not a fushless cycle :(

[TheNamelessPoet]

not a fishless cycle

OK... I am sure some of you saw my DISASTER in the Unhealthy fish section.


I need some advice on cycling my tank...
I am trying to get a guy at work to an extra filter pad to his tank for a week or so so I can put it in with MY filter in my tank next week. Here is my delema.
I have a 20G tank... with an young otto (not quite 2") and a fully grown Zebra Daino (2-2.5") Is that enough to start a cycle or should I purchas 2-3 more Zebra's? I don't really want to do a cycle wiht fish but I have noone to take the fish for me as his fish will eat mine. I am not sure if I can get ahold of him since he is on vacation.

My worry is that my 2 little fish will not produce enough ammonia to get the cycle going...

 

[Blueiz]

See if you can get a handful of his gravel. If you can, put this in a media bag of piece of panty hose in your tank, this will seed your tank.

With that light of a bio load in a 20 g, you will probably be able to cycle the tank with no problems as long as you are vigilant over your water parameters and you do not over feed the fish.

Your fish will produce enough ammonia to get the cycle going, and after it is complete then you can slowly add more fish if you wish.

 

[jsoong]

There is no problem cycling with less bioload than recommended. It will proceed, just take longer, but will be better for the fish in the long run.

I think you should just put your 2 fish back in the 20 gal (I assume that it is now all cleaned!) & maintain water parameters with pwc's. With light bioload, you prob won't need to do that frequent pwc's, so that would be a plus. Once you get a hold of a mature tank, get some substrate or filter media & that should hurry things up.

An alternative is to get some plants from the lfs. <I know you are swearing off plants for now, but I am sure you will get back into it ... once the bug bites, it is forever!> Plants from a tank with fish will have a lot of the bacteria on its surface, so that would be another way to seed your tank. <Assuming the lfs is healthy.>

 

[TheNamelessPoet]

OK

My friend at work is going to put one of my filters behind his in his filter for 2 weeks for me!!! and get me soem rocks from the tank for tomorrow!!! awesome... maybe it can jumpstart the cycle and push it down to maybe 3-4 weeks. That would be awesome... then I can get my Lobster and 2-3 more Zebra's. going to be a while before I can fill my tank... but hey... it would take me 3 months without his help.

 

[TheNamelessPoet]

Less than a month!!! Man... that EXTRA filter MEDIA really helped!!!
Time to restock
I tested last night 0/0/~15-20

 

[dkpate]

Congrats! Now the fun begins!

 

[TheNamelessPoet]

Congrats! Now the fun begins!

thanks
I picked up 6 neons today

going to let them settle for a while.

The LFS said my aust. blue lobster (crayfish) may eat them

 

[mfdrookie516]

those lobsters can eat anything they can catch. there is a thread on here somewhere about one killing alot of the posters fish