Re: Fishless Cycling -- or - Pedaling One's Way Around Ichthyophobia

["S. Hieber" <shieber at yahoo_com>]

Scott Lewis

> 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.
> 
> My experience is not typical.  So, YMMV.  I have to
> wonder if the nitrite needs to be kept to a fairly low
> level so as not to 'poison' the ammonia eating bacteria. 
> In a sense, NO2 is a waste product of that bacteria. 
> FWIW, I tried to keep the nitrites below 1ppm.
 
Notwithstanding the fact that cycling isn't really
necessary if you use lots of plants (as Tom Barr pointed
out so well), and notwithstanding the fact that you can
more or less instantly infect you tank by if you can shnore
a cup or too of bacteria (a la mulm) -- notwithstanding
those things, this post is interesting.  Couldn't one cycle
a tank about as quickly by putting a few fish in the tank
from the get go?  Eight weeks doesn't sound like it saved a
lot of time and I thought time savings was all that
"fishless" cycling had going for it, at least in plantless
tanks.

Of course, we can throw into the mix, so to speak, if one
does large and frequent water changes, one's tank can
withstand a higher population of fish sooner than otherwise
-- which holds for most cases, whether one is trying to
cycle a tank or not.

Scott H.

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