Cycling Your Aquarium
Guide to Completing the Nitrification Cyle

Described here are three different methods to cycle your aquarium.

   You will need to monitor the ammonia and nitrite levels (using test kits) throughout the cycle period, until they are both zero (or very close to zero). When they are both zero, the aquarium is cycled.

Method 1 - Cycling with fish:
  This first method is the classic method used for many years and cycles the aquarium using inexpensive hardy fish.

1. Traditional Method:

1. Have the temperature stablized at 74° to 80° F(26° - 28° C).
2. Place 1 hardy, inexpensive fish for each 2-3 gallons of aquarium water. Inexpensive fish include danios, platys, barbs, mollies, etc. These fish will provide the initial ammonia to get the biological filter started (see Biological filtration above). This should take about thirty days to six weeks.
3. This can be stressful to the fish, especially if you add large numbers of fish. Fewer fish will be less stress as changing water parameters go slower and they have a chance to adjust.
4. After about six weeks, when the aquarium has "cycled", you can add additional fish (see nitrification cycle under Biological filtration above).

Method 2 and 3 - Cycling with out fish:
   These next two methods cycle the aquarium without the use of fish. One is with the use of ammonia, and the other is with the use of fish food.
The following points apply to both of the non-fish methods:

• Higher temperatures of 86° - 95° F ( 30° - 35° C) can be used for optimum bacteria when cycling without fish, but you must stablize the aquarium slowly back to lower temperatures before you add fish.
• You can speed and enhance the nitrification process by introducing a starter culture of bacteria. One way to do this is by is seeding the aquarium with some gravel or filter media with existing bacteria from an established aquarium.Another way is by adding commercial preparations of nitrifying bacteria, there are several different brands available at pet stores.

2. Cycling using ammonia:

1. Introduce pure ammonia to cycle the aquarium. You can buy unscented ammonia with no additives from a supermarket or a bottle of ammonium chloride.
2. Add ammonia from a dropper, 3 - 5 drops per 10 gallons of water per day to get and maintain a reading of 5 ppm.
3. Initially there will be no nitrites. Monitor nitrites daily and continue the daily ammonia dose until you get a nitrite reading. At this point you can reduce the daily amount of ammonia to 2 - 3 drops per 10 gallons. Continue this until both the ammonia test and the nitrite test reads 0 ppm.
4. This method can take as little as three weeks or up to six weeks to complete the nitrification cycle, but adding a starter culture as described above can speed the time up considerably.
5. When the cycle is complete reduce the temperature slowly back to 74° to 80° F(26° - 28° C). Reducing it quickly can stress the bacteria.
6. Do a major water change, about 90%, and add activated carbon to remove any possible additives which might have been in the ammonia.

3. Cycle using fish food:
   We are not as familiar with this process and there is less information available on specific details. Basically it works as follows:

1. You simply feed the tank with a fish food, presumable daily to keep an ongoing decomposing process. As the food decays it will to produce ammonia and get the biological filter started.
2. This method takes about the same amount of time as the fish method above.
3. The main drawback to this method is that it is difficult to get a large enough initial bacteria colony. So when you introduce the fish, they may add a larger ammonia load than the colony can handle. Consequently you may get some additional ammonia and then nitrite spikes, though they should be less dramatic and shorter lived than the initial cycling spikes.
4. Another drawback is that the decaying food, besides producing ammonia, can add other by-products such as phosphates.