Every new aquarium setup must go through a cycling period.
What does that mean? It is a process that builds up a beneficial
bacterial colony in the filter media and the gravel. This bacteria
converts harmful ammonia and nitrite into nitrates, and until a large
enough number of nitrifying bacteria is reached in a new tank, the
ammonia and nitrite levels will spike to toxic, even deadly levels for
most fish. The process takes up to 30-60 days to complete (depending on
the water temperature and other factors). In part due to lack of
information, in part due to the anxiety of looking at an empty tank for
1-2 months, even today many people simply go ahead and add a whole
bunch of fish to newly setup tanks anyway, many of which end up dying
during, or not long after, the cycling period.
However, to the responsible fishkeeper, subjecting fish to this
situation is not an acceptable practice. There are traditional methods
called fishless cycling
where fish food, a small piece of prawn, and/or pure ammonia is added
manually to begin feeding the bacterial colony. This is a necessary
method in non-planted setups. But I read a lot of forum stories
around the net were aquarists seem to be very confused with the
fishless cycling method. I don't blame them. I was once confused with
the same thing also. Some frequent questions are: "Where can I find
ammonia?", "How many spoons of flake food should I put in?", "There is
already a big flake mess all over my tank!", "My nitrite is taking too
long to spike, what's wrong? Should I add more ammonia?" "My ammonia
spike is over, should I continue adding ammonia?", "When will I be able
to put the fish in?", and so on.
With planted aquariums, if a
few measures are taken, there is no need for fishless cycling. With the
method described here you can forget about adding ammonia, flake food,
raw prawns, etc. There is a better and quicker way to start your
planted aquarium, such that ammonia and nitrite remain completely
"silent", because they don't spike at all!
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Silent Cycling
Since the plants consume
ammonia and nitrate as nitrogen source, there is no preliminary need to
build up nitrifying bacteria as long as there are enough plants growing
well from the start. Cycling is all about building up “something” that
can prevent deadly levels of ammonia and nitrites in the water...so why
not plants? They don't just perform that function well, they look much
better than an empty tank! They allow the addition of fish much sooner
at little to no risk, and with time, there will always be a natural
build-up of bacteria in the filter with or without our help. Preparing
a new tank for silent cycling is very similar to following standard
procedures for any tank intended to have live plants in it, with just a
few extra precautions. Let's see what is necessary in order to
guarantee a proper silent cycling of a new tank, and I will exemplify
with my 180 L planted community tank during the description:
Step 1 - Substrate and filter power-up
Place the tank in a
secure position where it won’t be hit by direct sunlight. Direct
sunlight will trigger an algae bloom and, believe me, this is the last
thing you want. Add a first layer of fertile substrate if you choose to
do so, then rinse some gravel well and place it over the fertile layer.
Try to build up 7-12 cm of gravel like a bank, thicker in the back, of
course. Fill up with water and treat with the dechlorinator (chlorine,
chloramine and heavy metal remover). It is going to be dirty for a day
or two, but the filter circulation will eventually clean it. Plug in
the power filter and heater. Let it run for 24 hours, taking this time
to make sure everything is working correctly and to set the temperature
at the right level, for example, most tropical fishes and plants do
well at about 24-26°C.
Step 2 - Adding plants and making sure they grow
On the
second day, or whenever you're confident everything is OK, plants
should be added. Over 50% of the gravel surface has to be planted with fast-growing stem plants. Among the best ones I can recommend from personal experience are:
- Ceratopteris thalictroides,
- Hygrophila polysperma,
- Bacopa australis,
- Egeria densa.
But there are certainly others. For more information about these and other plants, browse the Garden section
of this site. When planting, make sure to remove all the old leaves and
some of the old looking roots. Don't worry, you won't harm them and it
will encourage growth. Plant the stems about 2-3 cm apart from each
other, so all of them have enough light, which is essential for good
plant growth, without which the silent cycle won't work.
After the plants are added, if you chose not to use fertile substrates, you need to at least stick one iron rich gravel fertilizer
tablet or granule (ask your pet-shop) into the gravel beside each
plant. The gravel fertilizer gives the plant a head start while the
algae can’t use it since they do not have roots. Liquid fertilizer is
not a good option in the beginning.
CO2 injection is a must have and there are many ways to introduce it. The DIY CO2 yeast reactor, pressurised CO2 system (could be expensive) and CO2 tablets with a plastic reactor-diffuser (ask your local pet-shop).
