How to Cycle a Fish Tank the EASY Way! 

leaving a fully set-up tank sitting for like two months 😭 sometimes life gets in the way of your aquarium goals

Throw everything in there except for fish and then u stare at it for 2 months

Get a real pet

@@wiz78129 rude

I add an established filter, and some substrate from another tank, and feed lightly for a week or two, gradually increasing the amount over that time. If your filter is big enough, it'll contain enough bacteria that you can consider the tank cycled on the first day really. In 40+ years, I've actually cycled an aquarium twice, moving house, despite always having had between 8 and 20 running most of the time.

Constipation that happens to a Lot of live bearers

Free pogo stick

I was waiting for him to start bouncing around the tank on it, like a spring.

​@@EmEm78 her

@@singingsunflower9000 this mf

That is exactly why seeing her put together this tank is so disappointing. The modified glo fish are far from hardy though, colorful yes. Toys should stay out of the aquarium.

@@barbrabarbra3537 There is not toys in there tho, its just some fake decor, its not the biggest deal ever to have a mix of fake and live plants...

@@barbrabarbra3537are you talking about the treasure chest? It’s made for aquariums and is a bubbler

I think the glow fish idea is from this popular version of glass fish that are manually injected with dyes. Glow fish are actually super healthy and don't have many of the issues regular fish do and are extremely eco friendly because they cannot possibly survive in the regular envirnment (everything will see and eat them). I wont say it's wrong because this is literally one of the most humanely bred domesicated species that both got bred for health and aesthetics. It's not as terrible as people think of it as but it's not perfect.

Bro colorful doesn't mean bad, I agree with you.

Also there's studies that show color preference and it always lands on more natural colors, reds, browns, ect I also find colored stuff really stresses my fish, which is why I moved to 100% natural tanks, no artificial colors

It’s just usually good practice to have 100% natural substrate and plants in a tank as it’s a whole ecosystem plus plants help to take out nitrates in the water, and plastic plants, usually can end up, causing tears in fish fins.

Thanks for being so kind about it tbh

It’s a worm

@@enterpriserubber No it’s actually not

Nah it's a gravity coil

​@@enterpriserubber no that is not due to bacteria it's happen due to some kind of food

@@MingCrab8404💀💀

A fish is like having a dog or a cat in space, like you gotta control their air and environment too-

Fr I have a 40 gallon tank and I hade a 10 so I know how hard it is you need to put co2 and plant food in for plants you need to put bacteria you need to put in the right fish that can mix you need to test water every 2 days and change it you need water ph hardness nitrates, and nitrates In the water you need water temperature for all the fish it’s as hard

It's more like a begineer fish

the strips are far more fool proof and more accesible to people with disabilites, people with a lot of tanks, children, and new fish keepers. seen a lot of people lose fish because their nitrates were off the charts, but they didnt do the nitrate test properly and kept reading 0

@@cockatoode705 so they refuse to read the easy instructions and thats somehow the test kits fault? And are you trying to argue its better to have incorrect results than it is to use a proper test kit correctly?

@Deez Nuts it's not discus's fault they are sensitive, should we reccomend them to first time fish keepers? I would rather beginners have something easy to use and read rather than something that if you shake a bottle for two seconds shorter you get the wrong results. I know so many people who bought a test kit, used it twice, then stopped using it because it was overwhelming and complicated. Would you rather those people continue not using their test kit, or use strips and actually use them? I prefer people test their water and get the right result instead of going "well that's your fault"

@@cockatoode705 it comes with easy to use instructions…..you telling me since they cant follow basic instructions they shouldn’t have to? Yeah theres a learning curve to be in the hobby, you dont let a beginner violinist be concert master just because they refuse to get past a learning curve, yes if they cannot do a basic API test than they shouldnt be in the hobby at all, these are live animals not decorations to be used however you want. Test strips dont work. Pretty simple concept

@@cockatoode705 If you can't use a simple test kit then you shouldn't keep fish, simple.

Great point! And yes, you're absolutely right. A seeded sponge won't work for a tank that's bigger or more overstocked than it (a 5 gallon seeded sponge won't cycle a 10 gallon, or a 5 gallon seeded sponge with 5 shrimp won't cycle a 5 gallon with 50 shrimp.)

Not feeding the first day is a good idea. Even after a few weeks without fish, the biological media will take a couple of days, more like a week to double once or twice to meet the new demand.

You literally can’t completely cycle a tank without fish because there’s no source of ammonia without the fish waste. Even if you add outside sources of ammonia the microbiome will need a while to adjust to sourcing their food from the new fish waste because of particle size differences, etcetera when you first add fish. The best way in my experience is to add just one or two fish at first (they did that with the snail) and then just add a few more at a time. That being said, it’s certainly not always possible to space out your fish ordering slowly and most new fish owners won’t realistically be willing to take the time. When you have to add more than one or two fish all at once, feeding them none or small amounts at first is a MUST to avoid a toxic spike in ammonia and nitrites. That being said, a full week of no food as suggested here is a long time for nearly all fish unless they can graze algae or something naturally in the tank. I would recommend waiting just a couple days with no food and then adding just VERY small amounts that they are sure to finish and digest very efficiently. Your tank can not be fully cycled without fish and even after adding fish it will still take normally take several months to really balance out. There will likely be spikes of diatoms (red looking algae), green algae, and filamentous algae as well over the first maybe 6 months if you’re doing things right and those will all pass with very minimal cleaning. The myth of being able to quickly cycle a tank before you get fish is something propagated by the industries that make algae killers and other interventative treatments.

