I'm not sure if the purpose of all this bacteria discussion is relative to
marine or freshwater aquaria, but having kept fish for over 20 years I
believe most of the stuff about cycling freshwater tanks is extremely
overblown. I've never done it, and never will as I have never personally
experienced a situation that needed it. However, I will preface that by
saying that I rarely ever set up a completely new tank with everything
totally fresh and clean. I always either add a handfull or so of gravel
from an established filter to a new filter (I usually use a goldfish bowl
undergravel filter in a plastic goldfish bowl sized container that I put
in the tank, ugly but effective and cheap), or-in-least add some water
from an aquarium that is well established and healthy. But I have at
times started new tanks, added a whole pile of fishes (way more than you
should), and fed the crap out of them from day one and all have done very
well. Granted some fish may be more sensitive than others though. I have
had problems with ammonia once when I did a water change (I usually always
change 70-90% of the water if I am going to bother doing a water change)
and totally cleaned out the filter-in-the same time. I didn't age my
water (which typically had only very small amounts of chlorine) and a few
days later lost the fish. But that was due to my own complete stupidity
rather than a lack of bacteria I suspect.
Tootles
Peter Unmack
Canadian River, Oklahoma
/-----------------------------------------------------------------------
/ This is the discussion list of the North American Native Fishes
/ Association (NANFA). Comments made on this list do not necessarily
/ reflect the beliefs or goals of NANFA. For more information about NANFA,
/ visit http://www.nanfa.org Please make sure all posts to nanfa-l are
/ consistent with the guidelines as per
/ http://www.nanfa.org/archive/nanfa/guidelines.html To subscribe,
/ unsubscribe, or get help, visit the NANFA email list home page and
/ archive-in-http://www.nanfa.org/archive/nanfa/