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Has anyone done a fishless cycle? And if so, how'd you do it? (Add a set amount of ammonia per gallon? Add ammonia, then adjust the amount according to water tests?) And how long did it take?

I have two empty tanks at the moment and am considering trying a fishless cycle.

I'm interested in how others have done this, as well.

I'm certain adding even a drop of ammonia daily would eventually cycle the tank, but I believe it involves putting in as much ammonia on the first day to drive the tester to a very high level.

That seems like the easy part. What I wonder is what does it take to sustain it once you see it dropping and nitrites rising. Is one drop per day adequate for say, a 10 gallon? My thought is that if a large enough colony is built to eat that much ammonia, it will quickly die off unless it is continuing to be fed a fair amount of it while the second phase completes.

Anyone who has done this, please specifiy solid details like tank specs, filtration, how much was used to start, to maintain, and how long it took to get there.

One of the reasons I'm interested in this is because I tried it once with my 30 gallon and it got kind of stuck. Nitrites got really high, and never went down.

Someone told me that was because I was supposed to decrease the amount of ammonia I was adding as I went along. But it all got very confusing, and I gave up, added BioSpira, the tank numbers were pretty much perfect the next day, and I was able to add the fish without a problem.

I fishless cycled my 55g

I got a scoop (1-2 cups is plenty) of gravel from one of racso's tanks and put it in nylon pantyhose, to culture the bacteria. I bought a bottle of pure ammonia, making sure it had no additives. I added the ammonia at a rate of 5 drops/10g/day. When the nitrItes reached a peak, I decrease the ammonia dosage to 2 drops/10g/day. When the nitrItes fell back to zero ppm, the cycle is complete.

Fishless cycles aren't always 100% stable, so you still want to add your fish slowly. I added only 3 or 4 right after the cycle completed, then about a week later, this it what it looked like:

http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/lilagluckpilz/detail?.dir=6548&.dnm=298f.jpg&.src=ph

9 bags of fish! I was very lucky that my cycle was stable enough to handle that, and despite the picture I recommend you still add your fish slowly. The hardest part of a fishless cycle is finding the balance of fish to add so as not to kill off your bacteria, or kill off your fish. Too many fish at once = too much ammonia for the bacteria to handle. Too few fish = not eough ammonia for the bacteria to live off of.

Hope that made sense :%)

><>Dani<><[hr width='40%']I don't want another pretty face
I don't want just anyone to hold
I don't want my love to go to waste
I want you and your beautiful soul

Last edited by gartenzwerfe at 23-Feb-2005 10:20

Great feedback.

Ok, then I would ask another question for general knowledge and discussion of the subject. What if you had continued to add in the 5 drops/10 gal/daily right through the end?

The bacterial colony grows proportional to the amount of food.

I'm thinking that if I try it, I put in 5 drops of ammonia, then do an ammonia reading a few hours later after it mixes well to see how many ppm that resulted in. If it has not peaked, I would add more, let it mix a few hours, then check again.

I would then wait until I seen it drop a little and nitrites rising. Then I would add another 5 drops and continue to do so daily, monitoring both ammonia and nitrite, and eventually nitrates.

Once I saw nitrates, I would continue to add the 5 drops daily until I got to 10ppm, at which time I would do a 20% water change. I would continue adding 5 drops daily to see how long it took to get to 10ppm again. If it is just one week, then that is a sizeable colony.

My theory is that the amount of ammonia wants to be constant (except when you peak it) and that you want to target it to cover for more than just a few fish. When ammonia is scaled back, then there is less for the bacteria to eat.

Any thoughts?

[hr width='40%']
EDIT:
Question of the Day

Is the size of the colony at the end of fishless cycling dependent on the amount of ammonia fed throughout the process?

I can certainly "fishless cycle" a 10 gallon with just 1 drop of ammonia per day and it will take a long time. However, when it is complete, will the size of the bacterial colony be the same size as a 10 gallon, in which 3 or 5 drops were added per day throughout the process? I don't believe so. However, if too much ammonia is used, some of the good bacteria will die off, as well when the number of fish don't match the original load. Is this a problem?

It comes down to a term I'm going to coin as Bio-Filter Capability. How much ammonia does it take to make a colony capable of holding at least 30% of the tank's max stock. Too little ammonia = weak colony = mini-cycle. Too much ammonia = strong colony that will either be A) Just Right or B) Too big and will partially die off.

I can't think of a good reason to stock a tank 100% out of the shoot anyway, so 30% is a good target.

