What is “Cycling”?

A “cycled aquarium” is a tank that has established bacterial colonies to process fish waste, in the form of ammonia, into nitrates.  It is very important for aquariums with fish to be cycled, as ammonia is toxic to fish.  Adding fish to un-cycled aquaiums will generally result in most or all of the fish dying.

What cycling is NOT

Despite the bad advice of so many pet store employees, cycling does NOT mean adding water to the aquariums and letting it sit and filter for a few days.  Doing that can be useful to make sure your equipment doesn’t die right away, but does nothing to cycle the tank.

How to Cycle a Tank

There are three methods for cycling:

• Fishless cycling
• Fish-in cycling
• Seeding a tank

EVERYONE who ever keeps fish has used one of those methods.  Those that are not aware of the choice have chosen fish-in cycling by default.  Read the rest of this entry »