What does it mean to cycle your fish tank aquarium?
I have a tank I’ve only used with my lizards. Never had fish before but I’ve made sure it’s clean and sterile. What does it mean to cycle the tank for fish? how do I do this?
Every hobbyist setting up a tank for the first time has heard people refer to the ‘nitrogen cycle’ or ‘cycling’ the water. A good understanding of this cycle helps get a tank off to a good, healthy start and saves money in fish losses and time dealing with the problems that can occur. Knowledge of this important process helps keepers anticipate and troubleshoot problems over the entire life of the tank.
The nitrogen cycle is a naturally occurring process that enables all bodies of water – fresh, salt or brackish – to sustain animal life over time. It is a dynamic process occurring in all oceans, lakes, streams, ponds and aquariums worldwide. Unlike animals that live on land and can move away from the wastes they produce, fish are trapped in the environment with their wastes. Without some kind of process to handle toxic animal waste, all aquatic life would eventually succumb to these poisons.
The nitrogen cycle is the means by which wastes are broken down to less harmful substances. Toxins from wastes affect a fish’s ability to take oxygen from the water, its ability to convert food to muscle, its ability to ward off disease, and even its ability to swim. The most common and deadly wastes in aquarium water, ammonia and nitrite, originate from the fish themselves, dead animals and from uneaten food.
As fish are introduced into a new tank, they immediately begin to release waste into the water in the form body secretions, which contain ammonia. Ammonia, in even low concentrations, is very toxic to fish, damaging the gills and the flow of oxygen to the fish’s tissues.
Nitrosomonas and Nitrobacter grow slowly at first, then have a rapid growth and reproduction phase and eventually level off to numbers needed in the tank to handle the waste of many fish. The numbers of bacteria will eventually be balanced against the amount of waste produced by a given population of fish. Introducing new fish, an outbreak of disease, or an interruption in filtration can disrupt this balance and the bacterial populations will play ‘catch up’ until the balance is restored.
Since the nitrogen cycle begins slowly, fish should be added to the tank slowly. A new system overwhelmed with fish is also overwhelmed with ammonia. Deaths occur when too many fish are producing too much waste and the beneficial bacteria have not reached sufficient levels to handle the load. Select a few hardy, inexpensive fish at first, be patient, feed very carefully and let the nitrogen cycle get the tank ready for the nicer, more expensive fish
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