cycling your tank

[SnowZz]

Look i know there are so many forums out there about cycling a tank, but at the same time i see so many ignorant and just dumb founding opinions about it too.

My first tank...i did not cycle nor did i even know what it was, well i want to just state the facts, especially when we talk about fish vs fishless.

Ok heres the thing about cycling with fish, Well if you cycle with 1 or 2 fish your only going to have a bio load for 2 fish. Add another fish later and your going to see spikes and mini cycles. On top of that your killing your new fish, at the least even hardy ones you just cut there life span greatly.

If you cycle fishless using shrimp and alot of it, your going to have a month or longer process of a huge bio load. This is preferred, because your giving your tank a huge boost in benefiticial bacteria needed for your ultimate desires. But you need to be patient, especially when i skim across the forums and find new tanks that have claimed to be cycled in 5 days or less.....

Im not going to go into detail on how to cycle your tank because this site offers a fantastic article on it already:

Cycle your salt tank

 

[Fishguy2727]

Cycling with bottled ammonia is better since rotting shrimp will eventually stop rotting and at that point you are not adding any ammonia anymore, leaving you barely ahead of cycling with fish, if that. Cycling with fish can also run very differently in large versus small tanks. Two 2" oscars in a 75 will cycle very differently than two neons in a ten gallon.

 

[SnowZz]

good call, i forgot about the bottled ammonia.

 

[Hinds04]

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