Re: Fish less cycling

[Thomas Barr <tcbiii at earthlink_net>]

> FWIW, I did this with my fishless cycle.  I added household ammonia and sodium
> nitrite at the same time.  My tank took about 8 weeks to cycle.  In fact, I
> ended up adding plants that I figured would have bacteria to help seed the
> tank after about 5 or 6 weeks.

Not to pick on you personally, but the fishless cycling craze.

I added mulm from another tank and had my tank cycle in 0.0 weeks. How is
fishless cycling going to beat that? That works on non planted tanks also.
No hassle, no testing needed, no wait, no problem.

I still don't understand why folks seem possessed to do fishless cycling.

Some say they don't have another tank they can get mulm etc but they bought
their tank from _somewhere_. Has to be a LFS somewhere nearby that will let
you have some of their "dirty water". I suppose a small Eclipse tank can be
mail ordered etc, but that group of folks are in a tiny minority at best
that neither live close to a LFs or have no other tanks or friend's with
tanks anywhere nearby.

One trip to a friend's or the LFS for dirty water in a one time shot seems a
much better deal than doing this ammonia thing and waiting 4-8 weeks and
testing to see what is going on with the bacteria.

Then there's the issue of the plant's uptake of the NH4 in the first place
so none builds up and no NO2 is produced etc. You don't get any NH4/NO2
readings so there is no need to cycle or worry about it.

Regards, 
Tom Barr