I Hate Algae

I've not been keeping fish for too long (5 years) compared to some other forum members on here, but I've never actually used any form of deliberate cycling until my most recent tank. My personal experience is that fish can be placed straight in dechlorinated water and start dosing stability. Do water changes twice a week (once a week is probably sufficient tbh). I am aware of the dangers of nitrite and ammonia so I do test my water before every water change in the first month. There was never an instance of any detectable nitrite or ammonia. Now with my most recent tank, I tried doing a fishless cycle with ammonia and bacteria culture. I started with 2ppm ammonia and after two weeks of waiting the ammonia dropped slightly to about 1.5ppm. After that, there was no more reduction in ammonia concentration for another two weeks. I gave up at this point. The next day I drained the tank completely and placed fish straight in with new water. I'm not sure how much longer the cycle would have taken, but I'm certain that the fish food method would take much longer than starting with pure ammonia. My honest opinion is your fish will be completely fine with no deliberate cycling. The tank will cycle itself in time with the fish. I've done it with supposedly sensitive fish like a German blue rams, cardinal tetras, and otocinclus. No deaths in the first month from any fish. All otocinclus are still alive (3+ years old), and I've moved them into every new tank I've set up to eat algae. None of the new tanks have been deliberately cycled. 1 Ram dead at 2 years so probably old age. I can't remember clearly but I think 2 cardinal tetras died within half a year. Unlikely to be due to cycling issues at 6 months in. I understand the science behind cycling so I'm sure it works and is a good mechanism to prevent ammonia from harming fish. So the purpose of my post here is not to discourage you from cycling, but just to share my personal experience and to let you know that my fish are very healthy despite me never having cycled a single tank before ?

Thanks!

@alanmin4304, do you still have H. umbrosum for sale? lol

Hello new member here looking through the old forums. For me there are two main types of algae; algae that grow on the glass/hardscape, and algae that grow on plants. The latter is much harder to remove so I would concentrate your stocking on algae eaters that handle those. Siamese algae eaters do very well at keeping your plants clean from all sorts of algae. One siamese algae eater to your 30g will keep your plants spotless. They even clean algae off hardscape too! Once they grow too big for your tank, you can hand them in to animates. Adult SAE are not vigorous algae munchers like the young ones are (<5months old in my experience) You could always add a few otocinclus too, but they're no good at eating algae off plants unless you're keeping plants with massive leaves.

That's a bit further out than I'm willing to travel ? Any places in urban Auckland? (preferably North Shore but doesn't have to be)

Hi new member here! Does anybody know any places where I can catch paratya curvirostris in Auckland? I've read all the previous threads but they're quite old now so I'm posting here to see if anybody has any up-to-date spots they've caught or seen these shrimp in. Any spots in Auckland is fine but preferably somewhere on the North Shore. Thanks!

Is a license required to catch these shrimp?

Hello, not sure if any of you still visit this forum but anybody know of some up-to-date locations to catch these freshwater shrimp in Auckland?