Tropical Fish Forum
Tropical Fish Keeping Help and Advice => Fishtank Filtration and Cycling => Topic started by: barneyadi on May 18, 2020, 06:36:40 PM
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Hi All
Not done anything with my two tanks, so am going to restart them completely and do a complete new cycle in each. But have a couple of questions.
Firstly, in a planted aquarium, I understand that plants can absorb the ammonia to help them grow. Is that right and how would it affect the cycle.
Secondly, I was going to use Seachem Stability to give things a little boost but heard that I shouldn't use Seachem prime in the water, or at least wait 24 hours before adding. Is that correct?
Many thanks.
David
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Plants do indeed use ammonia and provided there are enough fast growing plants you can do a silent cycle. This means planting the tank, waiting until you are sure the plants are actively growing, then getting fish a few at a time, checking for ammonia and nitrite every day afterwards. if they do show up, do a water change. if they stay at zero, after at least a week, get the next batch of fish. Floating plants are particularly good for this.
Tetra Safe Start is better than Stability. But you can't add it straight after adding Prime. To be honest, I won't use Prime because it is a chemical soup and the less chemicals that go in my tank the better for me.
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A couple of things:
* am I correct in that you lost all the ruby barbs from one tank and all the guppies from the other tank, and these are the two tanks that you're cycling?
* as I understand it, the planted aquarium needs to be incredibly densely planted almost like a jungle for this method to work.
Hope that's helpful.
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A couple of things:
* am I correct in that you lost all the ruby barbs from one tank and all the guppies from the other tank, and these are the two tanks that you're cycling?
* as I understand it, the planted aquarium needs to be incredibly densely planted almost like a jungle for this method to work.
Hope that's helpful.
Hi FCMF
Yes they are the tanks. Decided a complete reset was way to go. Possibly getting another filter for the larger tank as well as not sure the Fluval U4 is up to job.
So with only a few plants, they shouldn't affect the normal way to cycle?
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Ammonia should not be added to a tank with plants in. Although plants are fine with ammonia being excreted by the fish, that is tiny amounts 24 hours a day and the plants take it up as it is being excreted. With fishless cycling, the ammonia is added all at one and the level is quite high until it is removed. This is not good for plants. So unless you are planning lots of plants it is safer to remove the plants temporarily until the cycle is finished.
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Well decided to go all in and get external filters for all my tanks. Should be fun
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If you can get hold of seeded filter media from someone that will likely reduce your time to cycle the tank significantly...
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If you can get hold of seeded filter media from someone that will likely reduce your time to cycle the tank significantly...
I have some in my other tank which I might use in one of the tanks, the other, the 200l I will just do normally.