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fishless cycle but with turtles

Discussion in 'General Plant Topics' started by t2lieu, Apr 23, 2008.

  1. t2lieu

    t2lieu Junior Poster

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    Hi what i get from a cycled tank is that it requires time, surface area for bacteria to colonize, and fish waste

    so i thought generally turtle waste approximately the same as fish waste

    so would it be possible to have a not so much the "fishless" cycle but a turtle cycle to start a tank?

    Let me know what you guys think

    Thanks for reading,

    TL
     
    #1 t2lieu, Apr 23, 2008
  2. VaughnH

    VaughnH Lifetime Charter Member
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    Plant the tank heavily with fast growing stem plants from the beginning and you don't need to cycle it at all. At most you need to use just a few fish in it for a couple of weeks or so, then you can treat it as fully cycled and add the fish you want. The whole point behind cycling a tank is to avoid a buildup of ammonia and/or nitrites, which would harm the fish. The fast growing stem plants will use those nitrogen compounds for food, preventing them from building up at all.
     
    #2 VaughnH, Apr 23, 2008
  3. t2lieu

    t2lieu Junior Poster

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    any chance i can go without the massive load of plants instead go for a medium one?
    i'm limited on my budget suppose i increase the temperature of the water and increase oxygen to the tank?

    I'm trying to build some bacteria cultures?
     
    #3 t2lieu, Apr 24, 2008
  4. tkos

    tkos Junior Poster

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    If you use a lesser amount of fast growing plants then I would guess that you would need to use less fish and test to make sure that ammonia and nitrite aren't becoming an issue.

    The fishless cycle would work as well, but from what I understand you should add plants during a fishless cycle that uses ammonia. Turtle poo may be a different story.
     
    #4 tkos, Apr 25, 2008
  5. Tom Barr

    Tom Barr Founder
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    It's like plowing a field and then only planting 1/2 the field.
    The other parts will get weeds(algae in our case).

    You can clean and add herbivores(weed the field yourself) till things fill in, or use the Dry start method(see article threads), which cycles the bacteria, as well as allows for the foreground plants to fill in nicely,.

    Going cheap on the initial planting is one of the major common mistakes made in new tank start ups.

    Get lots of plants, this is why local clubs and friends can really help when starting a new tank, then it's not so costly and the quality is 5X better than mail order.
    Turtle waste is extremely rich, I'd stay away from that.
    Increasing temp should help, to about 82-84F.

    But the dry start will help a lot, except with some stem plants, swords, Crypts, any foreground weed, all do well, and there's no work involved, just wait 3-6 weeks, then fill the tank, add the stem plants that do not respond well to terrarium culture.

    Since the sediment is saturated, and there's plant roots and other sources of organic nutrients, the bacteria grow much faster and establish larger colonies than that of NH3 based fishless cycling. Once there's enough plant biomass, the plants can take over and really add to the bacterial cycling.


    Regards,
    Tom Barr
     
    #5 Tom Barr, Apr 25, 2008
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