On Jan 23, 6:33*pm, Marco Schwarz wrote:
Hi U2..

NetMax wrote:
On Jan 19, 10:25*am, Gill Passman
wrote:

@ Gill:

Your tank won't continue cycling if there is nothing in there to produce
waste.

ACK..

You could possibly continue cycling the tank without fish using a
procedure known as "fishless cycling" - this is where you add small
amounts of ammonia to the tank and continue testing as if there are fish
in there - once you reach zero nitrites and ammonia your tank will be
cycled

Yes and no..! Fishless cycling is (of course!) fishless cycling but it's not
automatically a cycling with ammonia..

- never tried it myself but there are a lot of people who swear
by this technique as it doesn't involve any stress to fish.

Yes and no..

A good place to ask any of your questions is:-
http://groups.google.com/group/The-F...m?lnk=li&hl=en

ACK..

@ NM:

Hi Gill, the most recent articles on fishless cycling describe it
exactly as you're saying; replenishing the ammonia periodically
(daily). *I think this does result in a larger bacterial culture,

Well this kind of method might support bacterial cultures that prefer
_anorganic_ *N ressources while denitrifying bacteria generally seem to
prefer organic waste..

but
note that there is also a school of thought that levels of ammonia
which are too high can inhibit the bacteria which complete the process
taking the nitrite to nitrate (ref: never-ending cycle).

Hmm.., don't think so - any links available..?

--
cu
Marco

Hi Marco,
In regards to the different bacteria, agreed, however my understanding
is that unlike the aerobic nitrifying bacteria like nitrospira,
nitrobacter and nitrosomonas which reproduce every 16-18 hours, most
other bacteria follow a more typical reproduction cycle of about 20
minutes, so their establishment is less of a concern in a new
aquarium.

In regards to growth inhibition of specific bacteria under high
ammonia levels (producing a never-ending nitrite spike), I can't say
that I'm an advocate of that idea, but the discusssions have come up
in RAFM, AA and now TFA on the topic. I think Frank was more vocal
pulling out references (if you wanted to search on the subject by
author), and like myself, thinking that there's really nothing wrong
with the old method of using a single ammonia load, provided it's not
taken to an extreme. If you search on fishless cycling, you come up
with many references to the original and revised recipe, but it's hard
to separate science from anecdotes, so I'll only point you to one site
which I've always found very credible.

http://www.skepticalaquarist.com/doc...fishless.shtml

In regards to *what* ammonia, Badman's site has a 3rd recipe developed
with a chemist which states:
snip Use ammonium chloride, not ammonium hydroxide. Ammonia
hydroxide will bring your pH too low and cause you to lose alkalinity
and likewise your bacteria population. NH4Cl is available from pretty
much every chemical company at a reasonable price.snip
If you can't find ammonium chloride, then this is something to watch
for as low pH will cause bacteria to go dormant. The rest of the
article is here.

http://badmanstropicalfish.com/articles/article14.html
Badmantropicalfish doesn't have the same scientific depth as
skepticalaquarist (imo), but has been around long enough to be a good
read.

hth
NetMax