Step 1: Add Ammonia to Your Fish Tank Start the process by dropping some fish food flakes into your aquarium. Once every other day, just as you would if there were fish in it. When fish-less cycling, how often do I add food to decay? Simply take your friend’s mature sponge and squeeze it out into your tank. Instead, it might kill the fish faster. The goal at this stage is to get 0ppm on both ammonia and nitrite. There is a lot more workload because of the frequent partial water change required to sustain the fish through the tank cycle. How do I cycle it? The fish for cycling a tank must not all die before the cycle is complete. Yes! By using our site, you agree to our. Nitrate is harmless until really high concentration at 40ppm+. However, this doesn’t necessarily mean the ammonia level will spike to deadly levels now or ever for that matter. After adding water to your system, turn on the pump and let it run for 2-3 days. Set up the entire tank before cycling the water. That's the point of cycling the tank. One improvement to this page might be to comment on how the cycle impacts plants depending on the nutrients. Going through this process is a must for all the new aquariums. X Expert Interview. Hey my name is Chris I got a 13 gallon tank and a 20 the 13 I got first and am doing fish in cycle now and the 20 fishless cycle my question though is if I do a 50%water change at .50 ppm will it atually hurt the cycle at this small of a tank or is 50% still required. As long as you do a partial water change with Prime every other day, the ammonia damage to your fish should be minimal. Aquarium nitrogen cycle is essential for the survival of pet fish in a home aquarium. Cycle with fish in the aquarium is one of the options of fish tank cycling. And repeat this process every 12 hours. It was really helpful. % of people told us that this article helped them. Conclusion. You must also continue to do testing on the aquarium water for ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate. This article has 14 testimonials from our readers, earning it our reader-approved status. This article has been viewed 496,040 times. All Rights Reserved. You can certainly speed the process up and cut down the time required by applying some fish tank cycling tips. A fish tank of the proper size for your fish, The Best Water for Fish in a Home Aquarium, Aquarium Filter 101 (Function; Purpose; Types; and How to Pick one), The Best Aquarium Water Conditioner For Fish, 8 Reasons Why You Should Not Overstock a Fish Tank With Too Many Fish, How to Choose a Fish Tank for Aquarium Fish, Freshwater Aquarium Setup and Equipment (17), Saltwater Aquarium Setup and Equipment (16). Therefore, it will slow their growth. You should add as few fishes as possible. Fish who eat more produce more waste, which can cause the levels of toxins in the tank to rise before the bacteria have a chance to colonize the aquarium. Both of those things will only kill the bacteria you already have. If you add fish to the tank before cycling the water, you could expose them to stress and a potentially fatal environment. That's what moves the process along so fast. This method is the best for preventing the introduction of pests and diseases into a brand new reef setup. Too many fish can produce too much ammonia which will kill the fish rather quickly. For those that want a quick water cycle, it can help to purchase live bacteria in a bottle. Aside from the primary function of neutralizing chlorine and chloramine in the tap water, SeaChem Prime has a secondary function of detoxifying ammonia and turn it into harmless ammonium for up to 48 hours. Ammonia is toxic and it will kill fish. Although cycling aquaponics system using fish can be more frustrating with the involvement of live critters, this option is the easier of the two processes as there is no extra input. Mis-matching your filters (like, for instance, using a filter from a tank with just a few fish in it to cycle a tank with a greater number of fish) can leave you with greater loads of ammonia than the bacteria are able to process right away. You may begin to feed your fish every day instead of every other day. As soon as you discovered ammonia or ammonium in the water, you need to do a 30~50% partial water change every other day with Prime as the water conditioner. At this point, you still need to do it every other day with Prime, but you can cut back on the percentage of water changed. However, using pure ammonia works much better. And maybe dump some Tetra SafeStart into the fish tank to speed up the nitrogen cycle. Most will offer cheap testing services (some even do it for free!). (Some people recommend 1 small fish for every 10 gallons of tank water.) Lots of plants will reduce any stress on fish during a fish-in-tank cycle. Step-1: Begin with a limited fish population When starting a new fish tank, begin with a limited fish population. No, you can run a fishless cycle. While we highly recommend a fishless cycling. If ammonia and nitrite levels are still low, you may add your next few fish. {"smallUrl":"https:\/\/www.wikihow.com\/images\/thumb\/7\/75\/Cycle-a-Fish-Tank-Step-1-Version-2.jpg\/v4-460px-Cycle-a-Fish-Tank-Step-1-Version-2.jpg","bigUrl":"\/images\/thumb\/7\/75\/Cycle-a-Fish-Tank-Step-1-Version-2.jpg\/aid2167770-v4-728px-Cycle-a-Fish-Tank-Step-1-Version-2.jpg","smallWidth":460,"smallHeight":345,"bigWidth":728,"bigHeight":546,"licensing":"