Hi Carol,

Usually what I do are fishless cycles on my new tanks using Bio-Spira, or
just some squeezes from a sponge filter in one of my other tanks. You can
use 100% pure household ammonia (comes in clear white bottles, no
sulfactents or detergents) that you can find in the cleaning aisles of most
stores and maintain an ammonia level of 2 parts per million. Use an ammonia
test kit to maintain the water at that level every day throughout the cycle
and monitor it also with nitrite and nitrate test kits. The first strains of
bacteria that convert ammonia to nitrite grow in first, and you'll be able
to see the tank's beneficial bacteria start to consume the ammonia by
converting it into nitrite within a few days. The second strains of bacteria
that convert nitrite to nitrate take a little longer to grow in, and you
will see a large buildup of nitrite over about a two week period. Then,
you'll see a dramatic crash in the nitrite levels and a spike in nitrate.
When you see that nitrite level crash from off the chart nitrite to zero
nitrite and all nitrate, then you know your tank is cycled.

At that point, you can stop dosing the tank with ammonia and add whichever
fish you want. You don't need to worry about subjecting any fish to the
nitrogen cycle and you can introduce all of the fish at the same time if you
wish (useful for semi-aggressives and aggressive fish tanks).

Bio-spira works fine but it relies on the fact that the spores of bacteria
in solution will grow to a population large enough to handle both ammonia
and nitrites before they build up to a level where they become stressful on
your fish. With my own testing (with liquid test kits) i've found that it
does handle ammonia well but not nitrites. In fact, unless it's a very large
tank with very few fish in it or a heavily planted freshwater tank, I
wouldn't suggest anyone believe for a second that using bio-spira is an
"instant" cycle method. It's just another way to seed a biological filter,
which does speed up the process, but isn't instant.

I hope this helps you with your future tank projects.

-Aiptasia

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