The Puffer Forum

i need to really know how to cycle the tank before i let my puffer in there because i dunt wanna kiill it i'm just geting ready ahead of time so when i get a puffer i noe wat to do

so every1 said that in cycling u need live bacteria is that tru and where can i get it

There is a good article on fishless cycling on here.

Check the library, It has a very good article.

Live bacteria build up in your filter and basically feed on the waste that is pulled through the filter. They build up over time, however, there are some products on the market that claim to have "live" bacteria to get your tank going. I think there's more products in the US than here in the UK.

The ones I know of in the UK are: Cycle, Safestart & StressZyme - no idea how effective they are though.

I don't believe that 'Cycle' by Hagen does any good. I used that for quite a while and didn't see any good results from using it. I don't think it's got any "bacteria" in it at all, although it may say it does. There used to be a product called 'Bactinettes' and if you can get ahold of it, it works very well. It was kept refrigerated and would get your tank going right from the start. But I am not sure you can get it anymore. I know alot of people on here advocate using SafeStart, but I can't really say. I have used it, but not in the sense of finding out if it can get a tank going from scratch. I didn't see any great results from StressZyme either. Personally I think all of those are more water conditioners than bacteria boosters, but that's just my take on it. I prefer to use 'Prime' by Seachem for a good water conditioner, you use a fraction of what you would use if you were using Cycle.

schismy007 wrote: I prefer to use 'Prime' by Seachem for a good water conditioner, you use a fraction of what you would use if you were using Cycle.

Wish i would have read that before, Im using stresszyme...Thought i was the only one not seeing a diffirence.

StressZyme will definitely not cycle a tank, and neither will Cycle, from what others on this site say. In the U.S. at least, use Tetra SafeStart for freshwater, and Bio-Spira for saltwater. They're both rather expensive. (Actually you should just use live rock for saltwater.) I've used SafeStart, and it works...you will go through a short cycle, but it won't be severe like normal and most fish should live through it. I've also used Bio-Spira, and it works to cycle a tank very quickly too, but it's way better and faster to use live rock in saltwater. There's something else by Dr. Tim's, and according to others on this site, it works, but I've never tried it.

Whatever you do, don't buy the puffer until the tank is cycled.

Like the previous posters wrote, check out that article in the library. Basically it boils down to this: you have to choose between fishless cycling, using a few fish to cycle, or buying one of the products made for quick cycling a tank. First two are slow and cheap, last one is fast but expensive.

Most products for adding bacteria to the filter, does not work. There are exceptions, but I don't know how many you can find in Europe (I've never bought any, so I haven't checked it). Some of the so called filter starters, removes ammonia, and in that way seems to work, if you only have a look at water tests. I suspect that it actually can slow down the cycle prosess, as there's less for the bacteria to feed on, but that's just my theory. I haven't tested it.

The best way to cycle a tank is to do it like describe in this article. That also means that you need a little patience before adding any fishes. There are shortcuts though. If you already have a cycled filter in another tank, you can steal some of the mud in the filter, and add it to the uncycled filter. That brown mud will contain bacteria, and will kick start a new filter. Preferably I would still wait for two weeks before adding any fish to a kick started filter, but I have been successful with adding fish pretty quickly. But I wouldn't dare to do it, unless I know my fishes very well (because I can spot problems quickly when I know how they usually behave), and not without a test kit at hand, to monitor the situation. There's also a short cut in putting a cycled filter in the tank together with the uncycled one. In that case, I wouldn't remove the cycled filter any earlier than two weeks.

I didn't see that this was posted under brackish puffers, so I guess it's a brackish tank. It's not so easy to use the short cuts when cycling the filter in a BW tank. In that case, you need to use a cycled filter that is used in a tank with the same SG as the one you want to cycle, or the difference in SG will kill the bacteria. But you still can use the fishless cycling.

So what do we use, when none of the bottled bacteria work? I don't know anyone with a BW tank & the lfs that I will get the fish from, use undergravel filters, so there is nothing I can have from them. Will the bacteria still build up, albeit very very slowly? I have bottled ammonia to use.

Fishless cycling and patience (see the link in my first post). The fishless cycling will work just as good in BW as in FW.

Even without a source of bacteria?