Fishless Cyling

CruelSun

I guess this is a bit of a silly question...

If I set up a new system, plant it, and seed it with water from seasoned tropical aquariums (preferably dirty water with lots of nitrate buildup), Should I be able to avoid the long wait for a new cycle to start?

CruelSun

earthbound

Pretty much, if you add enough "seed" to the system, it certainly speeds up the whole process.

CruelSun

Thanks for the quick reply,

Once the new system is filled and run for a few days to off gas the chlorine I can add a bunch of aquarium water and even rinse out a few aquarium filter elements in it. That's how I usually seed a new indoor aquarium.

tradewind

trout wrote:

jacjap wrote:

So it would be best to do #2 then: power feed or charlie carp (from nursery which I can get) plus seasol for trace elements?

Hi Jacjap

Whichever method you choose is up to you, both will work.
I used urea (very high doses) only as an experiment. When I first started I bought a DVD
which clearly stated that using too much urea will lead to a system in crisis.

I thought this was clearly wrong, so I used 100 teaspoonfuls in 2500 litre system, it worked.

Personally, if I was to do it again, I would use urea (not as much) plus a cup of seasol and walk
away. test it weekly, when cycled add the fish.
ps: the plants go in on day 1.

But, whatever you do it'll work, it's really simple.

Just for your info , these are the results of my cycling.

Quote:

My system consists of
fish tank 1500 litres
sump tank 800 litres
grow beds 3x 600 litres.

I dosed the system initially at 40 teaspoons of urea per 1000 lit of system

day 1 was July 15 2010 water temp for the test 9+/- 3 C.

day 4 ammonia 0.5
day 13 ammonia 4 . . nitrite 0.1
day 16 ammonia 8 . . nitrate 0.5
day 22 ammonia 8 . . nitrite 5 . . nitrate 5
day 30 ammonia 8 . . nitrite 5 . . nitrate 80
day 42 ammonia 0 . . nitrite 0.25 . . nitrate 40

cheers Lou

Bingo! I an certainly glad I did a little searching before I posted. I have been working on getting my system to cycle (fishless) and went from off the chart Ammonia to to about 1 or 2 now with nitrites about 2 and nitrates about 40. The changes over the last 10 days have been very gradual and all have dropped in that period. Before all I had as ammonia and then one day up popped nitrates at 80. Your time schedule did a lot to help me understand what to expect and it appears I am right on schedule or perhaps a bit ahead of it. I am now at day 19 from the initial dose of ammonia.

Thanks for the explanation,

Tradewind :wave:

Ice222

I couldn't get my hands on pure ammonia either, but I did manage to get some ammonium nitrate, and did a fishless cycle with that. Dosed my tanks to about 4ppm, kept testing every day till I got a drop in ammonia, and a rise in NitrItes. I kept adding a couple of pellets of ammonium nitrate each day (as though I was feeding the tank) until both ammonia and NitrItes were steadily at 0 for several days and NitrAtes rising slowly. All in all it took less than 2 weeks.

One thing to note though, is that I was doing a fishless cycle with 2 identical tanks at the same time. Both had sponge filters, one had gravel, one did not, and the one without gravel simply would not cycle. Once I added a small bag of filter media to the tank, it cycled just as quickly as the first.

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Fishless Cyling

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