"Dick" wrote in message
...
On Thu, 20 Jan 2005 09:58:09 GMT, "soup"
wrote:


Have googled for aquarium cycling and there seems
to be 301,000 different opinions on how to do it.
A straw poll, how many believe in the chemical
approach and how many in hardy fish and does
anyone have a method involving black cats and
ouija boards ?.

As I understand it "cycling" is too get the level
of good bacteria up so they can "eat" fish waste
and convert it into nitrites then convert these
nitrites to nitrates.

I am the voice of "don't add chemicals if possible." I have 5 tanks
ranging from 10 to 75 gallons. I always start with 3 to 5 fish. I
also add plants because I have a ready surplus in my existing tanks.
The "cloudy" phase lasts for weeks. I always feel great relief when
the water clears. I do change water 20% twice weekly, but I do not
treat the new water except to bring the new water close to the tank
temperature. Not only do I not trust the chemicals, I distrust me to
administer them properly. I killed several fish and burned several
more adjusting the pH. That was almost 2 years ago, I never figured
what I did wrong, but it made my mind up, I am more dangerous than my
tap water is.



Here here Dick, I've gone from 20 gal to 75 to 160 over the years and never
used chemicals. And the only time I ever really lost alot of fish was the
freak summer we had over here two years ago, and when the valve on my CO2
injection went mad and crashed my pH.

When I did my 75 gal from scratch, 8 hardies in, 10 % water changes every
couple of days and that was it for about three weeks and then added the fish
slowly. I don't know how you can go wrong with it, but someone will have had
bad experience doing a 'live' cycle.

I personally think and from what I've read you are more likely to screw up,
and never get the nitrogen cycle to stabilise using chemicals over fish.

for the original poster, spot on with what happens, I don't know if you have
already read it but I suggest the Krib faq, google it.

A