David C

I just bought my new bookshelf tank today and I'll be installing the homemade divider tomorrow. After that I'll of course be preparing for a fishless cycle, but I got an idea. Would it work if i used a dead fish as a source of ammonia and then used safestart to jump start the cycle? I of course wouldn't kill a fish, I would get one from the LFS feeder guppy tank, theres always a ton of dead ones in there. Or i could always go to walmart, I think they have more dead than live ones (its horrible, I HATE that walmart is allowed to sell fish, where are the animal cruelty people?!?). I figured this would be an easy source of ammonia and I could just do a water change and remove the carcass after the tank is fully cycled.

This seems like a good idea, but I'd appreciate anyones so I dont mess up and it takes me two months to cycle the tank.

Finally, would the LFS look at me weird if i went in to buy a dead fish

Blub

Well, you could easily buy one of those mollys who are 'cleaning' the filter. Someone actually said that an LFS employee had told them a dead molly on the filter intake way actually cleaning it!

Lucy

I'd be hesitant to use a dead fish from the fish store. You don't know what you'd be introducing to your water.
Try a raw peice of shrimp instead.

Good luck

David C

i love that someone was dumb enough to think the molly was "cleaning" a filter, lol.

Thanks for the point Lucy, I knew my idea had a hole in it, i just couldnt figure it out on my own. I guess I'll just use the raw shrimp from walmart, that'd work right?

Butterfly

yep but it may smell really bad so be prepared
Carol

jdhef

Just out of curiousity, why not just add fish right away since you are going to use Safe Start?

David C

I used safestart on my 10gal and it was fully cycled in 5 days, but I don't want to go through the all the stress it causes (on me worrying about the fish) so i figured if I just cycled the tank with safestart and then added the fish after the cycle was complete...

Maybe im being a little paranoid, but who knows

jdhef

I might be totally wrong about this, but I was under the impression that Safe Start makes the ammonia and nitrites non toxic to fish during the one week cycle time.

I believe that with Safe Start you aren't even supposed to check your water perameters for one week after set up.

Alessa

you could also use pure ammonia... odorless, faster, cleaner.

David C

I have no idea where to get pure ammonia from, and someone else said you dont check the readings because they'll drive you crazy, so i dont know. I just want to be as nice to my fishies as possible.

Alessa

Pure ammonia you can find at any hardware store.

as long as it is pure ammonia (label doesnt list any other ingredients, has no colorant and does not foam), it will be safe. If you introduce raw shrimp or dead fish not only you'll have horrible odor, dirt, pollution, diseases and many other kind of microorganisms that you dont necessarely want in your tank.

No matter what you use; shrimp, pure ammonia, dead fish, etc... tetra safe start or biospira will give you weird readings. it is just that by adding pure ammonia youre cutting on the ammount of unnecessary stuff going into your tank.

Shawnie

your not totally wrong..but semi-right.. safestart doesnt make it non toxic..neither does bio spira...all ammonia and nitrites no matter what are toxic..it has so many thousands of bacteria that eat up all the ammon n nitrites that they say in 24 hours, its gone...but, if theres a bad batch, or even a lil bit of error in the refrigeration, all that changes and from experience myself, id use both of them again, but fishless and with a piece of raw shrimp so I dont get that rare instance of something going wrong...I think most of safestarts and bs products assume your tank is new, no ammonia or nitrites to begin with, hence the fish addition for those things at the same time, are what they say to do....my luck isnt the best so im sticking solely to fishless LOL

fishydude

No need to worry about a bad batch cause the new safestart and biospira have an unrefrigerated shelf life. It really works.

kacie

I ordered it too but will it work with my mid-cycle tank?

Red1313

I don't see why they shouldn't... but I've never used either. I did order a bottle off of aquariumplants.com mostly b/c i want it and also to see if I can actually get my hands on it up here.

Christian Patti

Safestart didn't work very well for me. Took 2 weeks and $30 worth of the stuff. Didn't work very well and the fish saw some ammonia. I would never use it or reccomend it to anyone. Go fishless or seed a sponge in an established tank.

jsho

Safe start works fine in my opinion. You cant overload a tank to fast though. I started by putting pure ammonia in for a week, followed by safe start. Added the fish later that day and had no problems.

cg49me

If you're going to use SafeStart, make sure there's a rather large source of ammonia to begin with. It has live bacteria in it, and if there's no ammonia source, the ammonia-eating bacteria will die off, which in turn will cause the nitrite-eating bacteria to die off. Also, if it's going into a 220gal (I'm so freaking JEALOUS!!), you're going to need a TON of the stuff - upwards of $100 worth.

Good luck!

bryan87

i used it in my 75 gal bass tank. after one week ammonia is at 4 and nitrites just showed up at .25. i just and prime every day to detox it but leave it available to the bacteria. one 10 inch bass has alot of waste though.

bryan87

oh and make sure not to do any water changes unless it has finished!

David C

This was a pretty old thread that somehow got revived. I used safestart with excellent results on my 6.6gal and my 55gal. I'm going to be using media from my 55gal to start the 220gal so it's pre-seeded. Sorry if this confused anyone.

omnitheforsaken

I've used TSS, ordered it online. What I didn't know when I ordered it, which I wish I would've, were the directions. I ordered two big bottles, 1 to keep just in case, and one to use for 4 different tanks plus hopefully have some left over.

They came in the mail finally and I read the instructions. They tell you to use the whole bottle on day 1 and that one big bottle treats up to 75 gal.

Great... so I had to use a whole bottle on my 10 gal tank I was setting up. Big waste of money there.

I don't know if the bacteria will live after you've opened the bottle but if you want to go by the instructions on the bottle, I'd say buy a size appropriate bottle of TSS keeping in mind that the big bottle treats 75 gal.