Cycling a new tank? Sal****er mollies available!

"Racf" wrote in message
...

Not sure, but it may be that cycling a Salt Water setup may be a
different matter.....than fresh...I know really nothing about Salt Water
aquaria.......except the pH is like 9 and they use stuff like live rock
and sand....it may be that dumping a lot of ammonia in there would not
be a good thing......but I really do not know.....

Mollies have been a standard for quite a while for a number of
reasons.....


I'm just the opposite! I know little about freshwater aquaria, but I'm
pretty sure ammonia can be used to cycle them too. My aquariums, including
the 5-gallon, are all sal****er. I have the 5-gallon, a 29-gallon with
10-gallon sump/filter, and a 120-gallon with a 30+ gallon
sump/filter/refugium, 250 lbs live rock, and 220 lbs live sand. Normal pH
for marine systems is about 8.2-8.3.

I'm a staff diver at the Aquarium of the Americas here in New Orleans. One
of the curators told me that they, like most public aquariums, cycle new
tanks by adding ammonia. They use ammonium chloride, which is a commercially
available solution, but the clear household ammonia is cheap and works
perfectly. The technique is the same.

Some people just use a raw shrimp to produce the initial ammonia. That works
too, but I prefer the clear ammonia. To me it's cleaner and less smelly,
plus you can measure exactly how much ammonia is being added.

NOTE TO ANYONE PLANNING TO USE HOUSEHOLD AMMONIA FOR CYCLING A TANK: BE SURE
YOU BUY AMMONIA WHICH IS CLEAR AND CONTAINS ONLY DI WATER AND AMMONIA. DO
NOT USE THE YELLOW VARIETY, WHICH IS VERY COMMON IN MANY STORES. IT CONTAINS
LEMON SCENT AND COLORING. BE CAREFUL, AS I HAVE RECENTLY SEEN CLEAR
AMMONIA WHICH ALSO CONTAINS OTHER ADDITIVES, SO READ THE LABEL CAREFULLY!

I think mollies have been used largely because they're cheap. Since all that
is needed is a source of ammonia, be it household ammonia, ammonium
chloride, decaying shrimp, or live rock, there is no reason whatsoever to
use a live animal.Even if a fish is inexpensive, I think it's unethical and
inhumane to expose it to the deadly poison of ammonia, given the simple and
economical alternatives. Besides, it's hard to beat the cost of a 99-cent
bottle of ammonia!

Fish used for cycling often die. Even if they survive, and appear unharmed
afterwards, they aren't. Ammonia causes irreversible gill damage, thus
permanently injuring the fish and shortening its life span.

I'm not a PETA activist or anything, it's just that wasting an animal like
this is totally unnecessary. The idea that doing so is required for tank
cycling went by the wayside long ago. There's a lot of information out there
on fishless cycling, and all serious aquarists now use some variation of
such methods.

--

Greg Bunch
gbundersea AT cox DOT net
http://www.gbundersea.com
Creator of the Digital Lens Dock,
MXTENDER Optical Strobe Cable System
for the Sea&Sea MX-10, and the Save-A-Lens Kit
for MX-10 and Motormarine