My cycling experiment....

chipmaker

Active Member
I am against using live fish or any other critter to start a cycle. I sure as heck do not think using dead raw shrimp is a good way either due to excessively long cycle times and high ammonia and nitrite levels, and the smell and nasty water it makes. I do not believe the cycle starter stuff you buy is worth it either as if your gonna use live rock nothing more than live rock is needed to get it going.
SInce I am a lover of 2 gal and smaller PICO tanks, and I happen to h ave a few identical 1.6 gal tanks unused, I decided to do an experiment.
All tanks are identical in capacity and brand, lighting, and filtration. All are in a fairly constant temperature environment in the same room. I used IO salt, with a sg of 1.025. Temps are 79 deg +- 1 deg.
The sand I used is the white marine sand (non aragonite) which was at one time in a tank and since removed, and simply placed in a bucket and allowed to dry. I mixed it up and divided it into equal amounts for each tank. Each tank has a 1" sand bed. I am using paver type bricks that are approx 4 x 4 x 2" and are made of relatively pourous concrete, natural color. One brick in each tank.
One tank has a dead shrimp, one tank I used a small golf ball size piece of fully cured live rock that I removed from my main tank, another has non detergent ammonia, and yes, one tank I merely used some urine in it. As behind the times as USENET is, there is stil a lot of knowledgeable folks that use it. There was quite an extensive thread on cycling fresh water tanks, and urine was one of the items that realy did the job without a mess, and thats the only reason I am going to try it. Its about thew same as what the one LFS shop owner told me in regards to starting cycles with shrimp...may as well take a wizz in the tank and save the shrimp to eat.......
I took reading of everthing necessary prior to adding live rock piece and shrimp etc and all are the same. 24 hours later the tank with shrimp in it has already reached a .50 ammonia level with the tank with urine close to the same number, and the ammonia tank a bit higher than all of them., The one with live rock is at the lowest ammonia level so far but it is going up.
I just believe live rock and live rock only should be used to cycle a tank along with live sand or dead sand.....no additives and the tank will cycle faster and not reach such high amounts and be a far healthier tank in the end, and require less work during the cycle as well. Time will tell. As far back i time as Alabama is, none of the lfs recomend using dead shrimp to cycle a tank either, nor live fish, just live rock, and of courtse they want to sell the stuff in a bottle which is probably not much more than ammonia or some other organic material that starts to decay without making a mess like shrimp.
 

chipmaker

Active Member
Originally Posted by ninjamini
Dude, you went PP in your tank. Thats sick. You need :help: .

Its all in the name of science..........

5cc of urine in a 1.6 gal tank is nothing really. Did you know urine is pretty darn sterile. Old timers I worked with used to urinate on any cuts etc they got while working. I thought it was odd, but heard it form lots of old timers........Its no different than how a septic tank works, it takes all that human waste and the good bacteria breaks it down, and out of the field pipes runs clean clear water.....which is high in nitrates, so cycling a tank is akin to a properly functioning septic tank.......
 

jurichar

Member
Chip is right....Im a Dr. urine is sterile 99% of the time. Unless a patient has a UTI or Kidney infection, and even then usually you will see "casts" not live viable bacteria. I dont understand how urine would be effective?
 

viper_930

Active Member
The thing is how well is each tank cycled?
The bacteria produced in the cycle must have enough food to feed off of to grow a large population. The food would be the ammonia and nitrite. The test with which live rock was added did create ammonia and eventually nitrite, but why do you really think that was enough? Correct me if I'm wrong, but this would mean according to you only trace amounts of ammonia and nitrite are needed to deem a tank fully cycled after they drop to 0. The bacteria can feed off of the trace amounts, but the point of having a cycle process is to build up the population.
Also, the sand used isn't live after it's dried, and it probably had some die-off in it to contribute to the ammonia.
JMO, but I'd choose to be patient and cycle a tank good using the shrimp or pp methods rather than cutting the cycle short with some LR. A good amount of fresh and fully cured LR with LS will work to cheat the cycle, but not a little piece.
 

rabid frog

Active Member
I used 110 lbs of lr to cycle my tank. All seems to be fine. The bonus of using that lr was that I ordered it online and by the time it got to me (2 day Shipping) it had plenty of die-off to start the ammonia in my tank. So in a way it was uncured once it reached me I guess... :thinking:
 

danedodger

Member
Very interesting thread, chipmaker!!! Thanks! Keep the discussion going and please, let us know what you're finding!
(Don't be so sqeamish, ninjamini!! One man's yucky is another man's gold...or something like that
)
 

coachklm

Active Member

Originally Posted by DaneDodger
(Don't be so sqeamish, ninjamini!! One man's yucky is another man's gold...or something like that
)

if it is ....they need to drink more water..
 

danedodger

Member
Uuuuhhhh thanks so much for pointing out the completely unintentional and very YUCKY awful pun contained in there, coachKLM!!! Man, and I was so happy being ignorant on that one... :hilarious
 
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