Cycling : how did you do it?

tomuhs

tomuhs

New Member
Hi Guys,

Just wondering what you guys did in order to cycle your tank.

As I don't really agree with cycling the tank with "sacrificial" fish, i'll be going the fishless route.

What methods of cycling did you guys use and how long did it take?

I'm thinking of adding pure ammonia or I'm debating whether I should just throw in some shrimp. Also picked up some soaked bacteria induced media; it wasn't refrigerated so i'm wondering whether if this is just a scam to pay more.

In your experiences, what has proven to be more effective?

Thanks for all your input!
 
I always go fishless using pure ammonia. Works great and you can fully stock once you are done. You can use some old media to speed things up. I usually get a big sponge squeezing from my LFS to get things going. It probably takes me 3 - 4 weeks for a complete fishless cycle.

I've never used soaked bacteria induced media before so I can't comment on it but I would bother with it.

Ron
 
Shrimp will smell when it starts to break down, if you have access to pure ammonia there is no need to do anything else. I used stability and old media and cycled my 180 in about a week n a bit.

Benefit with ammonia is that you can get your ppm to a higher level then with shrimp, without having the awful fish smell taking over.
 
Thanks a lot! Ya i was kinda leaning away from the shrimp since I'm worried it might breed diseases as well?

Can't seem to find any pure ammonia in this city...lol

Any ideas?
 
I use my filter sponges and biomax packages from my canister filters when I clean my filter. You could also just empty 25% of the water out of your main tank into your new tank and fill the rest with new water if your running multiple tanks.
 
I know how you feel about the pure ammonia, as I looked forever to find something that only listed it and read a lot online about how you can shake the bottle and there shouldn't be any bubbles if it is pure... but even water bubbles for a bit...

Best bet is a janitorial store as opposed to safeway thrifty's store. You don't need a lot at all, and it is cheap so I would check stores that are just made for cleaning supplies if possible.

If not, one guy had told me to just pee in my tank... he said fish pee human pee alt he same... but I don't want to think about what chemicals are in there after a mcdonalds meal so I passed.

You cal always buy a cheap bag of tropical flake food as well as it will break down a lot faster with less smell.
 
How about using Seachem stability? Seems to be a relatively quick way to have a brand new tank cycled in 8 days.
 
Hey Aro51,

So I ended going with the fishy cycle due to not being able to find any ammonia.
I know this sounds like I didn't do much looking but believe me I did. Called a couple janitorial stores as well as walmart but I couldn't seem to find anything. Seeing as my fish will probably be coming in at the end of the month, I wanted to get things started asap.

Anyways, I went to fish store and picked up some Prime, and Stability (as per the recommendation above) and some tiger barbs. So far I'm going through some spikes in Ammonia and I'm waiting for the nitrites to start showing but i've been keeping up with daily water changes. Feel so bad putting my fish through this...

Let me know if you have any success finding an ammonia source.

Cheers
 
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is it a 2nd or 3rd tank? if so its real easy. No chemicals or anything, just squeeze a sponge filter into the tank and have an established sponge in there from another tank. DONE!
 
Bacteria in a bottle, for freshwater tanks is garbage. Its the wrong type of bacteria.

Doing a live fish cycle is also a bad idea. You run the risk of adding parasites or other pathogens to the tank.. plus you waste money on fish, that you end up killing, or damaging permanently. Plus, you'll nbever create enough ammonia anyways.

Adding food, takes too long, and doesn't create enough ammonia.

Adding media from another tank can be useful, and is the fastest way to cycle a tank, but you run the risk of cross contamination.

fishless cycle is the safest way... Adding pure ammonia. It is very easy to find. You'll find it at any hardware store, or grocery store.
You can specifically control the PPM levels in the tank, and prepare your tank for a real worl situation when you add in the fish.
 
Unfortunately this is my only tank as I've had to sell my 120 a few years back when moving.

Good news though, Nitrites have started to show up and ammonia has cleared away.
Now, only need to a wait a few more weeks and hopefully the nitrites go away as well.

Woot
 
Good job, it is always nice to see the nitrites going down as you know you are doing something right.

I am in the same boat as you as I looked for a while to find something that said Pure Ammonia, but didn't find it. Then I did more reading and heard about the chemicals that might be added and to do the shake test to see if bubbles stayed around etc etc and just didn't have 100% faith that I did get ammonia without anything else in it.
 
tomuhs said:
Hey Aro51,

So I ended going with the fishy cycle due to not being able to find any ammonia.
I know this sounds like I didn't do much looking but believe me I did. Called a couple janitorial stores as well as walmart but I couldn't seem to find anything. Seeing as my fish will probably be coming in at the end of the month, I wanted to get things started asap.

Anyways, I went to fish store and picked up some Prime, and Stability (as per the recommendation above) and some tiger barbs. So far I'm going through some spikes in Ammonia and I'm waiting for the nitrites to start showing but i've been keeping up with daily water changes. Feel so bad putting my fish through this...

Let me know if you have any success finding an ammonia source.

Cheers
Click to expand...

Safeway has their own brand of ammonia, if the only ingredients are water and ammonium hydroxide you are good to go. The ammonia solutions with surfactants in the ingredients are the ones to avoid.
 
Thanks everyone for your input. Special shout out to Glamis who actually helped me out by getting me some of his filter squeezings...safe to say that sped things up exponentially.

Thanks Aron00b for the tips, i'll be going fishless next time for sure now that I know i can get some ammonia safeway.
 
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