Welcome to the forum! I am sure that you will learn much more than you already have. It sounds like you are on the right track. Keep up the good work and keep us posted.
New Aquarium, Looking to do it right.
- Thread starter bucyouup68
- Start date
I've always used feeders to cycle all my tanks in the past. It really depends upon your relationship with your suppliers, I wouldn't buy feeders from any random LFS or petco or anything. Or, you could cycle it with a bunch of small tetras. If you're planning on getting oscars and red devils, they'll just eat the tetras when you add them to the tank.
The trick is to let your tank sit for at least a week with the cycle fish in it before you test. A lot of people will do tests, they'll show that the parameters are good, and then add fish and they die. This is because they haven't had a bacteria spike yet. Sometimes your water will even get cloudy, this is normal, just means that there is too much bacteria in the water and the extra will die off eventually and the water will clear up. Add your "good" fish AFTER this happens, not during.
If all else fails, you can buy a bottle of bacteria from most LFS. It'll have "cycle" in the name somewhere most likely, this is used to speed the process up. However, I find it's better just to have a little patience and wait until it's completely cycled correctly before adding fish. Stuff like oscars live for many years, so a few weeks isn't much compared to how long you'll have the fish if you keep it healthy.
Sorry for the long post, but that link to cycling info just didn't look interesting and I didn't read it at all, haha. Hope this helps!
The trick is to let your tank sit for at least a week with the cycle fish in it before you test. A lot of people will do tests, they'll show that the parameters are good, and then add fish and they die. This is because they haven't had a bacteria spike yet. Sometimes your water will even get cloudy, this is normal, just means that there is too much bacteria in the water and the extra will die off eventually and the water will clear up. Add your "good" fish AFTER this happens, not during.
If all else fails, you can buy a bottle of bacteria from most LFS. It'll have "cycle" in the name somewhere most likely, this is used to speed the process up. However, I find it's better just to have a little patience and wait until it's completely cycled correctly before adding fish. Stuff like oscars live for many years, so a few weeks isn't much compared to how long you'll have the fish if you keep it healthy.
Sorry for the long post, but that link to cycling info just didn't look interesting and I didn't read it at all, haha. Hope this helps!
Thanks for all the tips, I will definatly do the Fish Cycle with tetras. I will post the outcome to this. Thanks, and still learning
welcome to the forums. If you can handle a bunch of know-it-alls duking it out over how to cycle a tank in your thread, you are on your way to a lots of interesting times here at MFK.
I have used Bio-Spira with a few small, tough tetras like bloodfins and it worked very well to quickly cycle the tank. It isn't real cheap, however.
bucyouup68, May I ask why you have decided to cycle your tank with fish, risking permanant damage to them? Especially when you could have a tank totally cycled & fully stocked in 10 days, using the fishless method?
