The Silent Cycle. Sort of.

My plans are coming together and it is time to put some fish in the 120. I will start with some Gambusia, or mosquito fish, which were collected locally and live in a large tub on my deck, eating mosquito larvae. This has definitely made a dent in the mosquitoes we encounter outside.

I put 7 full-bodied females in the tank, and the next day I took the gunky Filstar XP3 off the goldfish tank at work, which is a 45 gallon and houses 5 fan-tailed goldfish about the size of walnuts or ping-pong balls. I figured the filter, which has not been cleaned in a while, would have more than adequate biobugs for the Gambusia. I brought it home and removed one of the clean XP3's off the 120, swapping it out for the dirty one from work. I then put the clean one on the 45 at work for the goldfish.

Typically in a well established tank you can literally replace the filter completely with a brand new one without showing signs of a cycle. I would not do this on a tank that was set up less than 6 months ago, though, because it is easy to cause a mini cycle by this type of disruption. I have even created a mini-cycle by being too aggressive cleaning substrate in a tank that was younger than 6 months. The 45-gal at work has been set up and stable for a year.

Cut to 12 hours later and I tested the water. I typically don't do this when I seed on a massive scale like this (using the whole filter off of an established tank with a heavier bioload than the new tank), but I was having a discussion about silent cycles and seeding new tanks on the CVAS forum, so I wanted to document how a silent cycle might progress. To my surprise, I found 0.25 ppm NH3, or ammonia. There was zero NO2, or nitrite, and 5 ppm NO3. The fish appeared perfectly normal and happy, and the water was crystal clear.

12 more hours pass and I'm getting the same readings. I started to wonder about my so-called "silent" cycle, and was surprised that I was seeing the ammonia, though a low reading. I don't like seeing ammonia at all, since any exposure at all can be permanently damaging to the gills of a fish (Reference Here). I decided to take action, though I could have waited another day, perhaps. I think this kind of thing is typical, but since when I do my usual seeding procedure I never test the water and everything works out peachy. I go by the appearance and behavior of the fish, and have never had a problem to date, so it never occurred to me to test the water right after the new tank is seeded.

Anyway, I took some gunky filter sponges off my snail tank filter (AC30) and squeezed that goop into the 120, which clouded everything up, of course, but, lo and behold, 12 hours later I was showing zero ammonia, zero nitrite and 5 ppm nitrate. The cycle is done!

However, this is not the time to stock willy nilly. Patience is required, especially at this delicate point. The tank is very vulnerable to a mini cycle now and I must be careful not to disturb the decor, substrate or filters for several weeks, at least - the longer you wait the better. I will add stock, though, since I'm not going to keep the Gambusia in this tank - they're needed back outside. Our warm weather can linger well into October so mosquitoes will be with us for a while to come. I'll be replacing the Gambusia with the Denison's Barbs soon, since the ones I'm looking at are about the same size as the Gambusia, and will have almost identical bioload.

After they're settled in for a couple of weeks I'll add a few angels, but I might add about 6 angels at once and add more seed material at that time for insurance. These angels are still small, about quarter to half-dollar size in the body, but when it comes to cichlids they can be territorial, so adding one, then another, then another later on might be a bad idea - the newcomers will almost certainly be bullied by the ones already there that have set up a territory.

Since I have so many established tanks up and running right now it won't be hard to get more seed material when I add the angels. MTS is paying off!

Enter the 120

It's here, it's here, it's here! A few days ago I picked up a pristine 120-gal aquarium with stand and canopy, and got a very, very good deal through Craig's List. It came with TWO Rena Filstar XP3 filters, along with an Emperor 400 HOB, plus media, fitted hinged glass tops, and a 4x36w (?) T5HO fixture made by Solar Systems Lighting, a company with which I am not familiar and I can't locate any information on them online. There was also quite a few other items that were sent along with the tank, including a large pirate ship wreck bubbler decoration, a skull decoration, a large cave decoration, air pumps, powerheads, plastic plants, a 5-gal bucket of gravel, etc., etc.

This is a 4' tank so it fit quite easily into the intended location, and the space looks meant for it. The tank is completely unscratched (erm, at least it was before I took ownership.....) and is a great dimension, being 25" front to back and 24" high.

The cabinet was brought in, and then Rick and my next door neighbor, Paul, who was kind enough to help, brought the tank in. Interestingly, as indicated in my post below, 30 Gallons, Shmerty Gallons, the tank holds 30 gallons less volume than my 150 (amazing feats of mathematical wizardry, I know!) but the glass is thinner than the 1/2" glass of the 150, and it weighs half as much empty, at about 200 pounds. This is a huge issue in terms of moving a tank this size. I guess going up that 30 gallons plus being longer, at 5', means it required thicker glass and a glass brace. I don't know, but am glad this tank is almost as big and nowhere near as heavy. Rick is happy as well.

Rick then began working on leveling the tank and being sure it was sound, and there were no issues - I think we found the one single piece of floor in our house that is actually level.

Meanwhile, I began scrubbing out the XP3's that I would use on the tank. I'll save the Emperor 400 for another setup or sell it at our club auction. The filters had been drained out but they were still wet, stinky and gunky with mulm, so the pads and ceramic rings needed a lot of rinsing with the hose set to "power wash." I noted that the previous owner did not utilize much in the way of mechanical filtration, but both filters were loaded up with very coarse gravel and ceramic rings. The tank used to house oscars so I know they were right on target to have so much filtration, of whatever type. I will use a bit more in the way of mechanical filtration to polish the water, with regular poly floss. It requires a bit more attention but is worth it.

