Hi all,

I am using cycle regularly and find that i have to buy a new bottle every 2 weeks or less. Does anyone know of a place (store or online) where you can buy cycle for relatively cheap? At the moment i pay anywhere between $18 - 20.

Thanks

umm, I might get shot down here, but I havent used cycle since my first bottle.

If I'm not wrong, your filter, your substrate, your plants, wood and ornaments already have so much beneficial bacteria on them that you simply don't need to add any more...

Certainly none of my fish sem to suffer, and i have never had a problem with ammonia/nitrite/nitrate buildup.

yeah

but if you really do need it you can get 2 litre bottles for around $80 so it may work out cheaper.

We haven't used cycle for well over a year and haven't had any problems with all the new tanks. If fact we don't believe in adding chemicals to the water unless it's a treatment and then we are hesitant. It seems to be an expensive exercise people insist on doing.

What are you using cycle for unless you have a surplus of money that you wish to spend??

If so, send some this way.

It'll just cost the amount you send.

Alan 104

Why are you using Cycle regularly? (asks she who has never used it at all)

you must have a really big tank, isnt the dose like one capfull per 200 litres at water change?

I'm using it to setup my new tank, but once the bottles gone I wont be getting anymore, once you have a healthy bacteria culture you shouldnt need anymore, unless you are repeatedly killing your bacteria culture in the filter, like washing the bio media in chlorinated water or something like that.

continued use of "cycle" is for the paranoid and the clean freaks.\

miss a couple doses and do a nitrite and ammonia test, every day, if the ammonia and nitrite dont go up, then your tank is safe wihtout "cycle",

Doug

I never used it in all the years I have kept fish. I don't really believe it even contains bacteria. If it did, or even if it was just bacteria food or something, because the containers aren't sealed every bacteria (good and bad) would soon be living in it, why would you want to add to your tank??

From what i've heard it works, but you should only need to it add it at the start, then once your filter media has a bacteria colony you don't need to add it. Without the stuff the cycle takes 4-6 weeks, I believe using it just reduces that time a couple of weeks. But I haven't used it myself.

it says something about dormant bacteria but i dont beleive that. bio-spira is the only thing i know of that actually works (we cant get it in nz), it has to be refridgerated at all times as it contains live bacteria. it needs to be kept cold so they do stay dormant and dont wake up, wana eat (then starve and die as the bottle will have no food), die and pollute the water or multiply. IMO cycle just bottled gunk which the bacteria will use as food and wont speed up the cycle by very much.

once the tank has finished the initial cycle it doesnt need anything added other than dechlorinator with a water change

The only bacteria that will remain completely dormant are spore formers and I doubt that they are the bacteria that you want. I used to have 50 tanks, have kept fish for years and have never used any product to cycle other than the bacteria I want, stolen from another tank by running the filter in there for a while, or by heavily planting the tank then adding fish slowly so that the balance is maintained. In my opinion many of these products, like chemicals to eliminate chlorine from Christchurch water (which has none) are a way for people to make money. Throw all the rubbish out, your fish will be grateful.

I tried a product called "cycle", probably the same thing that you have used. I STOPPED using it, I found it made more problems than it helped. But that's just my experience with it :-? Anyway, don't plan on using it again.

thanks for all the replys. I had a problem with nitrate (?) a week ago when i had some water tested and so ive been putting a capful in everyday (pet store directions) and then 5 caps every water change of which im doing 2 a week at the moment. My water has cleared up quite nicely and im guessing it would be safe to just put some in every water change? Im new at this so im still trying to get my head around everything.

Nitrate is removed from your tank in two ways - you either add lots of plants, which will use up the nitrates to grow, or you do water changes.

Usually some combination of the two works - I've had my main tank go almost 3 months monitoring the nitrates every few days, with almost no build up because of the plants - I only started water changes again because i dont like the build up of crud floating around

If it is nitrates, then cycle won't help anyway - they are the end result of the nitrate cycle. Cycle *supposedly* contains the beneficial bacteria that convert ammoinia to nitirites and nitrites to nitrates.

IMHO pet stores try and flog this stuff off purely to make money, we were certainly told that we *need* it when we started...

All the best and welcome to fishkeeping

does nothing, if they are real cultures they would have to be refridgerated

or have a very short shelf life