fish vs. fishless cycling

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wright4lfe

Aquarium Advice Activist
Joined
Jul 12, 2004
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161
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HB, CA
alright, just picked up a 110T from a buddy of mine. i usually do a fishless cycling and it takes about 1-1.5 weeks to get a good cycle going. i usually add the intended fish for the tank at approx. trhe 2 week mark depending on the water conditions.

when i was at my lfs the sales guy asked me if i was going to just cycle it with guppys/fatheads/goldfish. i told him no since i haven't yet. he said it makes the tank cycle faster.

true or not?

the tanks dimensions are 48*18*30 and i'm running a new eheim 2236.
 
Only cycle with fish you plan on keeping forever, but yeah, it generally goes faster if done correctly with fish. Look into SeaChem Stability as well, it worked well twice for me.
 
The two fastest ways to cycle a tank are with Bio-Spira (or similar product) or by transferring some seeded, mature media from an established tank into the new tank's filter. After this is fishless cycling, and using live fish is typically the most slow (and the most involved) way to cycle a tank.
 
Fishless cycling (as opposed to cycling with fish) is typically a bit faster because you can keep your ammonia levels high (~4 or 5 ppm) throughout the cycle to encourage the growth of the bacteria. If you have fish, however, you need to keep the ammonia levels relatively low to minimize the harm that you're doing to them.
 
I have to agree, fishless is faster and it isn't so much work. With fish it's constant monitoring of levels and water changes and so on. With fishless it's not that big of a deal if you make a small mistake because you can't kill fish that aren't in there.
 
I started to fishless cycle my new 55 gallon just a couple of days ago and I'm doing it with a frozen shrimp from the store. How long should I keep that shrimp in there?
 
That's what I would assume too. But I thought I had heard from someplace before that it should be taken out after three or four days.
 
Nope. Leave it in until the cycle is complete. Otherwise the tank won't have anything to feed off of for ammonia.
 
I've cycled both with fish and without. IMO fishless cycle is faster and certainly more easy for both the fish and myself. Next time I am ordering bio-spira and doing it that way. I found a place that will ship to me :mrgreen:
 
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