new fresh water tanksetup-cycling

Question
I have read up on cycling a new aquarium. I have a ten gallon tank and plan to have a fresh water tropical fish. Could you please advise best way to cycle? I read about biospira by marineland ever heard of it? Any advice would be great.

Answer
Good evening Cindy,

Bio-Spira from Marineland is a revolutionary product, the first of its kind to actually deliver instant results. Since it's refrigerated, as long as it has been kept refrigerated (no way to really tell, you'll just have to trust the local fish store) then it effectively introduces live beneficial bacteria to your aquarium. You could literally purchase fish on the same day of aquarium startup, if you use Bio-Spira.

For a 10 gallon tank, I would be a little reluctant to purchase the $20 product. If you need it shipped to you, double that! (It needs to be shipped overnight in order to arrive chilled.) If money is no object, Bio-Spira is definitely useful and efficacious. No other product in the U.S. can instantly cycle your tank the way Bio-Spira can. The liquid products Cycle and Stability have mixed reviews - they may help, they may not help - similar to some herbal remedies, it's hard to say whether they really do any good.

What I would do if I were you is use the fishless cycling method of introducing an organic ammonia source. Either feed your tank a teeny pinch of flakes each day for a week, OR drop a piece of cocktail shrimp (maybe 1/2) and let it degrade for a week. Make sure your heater, filter - and air pump/aerator if you are using one - are running. I find it helpful to bump up the temperature to 84-86 degrees during this time. Just remember to turn it back down when you are ready to add fish! Most importantly, keep an eye on your water parameters by using a reliable water test kit. As you may know, ammonia and nitrites must be 0 ppm for a tank to be cycled. These levels, if detectable at all, are toxic! Nitrates should show up after about a week, perhaps a bit longer. You can read lots more on fishless cycling by typing those two words into google.com. Many will discuss using pure ammonia to cycle a tank...I haven't personally used this technique and would prefer not to. You can also type these two words into the search engine at wetwebmedia.com. Happily, there's lots written about the subject nowadays.

Once you have an established aquarium, cycling is super simple. Just take the filter media off of an established aquarium, swap it out with the brand new media in the new tank, and within a couple of days, the tank is cycled! If you have a friendly local fish store whom you trust, you may even ask them for a bit of used filter media or floss in a bag with water. They may or may not be happy to oblige.

I hope that helps! Check out this website for more suggestions on stocking a 10 gallon aquarium:
http://freshaquarium.about.com/cs/qa/a/qa016.htm
The main site has information that beginner or advanced aquarist alike would find useful.

Take care,
Nicole