Cycling a Planted tank

[tazcrash69]

I've never cycled a planted tank before. I've always added plants to a cycled tank. I've just edited this question since I realized that Plants wouldn't produce any ammonia to cycle the tank with. So I Guess my question is: Should I cycle with plants, and lights, or no plants, no lights.


TIA....

 

[Tiffi]

Since the bacteria, that change ammonia over nitrite to nitrate work aerob (with oxygen) I could imagine that it would be better to have plants in the aquarium to cycle it. The plants will produce the oxygen that bacteria need for their work.
Plus they will take out nutrients from the water to have less left over for algae. Algae can even thrive in low light/daylight conditions.

 

[Jchillin]

Moved to Planted Tank Forum

 

[An t-iasg]

I would put the plants in now also. I would set everything up, including plants and lights, before you put the fish in.

The "good" bacteria that cycles a tank will still colonize in a planted tank once the fish are added. You'll still need to test for ammonia and nitrite levels, although they may be less than a tank that is cycling without plants. The plants will absorb some of the excess ammonia products, so your test kit may show a lower result than expected if you were to cycle without plants.

For the plants to completely absorb the byproducts of the nitrogen cycle right away, I think it would have to be a moderately to heavily planted, high-light tank to drive the photosynthesis. A few crypts in a 1.5 wpg lighting, for example, won't drive the photosynthesis enough to completely absorb the nitrogen compounds put off by the fish.

I have started small tanks from scratch with plants, fish, and medium light, and I have gotten an ammonia reading of .25 ppm. I did small water changes, just as you would do with a tank cycling without plants. Within about four days (the length of time will probably be dependent on your bioload) I got an ammonia reading of 0. I didn't get a nitrite reading, or else it's possible that the nitrite was only in the tank very briefly and I missed it during my testing. My nitrates were always 0, and I have to dose for them. Since I never got a nitrate reading to signal that the cycle was finished, I kept testing ammonia and nitrite for an additional week just to be sure that they were 0.

Hope this helps a bit!

 

[malkore]

You can actually cheat when you reach 2.5wpg and above, and skip the cycling process if you use a LOT of fast growing stem plants from day 1. The plants will use up any ammonia, so ammonia never hits toxic levels. since little ammonia gets produced, nitrite doesn't build up too quickly, and ends up converting to nitrate...and your cycle is complete.

Now, bearing all this in mind, you still cannot fully stock the tank from the get go...rather you stock more slowly, but without the major concerns of a traditional fishy cycle.

That said, you have enough light to pull this off, just maintain good CO2 levels.

You also may find that 60lbs of flourite isn't deep enough. I recommend about 2lbs per gallon of tank capacity for a 'standard' rectangular tank of standard depth.

 

[tazcrash69]

Thanks for all the advice.
Malkore - I'm going to have to agree with you about the flourite. Both the store, and the bag recommends 1 bag per square foot. I'm using 1.5 bags psf, but it's only about 2 inches deep. I'll definitely be adding some river rock to bring the depth to at least 3".

 

[malkore]

I would avoid the river rock. I mixed fairly small pea gravel in with my flourite, so I have like 70% flourite 30% pea gravel. I wish i'd gone all flourite (or rather, Eco complete, which was too new at the time to get locally).

3" is a good depth. anything beyond that is just for appearance, but there's nothing wrong with interesting substrate levels. I've seen some terraced tansk that looked amazing.