Cycling ? Thought I knew it all . . .

When I was on city water, I ran tap water straight into the tank for w/c and add dechlorinator as I'm filling. This was at 50% wc. Never an issue. I know a lot of people who do the same thing and have never had a problem.

I have never aged my water. When I was in a city with chloramines, I added 1/2 the conditioner half way through filling and the rest close to full. Now that I am on straight chlorine I don't use anything with a small, 10-20% WC. If I am doing a normal 50%+ I add it when done. I am planning on doing drip this summer and not worrying about it any more.

master.k. said:

Cycling ?

I was told today that using tap watter will kill all the "GOOD" Bacteria in my filters/tank .

Example : I do 50% watter changes every week with out adding watter conditioner before I add the tap/city watter to my system .

Question : Will my tank -180gallons- with a FX-5 filter And 2 HOB Emperor 400's ever properly cycle using my current methods ?

Note : My nitrates run on the high side ammonia not a problem .

I was instructed to : Do only 30% watterchange per week , Pre mix and Use watter conditioners before adding tap watter and my tank and it will cycle rite out .

Note : Tank has been running for 6 months and is stocked on the heavy side with Africans and has heavy filtration .

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If you have no ammonia and (high) nitrates you are cycled. I am actually not 100% sure what you are asking but "cycled" just means adequate populations of bacteria to convert ammonia to nitrite and nitrite to nitrate. Chlorine, for sure, kills bacteria (good and bad), as does chloramine. In a nutshell that is the job of these chemicals. Conditioner neutralizes these chemicals but that doesn't mean that not treating the new water will necessarily decimate your bacterial population. Especially with good biological media, like Matrix, plenty of bacteria can survive a non-conditioned water change, and they re-populate quickly.

That said, I often do greater-than-50% water changes. I use Prime, and I add it before or during the addition of new water. I never worry about adding new water if I am just topping up (e.g., if I have taken out a small amount of water to remove some uneaten food or whatever, or just topping up evaporation).

My view is the more water you change, the better, so long as you keep up with it. 30% weekly is not enough in my opinion for even a moderately stocked tank.

xraycer said:

When I was on city water, I ran tap water straight into the tank for w/c and add dechlorinator as I'm filling. This was at 50% wc. Never an issue. I know a lot of people who do the same thing and have never had a problem.

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I am one of those people.

In my pretty well stocked 70 i do 30-40% wcs every couple days and runa huge pothos bush, my nitrates never go over 10ppms. Africans are tough but more WCs would help growth at least. I pre-treat the water w/ prime before using a gallon pitcher to get it in my tank out of a cooler, ive never done different, but ive never had an issue after a WC.. i was told thats the safest way and im too sketched out about a chlorine spike (they used more at the treatment plant for some reason) effecting things to not pre treat

As others said, if your reading nitrates, no nitrites or ammonia then your good. You may just want to increase your WCs or add pothos to keep your nitrate level lower

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You should be using a water conditioner that removes chlorine or chola mines if you have them. When you say your parameters aren't spot on, what do you mean?