I then decided to take the second black acrylic overflow box out of storage, which used to be siliconed to the inside of the 150 (a drilled tank when I got it) and park it in the back left corner of the 120 to hide my filter intake and outflow, similar to what I did with the first box in the 150. For that tank, I cut slots into the acrylic corner box to permit flow of water to the intake, but that tends to clog with bits of debris and the subwassertang and java moss plants that sometimes go rogue on me. I decided to drill holes into this box, and that's what I did. The box is just two sides, meant to be siliconed to the side of the aquarium to create the box, but I just prop it against the side of the tank so I don't have to commit to the location.

I spaced the holes and put what I consider to be enough of them to permit flow of water, eyeballing their placement more or less evenly, and placed it in the tank, hiding the equipment, which is my goal in life when setting up an aquarium. It truly is the foundation of my aquascape and that's where I always begin. The design of the setup always kind of declares itself, in a form follows function sort of way, once I determine what I will use to hide the hardware.

It is important to hide the hardware, but at the same time care must be taken not sacrifice proper flow of water to the intakes and not block the outflows, though the intake is much more important. The outflows will blast the water no matter what you've got jammed up against them.



In this pic you see the holes drilled into the short side, but there are also holes drilled in the long side as well. I did pretty well eyeballing the grid pattern! I am SO impatient and could not be bothered to lay out a grid before drilling away. I got lucky this time, but recommend careful planning to anyone - this is something you'll be stuck with for a long time so it pays to do things right.


Next I gathered up the substrate, which in this case, as in most all of my tanks, sand. I just love the way it looks, and since this tank will most likely house eartheaters of some species or another, I'll stick with sand to be safe. If I keep natives they encounter sandy bottoms in their natural habitats so it won't hurt there, either.

Aside:  I am almost against the idea of natives for this tank now. I know I had plans to turn a large tank into a native setup, with sunfish, darters and whatever else I might find, but mainly sturdy sunfish of some description. In my research I'm just not feeling excited about them, though the pumpkinseed and blue spot sunfish are very appealing. I just don't know how to discern where to collect them locally - all we seem to have are bluegill, and I'm definitely not a fan - something about their faces! I think I'll start out with a few of the G. red-head Tapajos I already have, some of the angels I'm growing out, and, for a schooling species...... I'll get into THAT later.

I dug around in my eaves where I store all my aquarium equipment, past and present, and found a sack of clean, dry cichlid sand, which is black and white, like salt and pepper. I also had a sack of clean, dry Aragamax sand from my friend, Deborah, who had some extra and gave it to me for this tank. The two collections of sand, blended together, make a nice mix, so I added that, and it is just about enough. It took remarkably little sand to cover the bottom. I think for eartheaters I'll need a bit more for them to play with, but I can rob more out of the 150, which has too much sand. I also have more Aragamax sand up in the eaves that used to be in the 37-gal stored up there.

The tank came with some Mopani driftwood, which is always nice, and I took some leftovers of my own and propped them with some rocks against the overflow box. I have A LOT of rocks in my possession, after a few very fruitful collection trips to the mountain streams in Bath County and nearby.

I think I will go on a hunt for more driftwood, or, more specifically, a small stump that will still have branchy roots. Or, at least something pretty branchy and not slab-like, which is what you typically find commercially available for the aquarium trade. After that I will plant some valisneria and maybe cabomba, with rocks protecting the rooted bases from the geos, and call it a day. I like the simple and clean look this tank has, and I'm not going to jam it up with cairns or rockwork and plants stuffed everywhere, like in the 150 and the 45, which is so cluttered up I honestly don't know if I'll keep it like that. I'm picturing some moody dim lighting, sand, and round, smooth river rocks, plus driftwood. If I can have some branchy pieces of wood that go from the surface down to the substrate, it will mimic a SA river, like Rio Orinoco, for instance, which doesn't have much in the way of plants but has reeds and branches submerged. Rick commented that the tank looked "Zen-like" after I placed a few round rocks and a single valisneria plant, and I'm going to try to keep it this way. Try. It might be hard, as my tendencies are to move the aquascape up and down and all around the tank, but I'll really make an effort!

I forgot to mention that this tank came with a canopy that matches the stand. The canopy is simply a frame that rests on the top rim of the tank, and is open on the top in front, closed in the back, so apparently you would reach into the opening at the top to lift the glass top to feed, etc. Well, for someone who is 5'0" tall this is not very practical. The stand is not terribly tall, not nearly as tall as the stand for the 150 (this is why that tank looks so much more imposing than the 120) but adding this canopy, which is not hinged and does not lift away from the tank easily, makes it more of a challenge for me, and I'd have to get on a stool every time I wanted to feed the fish. I won't use it now, though maybe someday in a different location I will. I'm keeping it in storage, like everything else! It is in perfect condition so it will prove useful someday.

As for lighting, the fixture that came with it is a 36" fixture, which is short for the tank from a visual standpoint, and it has a silver polished aluminum surface like a Coralife fixture. It has 4 CF straight-pin bulbs, 2 actinic and 2 6500K. I am not using the actinic and will have to replace those for FW use.

 I have a Current Nova Extreme fixture that is 48" long, 2x54w T5HO and is slim and black, with legs, which would look nicer on this tank. This fixture is essentially new, sitting in storage for years, but the bulbs were burnt out so I've ordered new bulbs and when they come in I'll try that on this tank. The tank is viewed from a distance in the kitchen so you really notice things like the light fixture propped on the top, so I'd like it to look neat and tidy. The 150 has a hinged hood that hides all sorts of things, so it doesn't matter much what I put up there for lights, or how I attach them.

Here's a pic right after setup and filling, and you can see the shims on the floor, which have since been chiseled off flush and the ends of the shims colored in with brown magic marker to make them less conspicuous against the floor. The tank is a bit cloudy right now with some sand dust, but that since cleared.

The rocks and wood are not in their final position. More to come....