Last edited by Cory_Di at 23-Feb-2005 16:33

Last edited by Cory_Di at 23-Feb-2005 16:35

refer to this it has all u need!!
http://www.aquahobby.com/articles/e_fishless.php
i did mine in 2 weeks following this easy step by step guide
during the cycle you can do your aqua scapeing planting etc
have lots of patience..
when your nitrite spikes make sure u only add a little bit of armonia daily.. enough to not get the reading off 0ppm.. this is to keep the ammonia eating colony happy

hope this helps

r0b3y

Last edited by r0b3y at 24-Feb-2005 00:40

I have a variation of a fishless cycle, go to the grocery store and pick your self up your favorite type of fish for supper, go home cut a chunk of it off around 1 inch by three inches then bury it in your gravel then wait your cycle will be underway

The difference between 'involvement' and 'commitment' is like an bacon and egg breakfast: the chicken was 'involved' - the pig was 'committed'."

Many people do, in fact, use food to cycle their tanks. However, I have one major concern and therefore, would never use the process, unless I "contained" the food, and changed it daily.

Columnaris bacteria - that, which is responsible for many very common infections including body fungus, mouth fungus, saddleback lesions, black molly disease, and certain types of finrot - has been proven to grow on uneaten food, and in very little time.

It takse 3 things for a fish to catch a deadly columnaris infection. 1) It must be present in the water column. 2) There is some "opportunity" - an open wound, missing scale, slight scrape, parasite bites, etc. 3) They must be stressed, thereby lowering the immune system's ability to ward off the infection (chilled, ammonia/nitrite/pH crash, transport/handling, etc.).

Columnaris is often within every aquarium since it grows on things that are rotting. However, the more food there is rotting, the higher the columnaris bacterial count. Even one fish infected with it can be causing the bacterial count in the water column to rise.

With this in mind, I believe that using ordinary household ammonia without dyes, detergents, scents is the safest route.

In places like the UK where ammonia can't be easily purchased, I would use food, but I would put it in a mesh back and change it daily.

I brought my Panda Breeding Aquarium™ to readiness using a fishless cycle method.

My method was to add a small amount of fish food daily, as if the aquarium already had fish in it. I likened this in another thread as follows. Putting a large quantity of matter in the aquarium and letting it decompose is a bit like dumping a dead buffalo in the living room: the living room (and indeed the whole house) quickly becomes a place you don't want to live in. On the other hand, popping four rashers of bacon in the fridge each day means you get to have bacon sandwiches for supper. Putting a small quantity of food in each day as if fish are already living in the aquarium allows the bacteria to grow and accomodate themselves at a natural pace to the presence of wastes, and also provides continual feeding. And, ironically, the aquarium actually cycles slightly faster this way. The bacteria colonies grow at a rate that matches the food input, so that when the fish are finally added, the filter is already pretty stable. I somehow think that my Panda Corys (a species notorious for keeling over if conditions aren't to it's liking) would not have happily lived in this aquarium if the filter hadn't stabilised. Of course, my twice weekly water changes go a long way toward keeping things healthy, but they wouldn't keep things healthy for long if the filter catastrophically crashed. And Pandas don't frolic about and explore their environment with incessant curiosity if they're stressed by pollutants.


Panda Catfish fan and keeper/breeder since Christmas 2002

I guess I must of got lucky for the last 20+ years by cycling with a piece of fish and not speading these diseases to all the fish I have ever owned, and to beleive I have had fish survive in these extremly toxic bacterial infested tanks for years.





makes you scratch your head and wonder



The difference between 'involvement' and 'commitment' is like an bacon and egg breakfast: the chicken was 'involved' - the pig was 'committed'."

It's just the potential, FreeJoe. It doesn't mean it will happen for sure, it is just a risk.

If I couldn't use Ammonia, then I'd probably look at doing something similar. But when ammonia is available, its easy enough to dose.

Last edited by Cory_Di at 24-Feb-2005 17:36

Listen to what you are saying, you are willing to dump raw chemical into your tank but a piece of fish for human consumtion is a danger. I just gave a alternative way to cycle a tank without the use of chemicals

The difference between 'involvement' and 'commitment' is like an bacon and egg breakfast: the chicken was 'involved' - the pig was 'committed'."

I'm only raising a point that certain harmful bacteria may grow on rotting food. If a fish has a scrape or injury and goes into water with a high volumne of columnaris bacteria, the end result is body fungus, it the third component, stress, occurs.

Does it grow on rotting fish? I don't know. What I read was that it grow on rotting fish food, I took to be flakes and the like. It may rot differently.