Lighting should initially be low to medium, between 0.3-0.5
Watts per liter for fluorescent tubes. Strong lighting (over 0.8 W/L)
requires the use of pressurized CO2, otherwise an algae break-out is
very likely. To achieve full efficiency of your fluorescent tubes,
reflectors should be placed over the lights (tip: I used kitchen
tin-foil as a reflector). Without good reflectors, the amount of light
that actually enters the water can be as low as half of the total light
generated by the tubes.
So that’s it, we have fast
growing plants; iron rich gravel fertilizer, CO2 injection and proper
lighting. After all this is done, it's time to sit back and observe the
plant growth for a few days. We need to be sure, before adding any
fish, that the plants are thriving and growing well, which means they
are being capable of uptaking any ammonia from the water. During this
period, it is highly recommendable that you test the water occasionally
and make sure the ammonia and nitrite levels are really kept at zero.
Otherwise you will put our fish at risk and make the algae happy.
Step 3 - Introducing the first algae eaters
About two weeks
after the tank has been planted and if they are showing good progress,
you can start adding fish - and algae eaters should go first. For my
180 liter tank I added 2 Siamese algae eaters and 3 Otos,
but there are several other options and a separate article will soon be
available in this section, dedicated to the "algae eating army." Before
adding the fish, I suggest doing about 20% partial water change (always
use the dechlorinator). Don’t feed the algae eaters! Let them take care
of the minor algae. You will probably experience some brown, hair, red
and thread algae, which these fish will consume. Any mature algae
should be removed manually, as these fish prefer to feed on young
algae.
Step 4 - Increasing the population
About one week after the
algae eaters have been added, you can start adding your other preferred
species. This has to be done gradually like with any other type of
cycling, and it's always recommendable to do a partial water change
just before adding a new group of fish. In a typical medium sized tank
(80-200 liters) you should add about 5 small fish at a time. I added
more algae eaters, 5 Amano shrimp.
Again, I did not feed them as they will feed on algae. Just because you
don’t see the algae it doesn’t mean that there isn't any. After another
week, you can add 5 more fishes, and so on until you're happy with the
population. I added 2 golden angelfish, and on the following week 11
cardinal tetras. Once you start adding non-algae eaters, start feeding
accordingly. As always, don't overstock your tank there is no need for
it! Instead of falling into the temptation of "having" a whole bunch of
random fish that just exist in your tank, learn to appreciate the
natural behaviors of properly kept ones and the joy of "keeping" them
throughout their natural lives of many years. overstocking and mixing
incompatible species will only trigger diseases and disasters. Imagine
yourself living in a small, dirty apartment with 20 more people who
don't even like you. With shoaling species, it is much nicer to have a
bigger group of the same species than many small groups of different
species. Let them have a good, long fish life in your tank!
Step 5 - Establishing a fertilization and maintenance regime
After
about 4 weeks since the day you added the plants, it's time to start
adding liquid fertilizer. It's better to use only half of the
recommended dosage for the first few weeks. If your plants show no
yellowness, there is no need for more fertilizer, and if they're
showing deficiency symptoms, add the recommended measure. I use Tropica
Master Grow and I dose 25 ml every week, since all my plants are fast
growers. Slower growing plants need less nutrients.
Typical Nitrate (NO3) levels
for planted tanks should be around 10-20 ppm. Your fish population
might already supply enough through excrements to reach this level, but
with planted tanks you will often need to supplement. Nitrate can be
added through KNO3 (Potassium nitrate) and NaNO3 (Sodium nitrate). The
first one is better to use since it contains Potassium, which plants
also consume in large quantities. Many aquarium gardeners also use a
home-made solution known as PMDD (Poor Mans Dosing Drops) which you can
learn about and even order from the internet.
The best fertilizing and
maintenance regimes depend on many things, like how strong the lights
are, if pressurized CO2 is added, how big the fish bioload is, how big
plant biomass is and how many of them are fast growing ones. To be sure
how to manage your own regime, the best way is to ask questions and
exchange experiences with other hobbyists, for example on aquarium
forums. For my 180 liter low light aquarium, I dose 10 ml of each PMDD
mix on weekly a basis + 10 ml of Tropica Master Grow for iron dosing. I
also connected two bottles of DIY yeast CO2 (one bottle per 90 liter)
to the filter outlet. I do 25% weekly water change.
In summary, I find silent
cycling a very natural way to start an aquarium, with a beautiful tank
decoration resulting as an added bonus. In fact, if you have doubts on
how to aquascape your tank, take a look at other people's tanks in the Tank of the Month section for ideas and inspiration. Remember, our hobby can and should be joyful, rather than frustrating. Happy fish/plant-keeping! :D
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