Tetra Food In A Bag Of Tights. Have I Finally Gone Insane?

Hello again,
I'm obviously very new to all of this. Found myself stuffing the sock of an old pair of tights with some tetra pellets this morning and thought, short of swinging it round my head, I really have reached new levels of surreal.
But as I'm going away next week during my first tentative fishless cycle (with TSS) I also thought, why not?
Just wondered if this is a done thing to save mess when you don't have ammonia drops to hand?
I poured in about 25 grams of pellets and my tank is 29 gallons, dosed with 100ml TSS five days ago.
The bacterial bloom/cloudiness dissipated after two-three days, I'm wondering if I was too late realising I was supposed to be adding a source of ammonia without fish in the tank after about three days of clear water.
Any input appreciated!
Thanks

 

I think putting the food in the tights is a good idea. But I don't know how effective it will be. The food will break down and leach out of the tights so it will still dirty the tank.

They sell ammonia on amazon or at ace hardware and it saves the mess.

And yes, it was probably too late. If you put the TSS in with no ammonia, the bacteria probably all died. You should re-dose.

 

Thought so! I'll start again tomorrow when the shop opens. If it miraculously happens to be in the middle of a successful cycle, will dosing more TSS disrupt this or do you reckon it doesn't matter? Thanks for the advice!

 

What you're doing is fine; TSS comes with its own stabilized form of ammonia but once that is depleted, you will need an ammonia source to maintain your cycle. The reason people recommend the ammonia drops over this method is because the drops are cleaner and much easier to manage in terms of measured dosing. I'm not sure how much you've loaded your stocking with, but you don't need a ton of fish food; I cycled my 40B with three shrimp pellets in some cheese cloth.

 

Three shrimp pellets in cheese cloth. What a fabulous sentence. Thanks for the advice, that's reassuring! I used about half a 55 gram pot of Tetra sinking pellets in 29 gallon. Looks really sexy hanging in the tank there.
I'm wondering whether to just let it be, test it when I get back next weekend and then maybe re-dose the tank with TSS a couple of hours before collecting the fish? Heard conflicting advice about doing this, but seems to be Tetra's original intention - to do it with fish-in?

 

I think you should test before you leave. Ammonia too high will stall your cycle so I'd shoot to keep it at 2-3PPM. The intention was to use TSS with fish, yes. Your parameters will swing like crazy while its working so hardy fish stand a better chance if you go that route.

 

Got it! I've reserved a black moor, so don't want to stress that guy out with swinging parameters. I'll keep it fishless. Thanks again! Very helpful

 

Good work doing fishless. IMO it makes the cycle much more stress free as you don't have to worry about losing any fish.

 

Yes I really don't want to cause any stress to the fish and certainly don't want to lose any! Thank you