With respect, this argument does not hold scientific scrutiny in a couple of areas.
First, some ammonia will get past the plants and the bacteria will be established though at lower levels than if no plants were present. If one establishes the bacteria via a "normal" cycle, and then added plants later, the plants would still outcompete the bacteria for the ammonia/ammonium and the bacteria would die off accordingly. The end result in either case is basically the same. But you have not had to "cycle" initially with live plants and thus avoided either detriment to fish or messing around with some form of fishless cycling. And the hundreds of natural planted tank aquarists with successful healthy fish tanks shows that this does and will work.
Second, plants must have ammonium. As I mentioned previously, nitrate will be used, but for many plants only when ammonium/ammonia is not sufficient on its own. If you check with Seachem, you will find that their nitrogen supplement has both the ammonium and nitrate forms. Plants have to spend energy to change the nitrate back into ammonium, and they prefer assimilating ammonium/ammonia to doing this. There are scientific studies proving this, so it is not my guesswork. Walstad cites them in her book if interested. And several acknowledged planted tank sources maintain the same. High tech systems such as Amano's that need to dose high amounts of nitrogen obviuosly will use nitrate as the safer compared to adding ammonia/ammonium, but this is not because plants prefer the nitrate.
Third, Flourish Excel is a liquid carbon supplement, not nitrogen, so this is a very different issue. And I do not recomend using Excel or API's Carbon Booster, as both are toxic chemicals that will kill some plants outright, and can kill fish and bacteria if overdosed; the toxicity fact sheet on these products is worth reading.
Byron.
--- In AquaticLife@yahoogroups.com, sevenspringss@... wrote:
>
> Byron,
>
> The problem with "cycling," using plants consuming ammonia/ammonium is that
> the nitrogen cycle will usually never get establish, as they'll be largely
> starved out. As you said yourself, the plants will out-compete the
> nitrifying bacteria for food, especially the Nitrosomas and Nitrospira (those
> bacteria which feed directly only on ammonia).
>
> In those cases where a nitrogen cycle does get establish, this would only
> occur when there is too little plant life available in the aquarium to
> prevent the ammonia from spiking. In which case, a spike in ammonia -- and a
> sufficient population of Nitrosomas and Nitrospira enabling the conversion of
> sufficient ammonia to nitrite, to feed and establish large enough populations
> of Nitrobacters and Nitrospina -- is the only way a substantial enough
> cycle is to be established to constantly convert the organic waste of a normal
> bioload of fishes to ensure the Free Ammonia level never reaching toxicity.
>
> But to get back to using plants. While we know many aquatic plants will
> feed on ammonia, we also know that the presence of ammonia is not needed for
> plants to thrive. I'm sure you must know, that plants can utilize other
> foods, nitrate not being adverse to their needs. There are also food
> supplements such as Flourish Excel, which are used by many successful plant growers --
> Takashi Amano being just one of them. It would be infinitely more
> beneficial both for growing plants while assuring the establishment of a nitrogen
> cycle for the fishes in the same tank, to start the majority of the plants
> only after the cycle has become established via nitrifying bacteria.
>
> With plants otherwise consuming ammonia, it's difficult, if not impossible
> to be able to cycle your tank with sufficiently large populations of
> bacteria, to remove the organic waste level of a tank of fish if for any reason
> those same plants weren't present -- which could happen, for example, when
> needing to raise the temperature above the plants' tolerance in treating some
> fish diseases (and having many of the plants die as a result of this
> necessity). It is not safe in the aquarium to rely solely on plants to remove
> ammonia without being able to grow a large enough population of nitrifying
> bacteria. Growing plants is not cycling.
>
> Ray
>
> </HTML>
>
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