Ok so I have been doing this hobby for quite some years now and have always followed the normal fishless cycling procedure but I wanted to set-up a new FW tank and wanted this one to go a little bit quicker. After looking for more than a few hours, from what I gather if you have a planted tank you don't need to cycle???? Is this true or just partially true? I've had planted tanks before but of course I added the plants after I cycled the tank when I added fish?
Wait do what?
- Thread starter ViperCLKGTR
- Start date
ViperCLKGTR;3921101; said:
This CAN be true but it dosent nessicaraly mean that it is, for one you have to have a good ammount of plants. The faster growing the plant is the better this will work, hornwart is an all around legal plant that fits the bill. Heavy root feeders like swords draw most their nutrients from the soil and not the water itself, so they wont use up a ton of nutrients. Free floating plants that grow super slow like anubis and pretty much java anything grow too slow to really work well unless you have a very small bio load to balance out.To much waste and not enough plants growing fast enough and your gonna have a problem. So yes it can be done but it must be done with caution, I suggest get your plants growing and established and then slowly introduce fish to the tank if this is the route you want to take.
There are a lot of variables involved, but assuming you have plants capable of handling the bioload it can actually be better for your planted tank to not cycle first. If you do a full cycle then over the course of weeks you have nitrifying bacteria build up that are capable of handling your bioload. As soon as you add plants that bacteria is competing with the plants for ammonia (which in general both prefer). It means your plants have to work harder (in general they have to convert nitrates to ammonium to be able to use it). If the plants are there right from the start then you wont have as much nitrifying bacteria build up (that you wont need).