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Keeping your "cycle" without fish


OnlyGenusCaps
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So, I watched Zenzo's latest vid (I told him I would stop linking him, so I'm not) on the length of time it takes to set up a tank.  Great video, and it got me thinking: how do you keep your "cycle" if you don't have fish in the tank?  I just set up my first fishless cycle tank.  Used Dr. Tim's, went fine.  But it was many months until I could source the fish I wanted for the thank.  With all of the supply chain issues happening, I feel like this might be happening to more folks these days.  So I am curious, if you've done a fishless cycle (however you've done it) and had to wait to add fish, for whatever reason (though I'd be curious why you did have to wait; could be like Zenzo waiting to grow the plants, or like me waiting on availability of fish, etc.), how did you keep the population of BB going while you waited?

I added a drop or two of Dr. Tim's ammonia one a week.  That was what I had on hand and could do because I didn't want snails in this tank, which I am normally cool with.  I also considered adding snails if absolutely necessary, or fish that I could move back to another tank later.  But I am curious what has or has not worked for others?

Disclaimer: I realize that BB don't starve immediately if they don't have a nutrition source.  That said, in my case I wasn't sure if I'd get my fish in the next year, or tomorrow, so I wanted the tank to be in a state of readiness. 

I'm hoping this thread proves useful for others, so lay it on me.  What have you done?  Did it work, or not? 

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I let the leaves from my plants decay in the tank when cycling setting up a tank as I think it’s a nice source of a little ammonia and nitrogen as well as something for the microbiome of the tank to feed on. But like @Kenand @lefty oi just include it in my feeding schedule every 2-3 days adding some flake or whatever I’m feeding (except live foods). I think if you want a lot of algae or speeding up the process feeding every day would do that. 

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Sounds like the consensus is to ghost feed the tank.  Interesting!  I didn't do this out of fear of encouraging heterotrophic (i.e. rot) bacteria over the N oxidizing types.  Seems this was unfounded. 

On 10/24/2021 at 8:37 PM, Jeff said:

Cory mentioned in a previous stream that keeping a lot of algae in the tank is the best way he knew of, when you have this situation.

I'm not sure how this would help, unless the expectation is that there is population turnover meaning that there are constantly dying algal cells that then have to rot.  Curious.  🤔

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On 10/25/2021 at 5:31 AM, OnlyGenusCaps said:

I'm not sure how this would help, unless the expectation is that there is population turnover meaning that there are constantly dying algal cells that then have to rot.  Curious.  🤔

I wonder if Cory was talking about seasoning a tank as opposed to cycling it? 

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On 10/25/2021 at 11:23 AM, Jeff said:

Go to 29:14 is where he talks about it.

Ah, so he is talking about algae as taking up N and not keeping the BB going.  Interesting.  Presumably plants would work for that as well.  That's another side of the equation I had not thought about.  Interesting!  Thanks for the link and time stamp!

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