Fishless Cycling Bad for Plants?

[thetunnelfades]

I was curious is anyone know is fishless cycling is bad for plants. I absolutley swear by it. The last take I fishless cycled in had one Anubias Nana and a Crypt. They did fine and my tank cycled in a week and 2 days! Anyways I will be getting different plants for my next tank. Is it okay for some plants and not others?

[wellbiz]

Fishless cycling IMO will not hurt plants, but as you will read here with a heavily planted tank, cycling is not even considered as the plants use the ammonia and nitrites as fast as the fish(or what ever your ammonia source is) can produce them, not to mention all those plants will have a huge surface area of benifitial bacteria....


Jason

[anonapersona]

The concern is that the plants might have enough algae on them to get a big algae problem going due to the quick availablity of the ammonia to the algae.

It is almost a waste of time to try to do the ammonia thing when you have plants.

[wellbiz]

anonapersona,

You are correct, I have heard of people adding ammonia and then plants and getting green water... :x

jason

[aquaverde]

One of the gurus in the hobby, Tom Barr, seems convinced that ammonia is responsible for initializing green water outbreaks in a tank. Instead of the fishless cycle, the so-called silent cycle is recommended for planted tanks. Read about it on Chuck Gadd's site:

http://www.csd.net/~cgadd/aqua/art_plant_newtank.htm

James

[thetunnelfades]

I read the article from the link that AquaVerde posted. I really like the idea but I am a little confused now. I will be quarantening my fish for the 55g but I need to be able to seed all my filters. One filter is going to be moved to quarantine. Can I still add some nitrifying bacteria to the big tank? If I were to add the bacteria and the fish at the same type would that work just as well? That way I could seed my filters, and not have to worry about the fish being exposed to the harmful ammonia and nitrites? How did everyone else "cycle" or "do" their planted tanks? Thanks for the replies so far!

[m.lemay]

Heres how I do it. I just did another 10 gal this week. The only tank I've owned that went thru a cycle was the first one 5 years ago. Every other tank has been seeded from that one. Easy :!:

From an already established tank, at least 4-5 months old, take some plants and filter media or plants only and put them in the new tank. Plants work the best. The more plants from an established tank ,the better. The plants serve 2 purposes:
1)they use fish waste to grow.
2)they're loaded with beneficial bacteria.

If you don't have plants from an established tank, filter media from an existing tank or the whole filter will work.

By now you should be getting the idea. "Dirty" bacteria laden material from an existing tank plus plants and you got the makings of an old tank....almost. Keep your stocking levels low at first and gradually add fish over the next couple weeks and monitor ammonia as a precaution. If you follow these suggestions your tank probably won't see any ammonia and it'll be cycled almost instantly.


Marcel

[Rex Grigg]

Or just use Bio-Spira. It works quite well.

[docone]

I agree Bio-Spira works very well! I used it in my tank.