Nitrogen cycle the fishless way

Aquarist had always been reminded regarding nitrogen cycle either for freshwater aquarium or saltwater aquarium. Is that so important? Well, indeed Nitrogen cycle is one of the most important elements to be taken care of if you really serious about fish well being. Water quality will deteriorates when fish introduced to aquarium. It is inevitable as waste will be excreted from fish as well as from plants and the detritus will decomposed and become toxic waste. 3 stages involved in Nitrogen cycle where nitrifying bacteria will convert ammonia to less harmful nitrites and eventually to nitrates. Thus a colony of nitrifying bacteria is essential to ensure health of the aquarium.

The common way of achieving the nitrogen cycle in newly setup aquarium is by slowly introducing live fish to the aquarium. That natural process normally will take up around 1-1.5 months long. For me, this waiting process is something that really distressing, especially when I’m so eager to house all my fishes into the community tank.

Well, let me introduce another way of achieving nitrogen cycle in shorter time, a method called seeding. With this method, nitrifying bacteria is directly introduced into newly setup aquarium immediately in colony rather that let it being grown slowly. Several methods can be used to achieve the seeding effect and the best part is all these methods can be mixed together to enhance the effect. The first method is by transferring some bio-material from a well established aquarium, either from your others aquarium or from your friends aquarium. The most common place to get the bio-material is from filter, extract some of it and put it inside a mesh. Another way is by transferring live rock or sand or even plants from well established aquarium and mixed with new one. Some dealer may sell such items, but cautions need to be taken as there is no way to know the source is free of other harmful bacteria. I had also come across some aquarist directly transfer the current used filter to newly setup aquarium and let it operates. Nowadays, shop dealer will sell booster product containing colonies of nitrifying bacteria eg Cycle etc to be added directly into newly setup aquarium. This will definitely give a jump start to nitrogen cycle, but need to fork out with some small amount of money.

Regardless of which fishless nitrogen cycle methods to be chosen and how short the nitrogen cycle will be, it will still boiled down to how good is the setup. For more information, please find at http://www.101tropicalfish.com/aquarium-tank-setup/nitrogen-cycle.php.