Cycling your new fish tank
Author: kate Date Posted:1 August 2023
CYCLING YOUR NEW FISH TANK
To understand why we need to cycle a fish tank before we add large numbers of fish, you need to understand the nitrogen cycle. Bacteria and plants consume and convert nitrogen compounds from their environment, animals eat the plants and bacteria, and then the plants and bacteria consume the animal’s waste as their food.
This occurs in all fish tanks - you feed your fish, your fish produce waste (ammonia), and then bacteria and plants absorb the toxic waste so that the water is safe for your fish to live in. If you have only recently set up your tank you do not yet have the bacteria to process your fish’s waste and ammonia can build up to lethal levels quickly. This is why it is very important to cycle your tank before you add all of the fish you intend to keep in your aquarium.
- When setting up your aquarium, only add a few fish at the start. And try to add the toughest, most hardy species you plan on keeping first.
- Feed your fish very, very sparingly at first and gradually increase the amount over the next four weeks. The beneficial bacteria feeds on fish waste, but since there isn’t a lot of bacteria in the beginning, you don’t want to overfeed the fish until enough bacteria has grown to take care of their waste.
- You can greatly speed up the aquarium cycling process by adding beneficial bacteria from the get go. You can buy water additives to add bacteria and help speed up the cycle. Such as API Stress Zyme or API Quick Start.
- Measure the water quality using Ammonia test Strips and Nitrate test strips (Or a Master test kit) this should be done every day in the beginning. Whenever you see a detectable amount of ammonia or nitrite (anything above 0.2 ppm), do a part water change to remove the toxic compounds and provide new, clean water for your fish.
The cycle is considered “done” once you are able to feed your fish regular meals for a week, and ammonia and nitrite levels stay at 0 ppm while nitrate levels are above 0 ppm. (At this point, you can begin slowly adding more fish, with some wait time in between – just to ensure the bacterial growth keeps up with the increased waste load.) Nitrate is a safer compound for fish, but once it rises to concentrations more than 40 ppm, it’s time to do a water change to lower the nitrate levels.
