I have to agree with Byron on this one, with one exception... there are some plant species that prefer to feed on nitrate and will wither and die without enough nitrate for food, such as hornwort or naja grass. The key in using this method is in understanding the plants and the balance needed for plants and fish (waste). It takes a large amount of plants to utilize a small amount of waste. Thus, a 55 gallon tank with 3 - 4 bunches of plants in it is not a "fully planted" tank and cannot utilize waste from a full population of fish. I have seen many references to people keeping planted tanks and see a lack of understanding in what makes up a "fully planted" tank vs just a planted tank. A tank with live plants in it (any number) is considered a "planted tank", while a tank heavily stocked with plants (ie. a 55 gallon with 20+ bunches of plants) would more be considered a "fully planted" or "heavily planted" tank.
I'm wondering if Byron has any photos to share of one of his fully planted tanks for reference?
It should also be noted that plants also being in the nitrifying bacteria with them, be it in small amounts. When plants come from a cycled environment their leaves, stems, and even roots serve as surface area within the tank, and thus will hold a small population of bacteria that helps to start out the cycling process in a new tank as long as they don't come into contact with chlorine/chloramines which would kill the bacteria. For this reason, when I rinse new plants, I do it using tank water that is either established from an existing cycled tank or the new tank that has been treated with water conditioner a few days before the plants are introduced. This helps to preserve that bacteria and thus there is "something" in way of living bacteria to get things started right away. Plants also can give off a limited amount of waste that can create ammonia content, such as that single dying/dead leaf you may find when you purchase the plant. For this reason I tend to leave that minimal "undesirable" leaf here and there, at least until the fish are added to provide a food source for plants and bacteria alike.
Like Byron, this is my preferred method of starting up any new tank and I have been using this method for many yrs without any difficulties or fish losses.
There are multiple safe ways to cycle any tank.. doing a fishless cycle isn't the only one.
Dawn
--- In AquaticLife@yahoogroups.com, "amphibian_ca" <bhosking@...> wrote:
>
> I guess I should have detailed this more, so allow me to expand.
>
> Aquatic plants significantly prefer ammonium as their source of nitrogen and rarely take up nitrate unless the ammonium is not sufficient. When nitrate is taken up, studies have shown that the plants must change it back into ammonium, and this takes additional energy, which is why they prefer ammonia/ammonium. In acidic water, the ammonia produced by fish and bacteria is basically changed into ammonium and the plants take it up directly. In basic water the plants still take up the ammonia but convert it into ammonium. They also have the ability to take up ammonia as a toxin; when I once questioned my colleagues on one of the plant groups if there was a limit to this, Tom Barr mentioned that the plants' ability to take up ammonia was considerable and unless the tank was way out of balance this would never be reached.
>
> In my 15+ years of planted tanks I have set up dozens of new tanks, and reset existing tanks using new substrate and filter media, and always put fish in the tank on day one (having it well planted). I never see ammonia or nitrite above zero, ever. The Nitrosomonas and Nitrospira bacteria do establish, but their numbers are much fewer if there are sufficient plants. The minimal amount of ammonia that somehow manages to get past the plants is so low it cannot be detected with our basic test kits; and of course, nitrite is the same. Another benefit of plants is that nitrite is not a result of their take up of ammonia.
>
> Diana Walstad notes that the plants are in competition with bacteria for the ammonia, and the plants are generally much faster. This is why we do not want to encourage excess biological filtration. Provided there is sufficient light intensity to drive photosynthesis, and assuming the other 16 nutrients are available, plants will win out. I fully agree that the fish load must be in balance with the plant load. But this is fairly easy to achieve, if one uses fast-growing plants such as stem plants and especially floating plants which are fast assimilators of nutrients including ammonia/ammonium, and the initial fish stocking is low.
>
> Byron.
>
> --- In AquaticLife@yahoogroups.com, sevenspringss@ wrote:
> >
> > Byron,
> >
> > While aquatic plants will consume a fair portion of the nitrate being
> > produced, there are also many which prefer consuming ammonia and nitrite over
> > nitrate. Still, depending on the bioload and the flora to fauna balance, they
> > can rarely be depended upon to maintain a low enough ammonia level not toxic
> > to fish when this waste product peaks around the ten day period; likewise
> > for the expected nitrite spike within the 20 day period. Live plants will
> > certainly help towards this end, in cycling a tank, but unless the tank is
> > loaded up enough with plants in comparison to the amount of fish mass present,
> > the organic wastes can rise beyond the fish's tolerance -- especially during
> > the nights (of the 10th to 12th days), the time when plants don't uptake
> > foods because of not being able to synthesise them in the dark. There can be
> > a fine line in this balance of fish and plants, which cannot be trusted to
> > fall back on until the nitrifying bacteria populate in sufficient amounts to
> > control the spiking of the organic wastes.
> >
> > Ray</HTML>
> >
>
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