cycling my tank?

[bobrob]

*celebrate *crazysmil *laughingc

ok so ive pretty much got the gist of tank cycling but could someone give me the dumbass explination for cycling a tank cause ive looked 4 one and all i get is these ones talking about u gotta put this and that in and could u also tell me what fish is good for cycling a tank and how many 2 use

 

[stargurl]

You can start with hardy fish, but I recommend a non-living source of ammonia to start the cycle. This is referred to as a fishless cycle. You can put in some household ammonia (PURE ammonia), some fish food, or a piece of meat or something, even.

In a cycled tank, ammonia turns into nitrites which turn into nitrates. Ammonia and nitrite should be ZERO in a cycled tank, some nitrates will almost always be detected. Fish excrete ammonia, obviously, and you need the right kinds of bacteria living in your tank in order to be able to break it down. Ammonia and nitrites are toxic to fish at very low levels.

There's a great, more detailed breakdown here http://faq.thekrib.com/begin-cycling.html

 

[fishboy]

Fishless cyling all the way

Well have you thought of fishless cycling?

Personally i like to fishless than fish cycle because of some of the perks like:

1) You can add all your fish at once instead of having to slowly add them.

2) It is usually faster than fish cycling.

3) You dont harm any fish unlike if you were fish cycling.

4) It is easier than cycling with fish because you dont have to do water changes if the Ammonia levels get to high... you would have to do water changes to keep your fish in the tank alive if you would go fish cycling.


What you would need for a fishless or fish cycle would be test kits for Ammonia, nitrIte, and nitrAte. Also for a fishless cycle you would need just a bottle of clear ammonia that has no additives.

The only perk of fish cycling would be:
1) That you would have fish automatically....
That is the only thing i can think of.


Well, anyway if you are still stuck on having a fish cycle a good fish to start out with would be white cloud mountain minnows... They are hardy, peaceful, and cheap. But i still strongly recommend fishless cycling...


What hapens like stargurl said is that ammonia is changed to nitrite then nitrite to nitrate....
Ammonia and Nitrite should be zero, the nitrate should be below 20 ppm.

Here is another great link for fishless cycling:

http://www.myfishtank.net/articles/fishlesscycle.php


Good luck,

Daniel

 

[bobrob]

thank you i think il go fishless cycle but were could i get pure ammonia the only place i could think of would be in my science classroom in school swipe some there how much of it would i need

 

[stargurl]

Pure ammonia is available in the cleaning supplies section of grocery stores/walmart sometimes.. except you need to be very careful that it doesn't have any added detergents. If you shake it and it foams - it's not pure ammonia.

I'm glad you want to go fishless

Here are some links:
http://www.tomgriffin.com/aquamag/cycle2.html
http://www.mindspring.com/~reed/fishless.html
http://www.angelfire.com/or2/cichlid102/Tank_chemistry/cycling.htm

There was a rather lengthy discussion on usenet recently about fishless cycling.. you can read the thread at these two links:
http://groups.google.ca/groups?hl=e...3893e0.0207251448.24af5462@posting.google.com
http://groups.google.ca/groups?hl=e...eadm=vJQ09.15$672.20837@news20.bellglobal.com