Inroducing the fishless cycling....

[Esfa]

Wahey

I havnt seen one post on here about fishless cycling. Cycling is when you le your filter grow the bacteria which will turn ammonia (a poisonous gas) in the water into nitrItes, and then to nitrAtes. Cycling with fish WILL damage them, probably kill them. The gasses burn them, and stop their gills from working.

So what do we do?

We give the bacteria food, so make it grow!

Items Needed:

Bottle of pure ammonia. Pure ammonia will only list ammonia and water as ingredients. If the label lists dyes, fragrances or surfactants, you don't want it. Chelating agents are ok. If the bottle doesn't have an ingredient label, shake the bottle. If it foams, it won't work. A few air bubbles that disappear immediately are ok.
A good test master test kit. Get a good liquid master test kit. Those generally contain tests for ammonia, nitrite, nitrate, pH and high pH. You won't necessarily need the pH tests during the cycling process but you will later. I would also suggest getting a KH test kit too although, once again, it's not necessary for the cycling process.
A medicine dropper. Any cheap one that you get at the local drug store will do.
An air pump. Self explanitary.

First you set up the tank with clean, dechlorinated water. I believe it is best to fill the tank and let any sand/gravel dust or cloudiness settle for a few days before you add ammonia. This will prevent cloudy water from giving you a skewed reading when you test. Second, raise the water temperature to the mid to upper 80s. The warmer water promotes bacteria growth and will speed the cycle. Also, you will need to add extra aeration via the air stone and air pump. The warmer water temperature will force the oxygen from the water so you must add aeration to replenish it.

While you are waiting on the dust to settle and the water to clear, I suggest you do a couple things. First, test the parameters of your tap water. It is important to know the pH and KH of your tap water so you will know what fish are compatible with your pH. It is also very important to know if there is any ammonia, nitrite and nitrate in your tap water. A lot of municipal water supplies have some or all of those present and well water could also have them present. Knowing that could save you a lot of head scratching later when you have an elevated level that may be caused by your tap water rather than a problem in the tank.

You should also run a little test to determine how much ammonia to add to your tank. Since medicine droppers come in all different sizes, it's hard to say that you need X drops per gallon to get to 5 or 6 ppm to start. Take a small bucket, one of the buckets you used to fill your tank or wash your sand. Fill it with water and then add 2 to 4 drops of ammonia per 5 gallon of water. Swirl it around to mix it and test it to see what the ammonia reading is. Continue to do this until your reading is 5 to 6 ppm. Remember how many drops of ammonia you added and then, some simple maths will tell you how much to add to your tank to get the 5 to 6 ppm required to begin cycling.

Ok. Your tank is set up, the water has cleared, and you know how much ammonia to add. Let's get started.

First add your ammonia to raise the level to 5 to 6 ppm. Now you simply wait on the ammonia to drop back to around 1 ppm. Spend the time researching the fish you like and see if they are compatible with each other, with your tap pH, tank size, etc.

Test daily to see what the ammonia reading is. There is no use to test for anything else. Nitrite and nitrate won't be present until some ammonia has processed. Ammonia will raise your pH so no use to test it either. Once you see a drop in the ammonia, test for nitrite. There should be some present. When the ammonia drops back to about near zero (usually takes about a week), add enough to raise it back to about 3 to 4 ppm and begin testing the nitrite daily.

Every time the ammonia drops back to zero, raise it back up to 3 to 4 ppm and continue to check nitrites. The nitrite reading will go off the chart. (NOTE FOR API TEST KIT USERS: When you add the drops, if they immediately turn purple in the bottom of the tube, your nitrites are off the chart high. You do not need to shake the tube and wait 5 minutes. If you do, the color will turn green as the nitrites are so high that there isn't a color to measure them with.) Once the ammonia is dropping from around 4 ppm back to zero in 12 hours or less you have sufficient bacteria to handle the ammonia your fish load produces. Continue to add ammonia daily as you must feed the bacteria that have formed or they will begin to die off.

The nitrite spike will generally take about twice as long to drop to zero as did the ammonia spike. The reason for this is two-fold. First, the nitrite processing bacteria just develop slower than those that process ammonia. Second, you are adding more nitrite daily (every time you add ammonia, it is transformed into nitrite raising the level a little more) as opposed to the ammonia, which you only add once at the start and then waited on it to drop to zero. During this time, you should occasionally test for nitrate too. The presence of nitrate means that nitrite is being processed, completing the nitrogen cycle. The nitrate level will also go off the chart but you will take care of that with a large water change later. It will seem like forever before the nitrite finally falls back to zero but eventually, almost overnight, it will drop and you can celebrate. You are almost there. Once the bacteria are able to process 4 or 5 ppm of ammonia back to zero ammonia and nitrite in about 10 to 12 hours, you are officially cycled.

