cycle with table shrimp?

I've had my tank up and starting to cycle. It has been about 3 days and everything is going great. Water is crisp and clear! should I throw the shrimp in now or wait a few more days? Also, the only shrimp they had at the gocery store was a fresh water table shrimp. Is this ok to use? I figured it would be okay, as long as is starts to decay and feed the beneficial bacteria. Thanks to all!!

 

Toss it in. Watch the magic. by the time that's finished decaying you'll see tiny pods all over the place too.

 

I read an article a day or two ago that gave reasons as to why using a raw dead shrimp was a bad way to cycle a tank. It made some sense and I am not going to try to go into detail but I will try to find out where I read it and get back with the part that caught my eye.
Here is the part that got my attention. It is entirely up to the tank owner how to cycle your tank but I thought this was interesting, fwiw.

This is a quote from the article, not my work or writing. I lay no claim to any part of it. Just trying to pass on information......

"There are other methods of fishless cycling being recommended or used however one method being pushed on the internet is the use of Raw Shrimp; however this is a recycled idea (which included the use of silversides, frozen shrimp, and even dead feeder fish) and has reappeared on the internet even though it was debunked in the early 1990s.

I do not recommend this method, not because it does not work for cycling, but because it may also allow a Saprolegnia infection to get started in your new aquarium. Saprolegnia is a mold (often called a fungus) that easily gets a foot hold in decaying nitrogenous matter such as raw shrimp and I have seen this many times in my experiments. Even after the source of Saprolegnia growth is removed, the secondary zoospores which are the primary mode of pathogenic transmission can remain, even after large water changes/vacuumings.
A new tank is the worst time to have a Saprolegnia infection get started as this is when fish are often much less resistant to disease due to the stressor of a new tank environment."

 

Hmmm Thanks for the info ibefishy! I'll do a bit more reading before I throw in the raw table shrimp. My first tank I cycled with a damsel but it was waaaay to hard to catch him when I wanted to take it back to the LFS.

Has anyone that cycled with a table shrimp heard of or experienced anything like mentioned above?

 

Aquarium Nitrogen Cycle and cycling. Methods for ammonia, nitrite removal.

There is the site I got that statement from, it talks alot about starting up new tanks and has some pretty good info about the cycling of a new aquarium. About 1/2 way down the page is where I found that.

 

i just read the WHOLE article that was linked and it turns out the reason that shrimp is bad to cycle with is because of Saprolegnia. this type of "fungus"(it doesnt fit into any kind of animal kingdom) can only thrive in a ph lower than 7.2, which obviously doesnt occur in a reef. so...guess that means shrimp is in!

 

I'm sure the fungus argument is fact based, but I've cycled a good 30 tanks in the last couple years. A couple hundred since I've entered the hobby. I've never run into that fungus. Is it probable? Of course. Likely? No... IMO. And remember that "article" is just someone else's opinion and interpretation and NOT a scientific fact. All my tanks I cycle with shrimp/silversides etc. I've done it with pure ammonia... it works. I've also done it with live fish (heck... I've even released them when I was done into the Gulf of Mexico. These things I've done because of ignorance.) It works. But I pretty much go the shrimp/fish flesh now.

My tanks are rockin'..... thank you dead decaying shrimp.

I send a selection of my fish in for necropsies.... I've never seen fungus.

I don't throw the shrimp in, I suspend it from fishline or in a net bag for easy and intact removal. And you have to be careful to not use too much. You'll stall the heck out of the cycle.

EDIT:

Just saw this..... this would explain why it's not very common.

 

I've heard of people doing this....but I wouldnt.

Just grab a couple fish that you can either catch when the cycle is done...or that you want to keep when the cycle is finished.

Dont just grab some crappy damsels that you dont like b/c you may get stuck with them for a long time....they're fast and hard as hell to catch later on....especially once rock is in the tank.

 

Anybody use the fish food method that they talked about in the article? I think I'm gonna go ahead and throw in the shrimp. I'll but it in a 200 micron media bag to make for easy removal later on. (Thanks incognito!!!) I'll also be testing no4 and PH daily to ensure the PH stays stable.

 

I've used flake food. It works without any issues. So does shrimp. Better than torturing a poor defenseless fish that has no say by putting it in a hostile environment. You can do permanent gill damage to the fish, causing them to only live a few years instead of many.