Very strange cycle.

[missileman]

I bought and set up a 29 gallon to be used for a QT/hospital tank.
Nothing special, HOB filter. I needed it imediately to house my inverts while I treated my main tank for a parasite infection so no fishless cycle.
I put the cloth part of a used bio-bag from another established tank inside the filter of the new tank.
I put 5 rather big whisker shrimp and 3 cherry shrimp in it. At the end of the first week my daughter decided she has had enough of a rather bad snail infestation in her tank so we put her 3 platy's, 2 mollies and an otto cat into the tank after a 15% water change.
The really odd thing is it has been 2 weeks and I have never once saw any amonia nor any nitrite.
The parameters currently are 0 amonia, 0 nitrite and 5ppm nitrate.(the nitrate was 0 last weekend)
Could the tank really have cycled that painlessly?
PS: come to think of it I also put a couple of landscape items from another tank in there as well.

 

[SWerner13]

After two weeks with no reading I would think you can consider yourself one of the lucky ones. Normally other items used to seed do just that, seed. But since you have so few fish the bacteria you already had was probably plenty to handle your small bio-load.

 

[meegosh]

You might experience a mini cycle. I find it hard to believe that with just the cloth from a bio bag it is cycled, instantly. I seeded my 30g with two used filter cartridges, lots of plants, gravel and ran a seeded filter on it for over a week. Even with that much seeded material I still experienced a mini cycle.

 

[missileman]

You might experience a mini cycle. I find it hard to believe that with just the cloth from a bio bag it is cycled, instantly. I seeded my 30g with two used filter cartridges, lots of plants, gravel and ran a seeded filter on it for over a week. Even with that much seeded material I still experienced a mini cycle.

It may still happen. Perhaps with the low bio-load it will take longer to show up. There is a clump of hornwort in there too, so it can suck up some of the stuff as well.