cycling?

Fresh water does cycle and it is a lot more forgiving then saltwater but the concept is the same, the main thing to watch for is ammonia.I have had allot of freshwater tanks and man now that I look back on it it was so much easier then salt.
what I've always looked for is when your ammonia gets around 0 then the cycle is complete.

 

Yeah water changes with freshwater.. maybe once a month if that! please don't cycle with a Discus.. lol. i think they may be almost as challenging as SW. Beautiful fush though!

 

my girlfriend would love that. she's the one that has the interest in the black mollies. if i would go that route. would it be smart to only carry females or only carry males. because i hear they are actually quite fertile like guppies.

 

Black mollies like very hard water, and are very suceptible to ich.. They're livebearers, and seeing them explode with babies is sweet! They can tolerate brackish water, too I believe. Fertile Myrtle

 

This thread made my day! I had 4 fish tanks at one time when I was 14.
1. African Cichlids
2. Angel Tank
3. Community Fish tank
4. Betta of course!

Can you say nostalgia!

 

haha. well just like everyone u gotta start out as a beginner with everything. I've just had experience with a 10 gallon tank and I've finally upgraded. which i started the 10 gallon with 6 tiger barbs. 3 i lost. and the tank is still going through the cycling process still.

so the main reason for this thread was to find a different fish to stock the 38 gallon tank with that hopefully i could have a better success at keeping those fish i stocked and just add new fish after the cycling process.

and also thanx so far for everyones help. just keep posting idea's and such. i really appricate the help because the 38 gallon has been running 3 day's now couldn't figure out ways to start the cycle. i'm ready to go lol

 

The one I remember the most was my snakehead tank man that thing got to about a foot long.I was feeding it feeder gold fish every three days.I had a jack demsie in there with him.
The tank was a old 30 gallon slate bottom.most of my other tanks were community tanks.allot of angle fish.

 

From my FW experience (I've always had a FW tank of some sort as long as I remember) - I've never waited for a FW cycle to complete before I start adding my fishies.

But I am not arguing with the above - I DO wait for cycle to complete before I add anything pricey or sensitive - but there is a massive list of fish that will in all likelihood survive a cycle.

You know those Tetra's at Wal-Mart? I'm not condoning this, but I have seen them take water from tap and drop the fish in. They don't even treat it first all the time. Not that the fish appreciates it, but they usually do fine anyway... (and I checked, they didn't have any filter or anything on the water line - it was straight city water.

Now that I'm thinking about it, I can recall many times as a kid (about 14) that I didn't even float acclimate, just dumped it right in (along w/the LFS water).

And when I say forgiving, that's what I mean more than I mean price. But it does boil down to what you want to keep...

 

well i'm sitting here thinking as i'm reading the posts, and replying and everything. i think i've came up with an idea. just stock the tank with probably 6 to 8 red tetra's. to start out with. and maybe a week or so add another fish.

which i really wanna stay away from community fish due to my interest in other types. cuz i still think it would be really cool to have atleast 1 shark and a gourami or two. which i wanna do research on the gourami's first. because i dont know much about 'em.

 

I had a terrarium/aquarium combo that housed a baby croc. It was a terrarium that I put a 10G aquarium into and then built the land part up to the same height. I kept the aquarium stocked with feeder fish or other things as interest or ideas came. The croc would sun under lamps on a heat rock mostly, but it would go in the water to eat when it was hungry.

I can't tell you how awesome that was (and how popular it made me in high school).

I still have scars on my fingers. That thing had SHARP teeth. I eventually started using gloves... but when the buddies were over, I had to be cool and go bare handed. 8)

It died when I left for a couple of weeks and my dad only pretended that he would take care of my lamps (no timer back then). Poor little dude couldn't digest his fish.

I miss him a lot sometimes.

You hold them in a closed hand with the head sticking out the top right. When doing this, at the end, his tail would swipe around my elbow.

No idea what I would have done when he outgrew the tank...

And he NEVER got used to me and he NEVER got friendly. As far as it was concerned, I was food.

But I loved it.