coffeebean

i went with the silent cycle theory on my 55 gallon tank. so far so good.
just curious what others experiences have been with it.

Amanda

Silent cycle?

agabr123

with plants

shadowavenger

I believe its using plants to cycle the tank. they will absorb the toxins and protect the fish while the bacteria develope.

coffeebean

i guess thats a no then. LOL.

this is what i went on:

Then it was discovered that by setting up a tank and filling it full of fast growing stem plants that one could add a medium to large fish load all at once and never see the traditional ammonia or nitrite spikes. The reason for this is simple. The plants love ammonia. So it never gets a chance to kill the fish. Also the plants come covered in beneficial bacteria that will start the traditional cycle.

haedra

While I have read that it works, I was wondering though; if the plants are absorbing those toxins, then how do you build a colony of beneficial bacteria if the plants are "eating" it all? Just curious here, and want to learn more.

coffeebean

well the plants arent absorbing bacteria, just the ammonia. we are 20 days in and my readings are consistantly 0 so far.

haedra

Oh no, I didn't mean "eating" bacteria, I meant "eating" the ammonia. So basically I mean is it just a different balance that is achieved, where the plants are doing most of the work vs the bacteria.

coffeebean

initially yes, bacteria still forms though. maybe slower? donno. i was hoping someone on here has done it and knew more then me, which is not a lot.

haedra

Well the whole thing sounds very interesting! And I hope everything continues to go well.

capekate

What a great idea! I think I will go out and buy a large batch of live plants and add them to my new 125g tank! Not only do they look great, but what a wonderful benefit to having them in the tank.
Best of luck with yours and please keep us posted on your results.

Jonah

The plants are beneficial in 2 ways as you say they extract organic nitrates and phosphates from the water to grow and they also provide additional 'growing space' for the bacteria on their leaves etc.

The bacteria on the leaves when you buy them will be lost when you dip the plants before putting them in the tank to remove the snails you just KNOW are going to be imprted to the tank if you dont.

Quick observation here Kate, and i hope i am not stating the obvious, when you say you will go out and buy some. Like fish plants have specific requirements particularly in relation to light they come from low, med and bright/high light regions.

0.5watt per gal of lighting is low
1.0watt or light is med
and 1.5watt+ is high

As a very general rule

White/cream & green variagation = low light like hostas in the garden they like shade
Solid green Med light
Red/green variagation high lighting

I made that mistake at the beginning in my tanks with some lovely variagated plants under 1.5+ watt per gal lighting and watched them disolve in the tank

capekate

Hi Joe,
thanks for the advice, I do know about the light requirement problem before going out and buying plants for the tank. As I am an avid gardener as well, I do understand the light requirements.
Thanks for advising me on this tho, yes, I agree it would be a shame to go out and buy plants that may require a mod/high light requirements only to see them die off.

haedra

Wish I could try other plants but I'm afraid to.. I kill everything but hornwort.

coffeebean

i wonder how long it would be until i could consider my tank stable.

Jonah

If you can grow Hornwart you should be able to grow this one as well and its quite a nice looking plant

http://www.practicalfishkeeping.co.u...article_id=390

Fla_Larry

i see you have a few responses.
Yes i have run through the silent cycle method. I have also watched and monitored a number of others performing basic fish less cycles, some accidental fish in cycles etc, and even an accidental silent cycle.

so far my take is the over all simplest method is the fish-less cycle.
no risk of harming any live stock, and it is fairly inexpensive to do, right up to the point of the water changes.

Now to me thats where it starts getting to be to much like work, that said however it does take the edge off of not having any fish in the tank for around a month or so ( the water changes). Now to shorten that period a few have used products like TSS and have been able to add fish at around the 2 week mark. This all worked seeming smooth and easy ( should be a running thread on it )

Silent Cycle:

ok, a bit more work up front, You need to plan tank layout, and desired plantings, you need to plant at least 50% or better with fast growing Stem plants. You need to give them a little time to establish and assure they are stable ( i gave mine 2 weeks ) advantage? at least i got to look at plants, growing etc during that time period. at the 2 week period i added a total of 8 Harlequin Rasbora's, one week later i could have added more, just having issues getting the desired fish. At the one month point, i had still no need for water changes, but had been replacing water lost due to evaporation.

I kept a running spreadsheet of my ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate, pH, and temp. levels

the highest ammonia reading ever attained was .5 PPM( UNCORRECTED FOR TEMP AND PH), Highest nitrite level was 2.0 ppm ( ammonia dropped to 0 ), and Nitrate to 10ppm.
one week after that, levels have held at 0,0,5ppm respectively at one month and 1 week after the addition of the 8 harlequins.

In the silent cycle, you will not experience the spikes that those doing fish-in or out will experience, and short of going way overboard on adding fish, you should be able to safely add many more fish (IN BIOMASS) using the silent cycle, than is recommend in fish-less cycling with out worrying about kicking off a mini cycle ).

The silent cycle uses the plants to perform the bulk of the work that in normal setups is done by bacteria.

Note : this method does not replace the bacteria, just buffers the need to allow them to grow and better match the bioload as it establishes in the tank.

It tends to be more forgiving, BUT you have to keep an eye on your plants.
Now if you are dosing EI, PMDD etc, you have to account for all that and will in all likelihood be doing water changes just like everyone else.

remember in all this YMMV, your setup is not like my setup unless you live right across the street. and then personal preference enters into the equation.

I use Eco complete, i prefer to keep my lighting at around 1.5 WPG, I dose with Excel and flourish, and prefer the AAR dosing method.
I prefer using carbon in my filters, and yes i use a larger filter than would be needed even if i didn't have the tank planted. I run 2 light cycles per day and actively cultivate a small snail colony.

all that said and done, i have found the silent cycle very trouble free, very smooth to accomplish, and very natural for all flora & fauna.

coffeebean

thanks!

kendrid

Here is a great article regarding silent cycling:
http://www.rexgrigg.com/cycle.htm

I plan on doing this with my 29g. I am going to plant it anyway so why not utilize the plants.

coffeebean

that is the article i went by

MrWaxhead

It works very well as long as you use plants that grow real fast. I typically use a filter pad from a already running tank and then plan my plant layout but only to a point. I set up all my hardscape rocks and wood and slow growing plants where I am going to want them to be. Then I set up some stem zones that I plan on keeping long term, but I also add a bunch leach plants that I have no intention of using hornwort etc and let them grow like mad for about a month with about 50% of the fish I plan on being my stock from the start. Then I start adding more stock slowly and take some of the filler plants out and trade out some of the filler plants for long term goal plants untill I am happy with my final scape and fish load.

Any tank I have started for the last couple years has beeb done this way with great results, and I don't have to look at a empty tank with a peice of shrimp rotting during a fishless cycle. Instead I get to look at a nice planted tank with fish from the get go. With minimal upstart cost as I just borrow plants from other tanks I have running to get up and going. I keep a pair of 29g tanks that are basically plant nursuries with no scape what so ever just to keep my load up for future tanks or friends tanks that are starting up. I didn't know it was called a silent cycle, but I can tell you it works as long as the plants are growing fast. If you have a low light tank with moss and annubis and java fern I would be leary of doing this, but if done right its the only way to go in my mind.

Lymore

Before I even knew what a silent cycle was, I had been accidentally doing it for a few years, with success. I started adding plants to my aquariums when I was 13, and being impatient, I added lots of fish at once, and surprisingly didn't lose any fish. I always liked the look of plants and continued to put plants in all my tanks. it wasn't until a few years later that I realized where my success came from.
So, I'm all for adding plants to aquariums