new tank

Enzo

i got a new tank today (20g) and i was wondering how long do i let it run before i ad cycling fish?

Trishfish

You should let it run with the heater and filter for a good 24 hours. Do consider fishless cycling though. There's a sticky at the top of the forum.

Enzo

so should i try ghost shrimp? or should i run my filter on my other tank for a bit then uput sum of the water from my old tank into the new one? i cant tranfer gravel because its a totally different color

o and would the ghost shrimp die?

tangy

1-2 days after you set it up, but you could use something else instead of fish, like a raw piece of shrimp or fish from the grocery store, you will save a fish or two a months worth of stress

Enzo

u mean throw raw shrimp into it so itll break down like a dead fish? how would that cycle a tank?

Trishfish

The sticky does a great job explaining everything on cycling.

Enzo

i dont have ammonia and other things to add

tangy

dead pieces of shrimp or fish can and will cycle a tank. their bodies can create bacteria colonies out of their rotting bodies(gross but true) and begin the cycle. in the beginning i had doubts too, but it works and i recommend it to everyone because it saves even the hardies of fish from bad water qualities throwing a ghost shrimp in a cycling tank will kill it, same thing as a piece of raw shrimp, except you kill it for no reason.

Enzo

how long would the cycle work with a dead shrimp?

fish_4_all

http://www.fishforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=3738
This is the sticky which explains it, I hope it does anyway but I will explain a little here about the shrimp/prawn cycling method.

All you need to do is set up the tank, stabilize the temperature, set up the filter and throw in a raw peeled full prawn. The prawn breaks down slowly and creates ammonia which feeds the ammonia eating bacteria. This in tern creates the nitrites which are eaten by their own bacteria. This makes nitrates which are removed by doing water changes.

The whole process when done from scratch without any seeding can take from 6 weeks to 3 months. If you take some gravel from the old tank, wrap it in some nylons and place it on the bottom the bacteria can and should produce faster. This can speed up the whole process to about 3-5 weeks if you are lucky. If you let the whole prawn disintegrate before adding fish it is said that you can add pretty much any bioload you want to because of the massive amounts of bacteria that will grow from such a mega source of ammonia and nitrites.

Hope that helps. I will edit the sticky to say prawn instead of shrimp, is a little confusing now that I have read it for the umpteenth time. And yes I do read it even though I wrote it. Is why I wrote it all down because I would never remember it all myself.