No, not riding one. My Q is, will rotting plant material get the bacterial process going. I read with much interest about the pros and cons of the live fish style versus amonia, will leaves from aquarium plants do it, or even dirty water from my filter or water from siphon cleaning the tank. Thanks, Tony

From my understanding, decaying leaves from plants release nitrates, not ammonia while decaying, so just using that wouldn't start or maintain a cycle. Also, you could use old water, but I'm not sure that there is much bacteria, if any, actually contained in the water itself, compared to filter media.

Tony I use the water from the filter after it is washed in it. It is very dirty looking but has excellent live bacteria. Never lost a fish using this method.

That was my prefered method if it worked, now I know it does, thats which way I will go, Thanks to those who replied. Tony

Pretty much what he said

Using just water you have syphoned from your old tank will not yield much, if any, bacteria.

Generally speaking when seeding a tank, the order in which contains the most bacteria as your source is something loosely like this;

(established) Biological filtration media - Your bio balls or noodles.
(established) Mechanical filtration - Your sponges.
Substrate
Ornaments
Actual water

The reason the water contains little is because the nitrifying (specificially the Nitrospira bacterium - the one that converts the Nitrites into Nitrates) bacteria has been proven to be sticky and adheres to the surfaces like glue. This is the exact reason why gravel vaccuming and UV does not interfere with the colonies.

For the *best* results, I would suggest grabbing some biological media from your old tank and putting it into your new one. Otherwise, if that is not possible, I would suggest putting some of this filtration media into an filter bag and just dumping it into the aquarium. It wont look pretty.. but would work a treat.

Jono

Sorry for the dbl post; but in addendum to that there are generally some terms bantered around when it comes to cycling a tank;

I feel it is important to clarify them (without going into detail at all as I have been there and done that...)

First up, you have seeding that is where you are introducing live bacteria into your cycle to assist in the speed up of it from what I have said above.

You then have your 2 type's of cycling

Fish-in - where you use the fish to generate the ammonia required to continue and extend the cycle

Fishless - Where you introduce another source of ammonia (pure ammonia/prawn head - whatever) required to continue and extend the cycle

You can use Seeding with both a Fish-in and Fishless cycle to assist in speeding up the process.

Hi,

I'd really appreciate a bit of hand on this, setting up tank for cichlids electric yellows and couple of others.

So if I have a 4 foot tank by 38cm wide and 35 high and and wash my filter media out from 2 x 2 foot tanks into a bucket with say a couple of litres of exisiting tank water, then pour all that in my 4 footer....

Could you give me an indication of roughly how long it would be before I can put fish in it ?
Would it help if I rinse more filters in there a few days later or not ?
Also I have 4 small mollies swimming around in there now.

Thank you

if u got a new filter put that in the old tank first then next w/c put that and 1/3 of the water out of ur old tank into the new one run it for about a week and a half with the mollies in there and u should be sweet to throw more fish in TEST THE TANK WATER FIRST