Tips on nitrogen cycle

When setting up new aquarium, the first thing beginner always neglected is nitrogen cycle. It is a wrong perception that once the aquarium is filled with water, we can immediately introduce all the fish and plants/live corals into the tank. At beginning stage, the most lacking element is good nitrifying bacteria that keep the water quality at balance. It is imperative that fishes and plants excreted waste. Once the waste decomposed, it will formed toxic ammonia if unattended. Thus, it requires an agent, which is nitrifying bacteria, to convert ammonia to less harmful nitrates. To build the colony of nitrifying bacteria, below are some tips for beginners:

a.) Starter fish

This is a traditional way of cycling aquarium by introducing more hardy fish to aquarium before adding other community fishes. A suitable hardy fishes are inclusive danios and platys for freshwater aquarium or angle fish for saltwater aquarium. The hardy fishes will provide initial ammonia to get the biological filtration started. This is an inexpensive way to achieve full cycle. The only draw back is that it would require at least 4-6 weeks before introducing new fishes to the aquarium.

b.) From established tank

This method will provides a quick jump start to cycling your newly setup aquarium by using part of established tank and transfer them to newly setup aquarium. You can either transfer some gravels to be mixed with newly added gravels or filtration medium to be mixed with new one. The original source of gravels or filtration medium will contains nitrifying bacteria and all these bacteria will be directly introduced to the newly setup aquarium. This seeding method will be able to reduce the cycling duration significantly to at least half of traditional fish method.

c.) Commercial alternatives

Nowadays, there are some commercial products that contain colonies of nitrifying bacteria that can be directly introduced to newly setup aquarium. Products like Cycle and Fritz will act as booster as it contained starter culture and can be available in any shop dealer. One draw back to this method is freshness of the culture. It will only be effective if it is still within its freshness date and might be a bit more expensive.

d.) Fish food

Many people think that this might be ridiculous way as why feeding an empty aquarium with fish food? In fact, the whole nitrogen cycle is all about organic compound being decomposes to become ammonia. Adding fish food to newly setup aquarium is the same as adding starter fish. Once the food started to decay, it will produce ammonia and allow biological filtration to start. The duration of cycling is the same as starter fish.

Conclusion

Regardless of which methods to be used, all of them will be able to achieve the nitrogen cycle for newly setup aquarium. It is only the matter of whether you want it to be quicker or cheaper. The choice is yours.