MTS during fishless cycle?

[mommytron]

I've gone through a bunch of complications with my 20H tank. right now we are fishless cycling it. we started with fish food and it made a HUGE mess so we are emptying the tank right now and filling it back up and going to use some pure ammonia instead. problem is, the tank is so filthy from all the fish food. do you think malaysian trumpet snails would be OK in the tank while it is cycling? I was hoping to add them in to help clean up the food we can't get out (already vacuumed the PFS and siphoned all the water out TWICE, and there is still a ton of fish food floating around). if not MTS is there anything else you suggest to help clean up the tank? i'd love to add plants this weekend, as well, so i'm worried about all the excess fish food harming them. any suggestions appreciated! thanks

 

[BigJim]

If your ammonia is high, I wouldn't add MTS. I tried it with mine and the MTS all bit the dust. I put them in the cycling tank because they didn't look like the other MTS I had, but I found out they were MTS.

Take a brine shrimp net (really fine mesh) and skim the tank.

 

[mgamer20o0]

they should be fine. i moved plants into a tank when cycling thinking all the snails would die that was on the plants.... well they didnt they were all over the place.

bigjim right on brine shrimp net. also kicking it up for the filter should work. sounds like too much fish food was used. one of the reasons why using fish food is a bad idea to do fishless cycling.

 

[mommytron]

yea, never again will i use fish food! i knew it was too much food but it still only brought the ammonia to 0.5ppm which is why we decided to just clean it all out and get pure ammonia. thanks for your input everyone, the water is looking pretty clear right now, so we'll probably just wait on the MTS till it's cycled.

 

[logansmomma1228]

Well I have a thread floating around here somewhere about cycling with snails, and I was advised not to put pure ammonia in the tank. I have had fish food in there but I persnoally don't care what my tanks look like when they are cycling. When I cycled the 10 I did the water change at the end and it cleaned right up, crystal clear water and everything! but it is your decision. I think my snails are breeding already because I have seen what looks like egg clutches maybe, but I am not sure. Can't post pics up becaus eI didn't bring my cam and my comp has a virus for now.

 

[mommytron]

yea i was looking forward to not having to use ammonia, but it was so bad that there white fuzzy stuff (what i could only assume was mold) growing all over the driftwood. i had to take it out and scrub it with a toothbrush. it was pretty gnarly. after we vac'd it and siphoned out all the water, we started filling it back up and SO much more food started getting stirred up that we had to siphon and vac it again. looks pretty good now though, got the ammonia in, about to test it now actually.