When to plant and when to cycle?

[Deep Seven]

My Future Aquarium
They are nice and green
I like the planted tanks so
And thus it begins

Soooo, I've been reading articles all night* trying to find an answer to my question. I'm hoping someone can answer it for me or point me to an article on the subject that does so. I've decided to do a heavily planted aquarium with otos, shrimp, and dwarf puffers. I'm going for a fishless cycle.

My question is should I cycle before or after adding the plants?

I'd like to do the set-up and aqua-scaping, and do all of my planting. Then get the water parameters good for the plants to thrive and start cycling. When cycle stabilizes add shrimp, and otos at a paced rate to avoid overloading the cycle. Then after everything is stable for a while, add the dwarf puffers.

I want to know if cycling hurts the plants and should be done before aqua-scaping, and I want to know if planting the tank first will help or hinder my effort to establish a nitrogen cycle capable of dealing with fish bio-load.

Any help would be apreciated, thanks.




*two and a half hours to be exact

 

[maxima423]

from what i have been told, you can add plants before or after your cycle, plants dont need a cycled tank if i remember correctly

heres my previous post about adding plants

http://www.aquariumadvice.com/forums/f15/adding-plants-before-cycling-130799.html

 

[BillD]

Are the shrimps to be food for the puffers?

 

[HN1]

Plants are fine in an uncycled aquarium and actually benefit the aquarium by utilizing the nitrogen sources and producing O2.

I would not add shrimp or otos until the tank is established for a few months at least.

As Bill alluded to... shrimp will be puffer food.

 

[jsoong]

You can also skip the fishless cycle & cycle with plants only. this is possible if you have a healthy, heavily planted tank & low fish bioload.

More info if you google "silent cycling", One to get you started:
Silent Cycling in a Planted Aquarium - Article at The Age of Aquariums - Tropical Fish

 

[Smitty]

You can also skip the fishless cycle & cycle with plants only. this is possible if you have a healthy, heavily planted tank & low fish bioload.

More info if you google "silent cycling", One to get you started:
Silent Cycling in a Planted Aquarium - Article at The Age of Aquariums - Tropical Fish

This is what I did but I still had some die off unfortunately (only like 2 fish but I didn't know any better at the time years ago)... be sure you are ready to test your water and do very regular water changes.

 

[Deep Seven]

Are the shrimps to be food for the puffers?

I've read that shrimp have a 50/50 chance of becoming puffer friends or puffer dinner. And if the are friendly, it will only last until the puffer realizes how tasty shrimp are, which could be forever.

If the puffers eat the shrimp I may try and raise shrimp in my refugium as food. I'm hoping to keep the puffers happy with worms and snails and they'll leave the shrimp alone.

Thanks for all the replies. First time I heard of a "silent cycle", but I was guessing plants would feed the bacteria at least a little and get a small cycle going.

I'm getting pretty excited. Can't wait to start it up