At this point, your tank will probably look terrible with brown algae everywhere and probably cloudy water. As I mentioned, the nitrate reading will also be off the chart. Nitrates can only be removed with water changes. Do a large water change, 75 to 90 percent, turn the heat down to the level the fish you have decided on will need, and you are ready to add your fish. You can safely add your full fish load as your tank will have enough bacteria built up to handle any waste they can produce.

That's it! Now you can go buy all your suitable fish, put them all in at once, and your tank is complete!

Note: If you want a planted tank, add the plants before the fishless-cycle. They feed off the ammonia and therefore speed up the cycle!

[HABU]

just run the pristine tank as intended but innoculate it with bacteria either from an old, established filter or from store bought bacteria in stasis, then feed the bacteria with fish flakes to truly represent the organic compounds that will be present in real conditions. ammonia is but one by product of fish metabloism(sp). ammonia is not very toxic at neutral, or low Ph. it gets highly toxic at higher Ph's as it turns into a different form of ammonia....and is generally introduced through respiration and urea from the fish, this doesn't address the more complex compounds introduced by solid waste, death, plant decomposition. sulfur based compounds and others are a huge factor......one that if beneficial bacteria are not established beforehand, will be out competed by nasty bacteria that thrive in anaerobic conditions and will harm the fish by promoting conditions in which they thrive by out-competeing the good ones.


i've always stated that with closed systems such as aquariums, you are not raising fish but rather, bacteria...the type of bacteria you raise makes all the difference.....bacteria tend to be very specialized in what they nourish themselves with....and generally thrive as a team with different species breaking down more complex compounds into simpler ones than in turn.......it's too complicated to fully describe here....ammonia isn't the big problem with neutral Ph's and base Ph's ....in tanks with higher Ph's such as rift valleys and marine tanks...you must have a zero level of ammoina as it will be molecular ammoinia not ammonium....with a typical freshwater, tropical tank, the nitrite spike that will surely follow the fast breakdown of ammonia will be the killer. one must have a complete baterial food chain in order to have a balanced tank, otherwise uglies will rise up in the condusive conditions.......


sorry if this sounds not very well written but i just started typing off of the top of my head.......i used to pollute my tanks back in the day before we had static bacteria in the shops...... you need all of the bacterial flora present otherwise the balance will tilt anf new tank syndrome will happen despite the best intentions.........i always used fish flacks to feed my bacteria as they most closely replicated real compounds that will occur in a proper tank



.........then again, i may be just full of it.......

[Esfa]

I have never seen mature media for sale in lfs! And, unless you have an already cycled tank, there is very little chance that you are going to have any mature media handy.

Ammonia above 0.25ppm is actually dangerous, any higher then that and there is a chance of the fish dying, no matter what the pH is.

If you cycle the tank this way, there will be no "boom".

Of course, one you have the bacteria established, you need to carry on feeding it daily, your fish will do this.

NEVER clean your filter out with chlorinated water - byebye bacteria.

Just some tips.

But yeah, you can always use mature media, or cycle with fish. But cycling with fish WILL damage the fish.

[Stoke Lad]

I was thinking of getting a fairly large tank, so it would be hard to put all the fish in at once, so if i build it steadily with fish wont most of the bacterium die?

[mike515]

nah, you get the first lot and the filter reacts to that. then you add more slowly allowing the bacteria time to catch up before the toxins get to dangerous levels. It's a delicate balance between time for the bacteria to build up and time for the toxins to build up, but if you do it slow then it works pretty good

[Esfa]

Yeah. When the bacteria is established, it can double over night, I believe.

[Graylord]

Ammonia above 0.25ppm is actually dangerous, any higher then that and there is a chance of the fish dying, no matter what the pH is.

This isn`t true at all at a pH of 6.8 0r lower there will be no free ammonia only ammonium which even delicate fish can cope with.

Plus your statement of poisonous gasses is erroneous ,they are compounds not as you state.

However all in all a good stab at a tricky subject if a bit error strewn.

[Esfa]

Originally Posted by darwengray

Ammonia above 0.25ppm is actually dangerous, any higher then that and there is a chance of the fish dying, no matter what the pH is.

This isn`t true at all at a pH of 6.8 0r lower there will be no free ammonia only ammonium which even delicate fish can cope with.

Plus your statement of poisonous gasses is erroneous ,they are compounds not as you state.

However all in all a good stab at a tricky subject if a bit error strewn.

That isn't true at all. Ammonia and ammonium are always in equilibrium. There is always some of each species present. The amount of each species is dependent on pH, but a pH of 7 is not some magic point where all the ammonia flips over to ammonium. That is a misapplication of the neutral point on the pH scale.

But thanks for the compliment!

[Onlinebug]

rip from tff

[snooks1!]

Good to see some-one is trying to spread the work of Fishless cycling.

Nice to see some-one spreading the good work .