Tell me you don't know what you're doing without telling me you don't know what you're doing. If you have fish I fear for them and the aftermath of your tank

@@k9spot1 I think you don't get the exponential growth thing about bacteria. Very little ammonium is needed to establish about half or even just a fourth of the capacity the tank will eventually need. That however takes a lot longer than the one or two redoublings still necessary, which again takes a few days.

​@@k9spot1toss in a grocery store shrimp and let it decay. Works every time for me. Silly to think the only source of ammonia is aquarium fish or bottled ammonia and nothing else.

🤫😉

😮

Please note the tank didn't need cycling as they used an already seeded filter.

They'd cry seeing my son's tank. I personally have 6 fully planted tanks, all naturalistic with wood, rocks, plants. My son's Molly tank has some plants, but also a pirate ship, a tiki head, some driftwood, and some pink,purple, and blue fake plants. It makes him happy, it's not harmful for the fish, his fish are healthy and breeding (I mean mollies breed in about anything lol). He's agreed to a more natural look once we upgrade the tank, but there's no way I'll be taking away his pirate ship 😂.

yeah they seem kinda sharp

Haha , amateur decorations

It’s her daughters

It's for her daughter!! She knows about fish and she knows the decor is good, If the decor is colored it doesn't mean it's bad!!

That's right, she has other videos with live plant set ups, this one was for her daughter and she wanted to ease her into the hobby and focusing the care of the fish. It's explained in the longer video.

She is very informative in her long form videos

Also get innovative marine all in one tanks

That's what I thought

I have been doing that many times without any ammonia spikes. With the method in the video, 95% or more of the bacteria is starved to death, then the little remnant is slowly and also expensively growing back. Starter bacteria is usually not cheap and totally unnescessary here. They are absolutely awesome if you start a tank, including the filter from scratch though.

@@MrDanAng1 well I transfer filter media from one tank tot he next and all the bacteria is alive, allows for immediate cycling.

@@sam3d Absolutely agree! 👍🏻

@@sam3d exactly what I did when I upgraded tank sizes. But it was from a 10 to a 75 so I still allowed for one week cycling

That still isnt good

@@StuffieLover69 yea idk how she did it

They’re glofish, specifically the pristella tetra If you haven’t heard of glofish before they’re basically fish (specifically hardy species like zebra danios and black skirts) that were modified with biofluorescent genes for jellyfish and coral They’re a bit controversial, as you can probably imagine, but popular with kids

@@garg4531 Thank you for your detailed response, how interesting! Thanks for letting me know :)

@@uufruity You are most welcome, and glad to be of help!^^

Please don’t tell me you starved your fish for a week

Generally they don’t really care about the color. The hard plastic is bad for them though as it can cut up their fins and even potentially leak nasty stuff into the water if they are cheap. So if you want to go with fake plants don’t worry about the color but try to get silk plants 👋 real plants are always the best though

@@homicidalmuffin9063 👍

Are you using test strips or a liquid test kit? I would be surprised if a 60 gallon with that many fish had ammonia issues, usually you see it more in heavily stocked smaller tanks. How long has the tank been set up for?

@@carolinesalpeck2567 I am using the liquid drops in vials. I’ve had it set up since September of last year. Thank you for replying!

Also the test strips the drops are so much more accurate but the price is a bit higher

It's also not a girl

Right!🤣poor fish live in a prison

One thing to keep in mind is the level of bacteria growing in the tank is related to the bioload, so even taking a well-established tank with an extremely light bioload comment then rapidly increasing the bioload can cause problems

Those are glofish pristella tetras. If you ever in the future want to get them, go with plant lighting or natural wavelength lighting- I’ve heard the glolights marketed specifically for them can damage their eyes

Exactly! This is called "seeding" and cycles in as little as 12 hours, sometimes up to a week (but that's still better than a month!)

Why not just add the old sponge like she did? Seems that would have more good bacteria than just rinsing it out. That's the way I've always done it. Just add very few fish and use prime and stability for a week. Never had any problems

​@@matthelm3795because people need to find things to criticize. It's way easier and just as effective to plop the whole thing in there and turn it on.

Plus they don't work. Get a liquid test kit....

​@@chrisley4100 They do work, just not as well as the liquid kind

Thay do tho

Check out the rest of her videos, this is a one-off because it’s for her daughter.

They can if you don't be careful but people tend to be very dramatic about how bad it actually is. When you're careful and sane eveyrthing down and oviod stuff like that its fine