Margolis wrote:
"Elaine T" wrote in message
...

You know, you can take some old filter media like spent carbon, a worn
out sponge or cartridge, or some biomedia from one of your established
tanks and put it in your new filter for a few weeks. You will transfer
enough bacteria to keep fish immediately with no cycle. Just be sure
the "donor" tank is healthy.



Not quite true. You can seed a filter to speed up the cycle, but it still
has to cycle and will cycle. It will just do it faster since it has "seed"
bacteria to get things started. The fishless cycle is still the way to go
until it is COMPLETELY cycled.

I beg to differ. I have a month-old carbon bag from an Aquaclear on an
established tank and put it in the new filter of a new tank and added a
few fish. I never saw ammonia or nitrite in that tank. The next time I
was planning a tank, I put extra bio media in the filter of my largest
tank for a month and transfered that to the new filter. Again, no
ammonia or nitrite. This was a Tanganyikan tank and I had to stock
pretty heavily right away too. What, exactly do you mean by COMPLETELY
cycled?

There's a craze for fishless cycling now that is IMO completely
unnecessary. A properly managed tank with a generous load of bacteria
on filter media from an established tank does not "cycle" or stress fish
at all. The fishkeeper must simply consider how many bacteria have been
added and stock accordingly, giving the bacteria time to reproduce as
the tank is filled.

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__ Elaine T __
__' http://eethomp.com/fish.html '__