The big debate: Fish-less cycling VS Fish-in cycling!

[trickshot3102]

What side are you on? I cycled my 10 gal with fish in it. What did you do?

[tanz8anz]

We were told to cycle the tank with out fish in it and had no problem it does seem silly to cycle a tank without fish as when u add fish the ammonia spikes because of them so im on the side of cycling with the fish in the tank.. we ran our tank with just water and water conditioner for 4 days before adding fish

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[Ohsnapitscharity]

Originally Posted by tanz8anz

We were told to cycle the tank with out fish in it and had no problem it does seem silly to cycle a tank without fish as when u add fish the ammonia spikes because of them so im on the side of cycling with the fish in the tank.. we ran our tank with just water and water conditioner for 4 days before adding fish

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That's not proper fish less cycling...someone may post a link with the proper way to fish less cycle a tank.

[tanz8anz]

Sorry was meant to say we were told to cycle the tank with the fish in it

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[threnjen]

I cycled fishless.
I have a hospital tank with fish and meds that kill the bio-filter, and I have to do lots of WC, it's so annoying =| I wouldn't do fish-in if I had a choice.

[threnjen]

Also are you just taking a poll or did you want to have a discussion about the pros and cons?

[Mebbid]

I think both methods are perfectly fine honestly. Ita just a bit more work to do the fish in cycling and if the aquarist is willing to put forth the effort then there's no issues.

[Toad]

Neither. I haven't cycled a tank since my first one back in 2002. That one was fish in because I didn't even know what cycling was, ever since then I just prep before a new tank by adding extra material in the current tanks filter in advance by a week or two, then set the new tank up, add the filter stuff, give it an hour or three, add some fish.

[Old Scales]

I'm with Toad on this one. After cycling that first tank, be it fish in or fish out. You really should not have to cold cycle any additional tank. Another reason why I like having two filters. You can take the established media from one, place it in the filter in the tank and have what I call a warm cycle. LOL It's kind of like the difference between a cold boot and a warm boot on a computer. The warm boot usually takes much less time. OS.

[tnfinfan]

I left the old tank near to empty because the fish were moving into a new home. So, they moved with the bulk of the bacterial population. The plan now is to add gradually while the new filter populates.

Initially, cold starting (I like that term) the old tank, there were fish fatalities in spite of all efforts. A six gallon tank swings wildly! I never want to repeat that. I didn't know about fishless cycling back then but wouldn't hesitate to try it if I didn't have another tank for seeding.