling,
for sure, and
I use it, but it doesn't eliminate ammonia and nitrite spikes if
you're
stocking the tank fully all at once. And as I said, there are
instances where
stocking, even overstocking, all at once is necessary. African
tanks are often
overstocked, all at once, to minimize aggression and to keep any one
fish from
getting a "home tank advantage."

You have not convinced me there is a place for it yet, the isolated
aquarist is the best hope I've seen thus far.

Having bred AF cichlids from both lakes for many years(15) before
coming to fully planted tanks and also by stating not overstocking
from the start I still disagree.

Small juvenile fish should be purchased if adding all the fish at once
is the goal to prevent home town advantage. Adults have different
behaviors than sub adult fish.

I did the same thing back then as I do now. I never had issues with
water quality. I simply did water changes like I do today.
Small juvenile fish cost less, often are 1 to 1.5" long and perfect
for starting a tank with or for breeding later on. When you add
adults, well you are asking for it and fish behavior is unique to each
fish, it's difficult to say what will happen even with a broad
generalization. Often you have to have other tanks waiting in case of
problems with territorialism as rule o have dead/battered fish/LFS
donations etc.

Sure you can come up with some weird situation to make an exception
for fishless cycling but hell, 99.5% of the cases are still where I've
stated. There's no need unless you plan to over stock all at once
which is bad practice and something I'd not advise anyone to do.

And here's a lynch pin even if you don't know a hoot about AF fish.

If you know you are going to overstock/fully stock etc in
advance(you'd __have to know this__ 3 weeks in advance to use this
method), why not run your filter on another tank a few weeks first,
then slap it on the new tank when you add the fish?
Takes the same time, far less hassle and no left over NO3 requiring a
series of water changes to lower..........also I/we know how
inaccurate the NO3 test kits are. Amano uses this method. So do the
LFS's.

Regards,
Tom Barr

I recall a short few years ago, fishless cycling was all the popular
rage. Anyone suggesting cycling with fish was usually flamed until
medium done. Here in 2003 I still read about fishless cycling, but its
more rare... It seems I read a lot more about adding plants these days
as a cycle solution. To me its interesting advice as I really do not
really see how that's going to cycle anything... Using someone else's
used media, fish poop, plants, etc.... will probably speed up the
process of adding in all sorts of things that are usually not
wanted.....like parasites, snails, pathogens, etc.... I guess you get a
lot of bad things also just adding in the desired fish.

I still wonder the best method for getting a new tank cycled as any
method has good and bad points, including doing nothing. Lucky me for
having more than one tank already. I wonder what will be popular in
2006..?

PS. I loved the reference to Amano and what he would do. I recently
read somewhere he uses Activated Carbon for the first week or so for
Ammonia removal.....which I thought was amazing, too...