Tank Cycling

[Ryan NY]

I have a 10 gallon freshwater and put the stuff called Cycle in it. how long until i can put fish in it and it is fully cycled? does anyone have an idea how long it takes to work?

 

[MissFishy]

Your tank will not cycle unless you actually go through the cycling process. The product called "cycle" is nothing but a waste of money. Please check out the link in my signature for information on how to cycle a tank quickly without getting ripped off. There is one product that will actually "cycle" a tank, but it can be tricky to use. It's discussed in the signature link.

 

[forrestcook]

im pretty sure the product miss fishy is talking about is bio spira. the reason it's tricky, is that a lot of times either the store doesnt refrigerate it or if they do te fridge is accessible to the public who imght leave it on a shelf somewhere when they decide not to buy it.... it's basically a live bacteria culture in a bag. I just cycled my tank with it successfully (though I hear I might be in the minority)

I had a short period where my ammonia levels were 0.25ppm and my nitrItes were at about 1ppm, but frequent water changes kept lowered those levels and kept the stress down on the fish. Now I have something like a two week old tank that is fully stocked, planted and cycled... my readings as of last night were:

0 ammonia, 0 nitrIte, 5ppm nitrAte.

Again - I do not appear to be in the majority with this result... it might help that I have an addictive personality and monitored my water several times a day in the beginning... for what it's worth, I used cycle along with the bio-spira... not sure which one did it, maybe both. but cycle is not refrigerated and the bio spira is, so im thinking the bio spira did more of the work.

 

[Seleya]

Stability also does indeed work. As a matter of fact, one of my lfs no longer carries biospira because their customers have had such success with Stability and they have had problems with Biospira [being shipped and used properly mainly] I've used it to seed tanks in an emergency and had good results -- these are tanks with high goldfish loads, so if it works for me, it's good stuff.

I would suggest with any cycling technique, that getting ammonia and nitrite to 0 is far from the end of the road cycling. One must always monitor any new tank regularly for at least the first 3 - 6 months past that point at the barest minimum with no additions of livestock or disruption of biomedia and at wider intervals or as needed beyond that.

 

[Ryan NY]

this is confusing as all hell

how do i know when the tank is cycled?
i have waited all different amounts of time to add fish and majority of the time i add the fish they die.
i duno what to do.
if i add a larger, more hearty fish to the tank temporarily, will it cycle the tank faster.

 

[Seleya]

With three established[???] tanks, you can easily seed a new tank from your current tanks. What I typically do is keep an extra filter running on a healthy tank. I also have sponge filters, sponge prefilters or other biomedia cultivating items in some of my tanks. When I need a hospital, quarantine or new start-up tank, I can then move as much of a biofilter as needed onto another tank.

Your tank is cycled when your ammonia and nitrite are 0 and you have nitrate readings [unless you have a heavy planted tank]. You have an established tank when you have a stable tank for a considerable amount of time beyond the end of your initial cycle.

Have you read the cycling stickies on this forum?

 

[JWright]

Maybe all the times people have asked this it's gotten lost in the rest of their post, so I'll keep this short and sweet.

Have you read the cycling threads listed in the sticky at the top of this forum?

 

[MissFishy]

Ryan, you keep on asking basic questions about cycling. All these questions and more are answered in the link in my signature or in the stickies at the top of the forum. You really need to read through one or both if you plan on keeping any fish alive for long.