Best Nitrogen Cycle Guide for Beginners (Different Methods Explained)

‎ Cycling an aquarium is the process of growing biological filtration (like beneficial bacteria and plants) in your tank before adding any fish. There are many ways to cycle an aquarium — such as fishless cycling, fish-in cycling, live plants, and bottled bacteria — so let's talk about how we can combine these methods to quickly and safely cycle a new aquarium.

🛒 MATERIALS

WHO WE ARE
------------------------------------------------
At Aquarium Co-Op, we focus on your aquariums. We specialize in freshwater tropical fish, aquatic plants, and the overall betterment of the freshwater fish keeping hobby. Our goal is to help you with your first pet fish and graduate you to an advanced aquarium hobbyist. If you'd like to take it to the next level, subscribe to Aquarium Co-Op and check out our weekly videos.

Cory McElroy is employed by Aquarium Co-Op LLC. He also owns Aquarium Co-Op LLC. Therefore, all content is sponsored by Aquarium Co-Op.

#Aquariumcoop #Aquariumfish #Fishtank

[AquariumCoop]

*What's your favorite way of cycling an aquarium?*

[alyshamnl]

What I learned from owning these pets is PATIENCE IS EVERYTHING

[Itsjustme-Justme]

What really helps in a new aquarium is when you can use plants that have grown in a cycled aquarium. Beneficial bacteria live on every solid surface, including plants. When plants spent a lot of time in a cycled aquarium, they have way more bacteria on them, compared to plants that were grown above water in the nursery and only spent a few days in the shop tank.
Moss is especially helpful but other plants do the job too.

[sarahwoodring]

Always great to see Irene in videos! You have a great talent for explaining concepts in a way that accessible to new fish keepers.

[jackjmaheriii]

I’ve had to restart my aquarium, hobby from scratch four times, and this is how I did it…
1. Assemble all your hardware, run it for two days with no plants, animals, hardscape, or substrate, then do a 100% water change. This is just to ensure that everything is clean.
2. Add in hardscape, non-nutrient enriched elements like gravel but put them in a container and let them run for 5 days.
3. Buy all plants and invertebrates (snails, shrimp, crabs), put them in with your plants and Banquet Blocks and finely crushed spirulina. Run this for a month. Test, dose, and water change as needed. And tend that garden!
4. After a month your immersed plants are converted submersed, and the ‘melt’ phase is over.
5. Assemble your aquascape, add in invertebrates, wait two weeks.
6. Add in clean up crew (autos, hill-stream, etc.) wait a week.
7. Add in the center piece fish. Wait a week.
8. Add in schooling/shoaling fish.

Note: If you are old enough to buy booze, the. buy the very best stock and components you can (other than the actual tank), and upsize them so when you’re ready to get a bigger tank it’s an easy transition. Your old tank is now your hospital tank.

[CreativePets]

When I started I didn’t know I had to cycle my aquarium so my first fish didn’t make it, but now I have a 75 gallon aquarium it’s been cycling for months and now I have 6 blood parrots (or as Cory calls them derp fish) and six zebra danios🎉

[jackanderson]

Been keeping tanks 4.5 years, still have tons to learn. But i still love to learn and watch videos of things even as elementary as the nitrogen cycle cuz there is always something that stick out the 2nd time around. Frikin love this company

[chloefallon]

Honestly thank you so much iv just started at pet store and they made me the fish person with little to no knowledge! So now iv needed to do my own homework with no help and iv been trying so hard to find a video that dosent fuzz my brain out and yours has Honestly helped me so much you explained everything so well!! Thank you, thank you, thank you about to watch a lot more of your videos need to learn!

[dubadah]

to cycle my 210 gallon tank I used the seachem stability, prime, and plants for 1 month. I then added two corys, 4 otocinlus, and 6 blackskirt tetras. I watched the video from cory on the nitrogen cycle which also helped. I fed my fish every other day with just a little bit of food. After another month I started adding more fish and more plants.
I really like the water sprite. In just 3 months it grew 24" high with no co2 or fertilizer.
Thanks for the video. It is really helpful.

[kauhalephinfan]

When did aquariums become so complicated??? I appreciate the video

[FA-ftsq]

If you are doing fishless cycling, specifically if you are adding ammonia: you need to make sure you watch your ph like a hawk. If it goes down below 7, then it will basically shut down the nitrification process.

Thankfully the solution is rather simple, just add baking soda. How much will depend on your particular water chemistry so I suggest putting in a bit (like a quarter of a teaspoon) then retest ph and see if it moves. Then add more depending on how much your ph moved, hopefully towards 7.4 but def less than 8.5. All of this assumes that y out are going fishless cycling using ammonia.

For example, I have to add about two to three tablespoons to increase my ph whenever it goes down below 7 ph.

The other good news is that you don’t have to obsess about checking your tank every hour. It’s totally okay if your ph goes down below the threshold, the cycling will simply start up again where it was once you correct the problem so you’re not going to be starting from scratch even if you miss it going down the danger zone.

In actuality, nitrifaction actually stops at around ph 6.8 to 6.5 ish, but 7 is a good cut off point to give you some leeway.

i suspect that this is main reason why some of the peeps doing fishless cycling with ammonia seems like they are stuck.

[pencilpauli]

Thank you
Helpful video for this newb who is procrastinating about setting up his first aquarium!

[maxngwen]

Uuuuggghhh. This is the most helpful thing I've watched so far in this hobby and I wish I would've seen it before I jumped the gun and lost my first betta. Have a load of aquarium co-op plants and stuff coming in to help the cycle in my 2nd attempt at my first tank.

[applesauce]

Thanks a lot for providing an idea to cycle a new tank with used parts. I have a pond but didn't know about fish cycling.

After moving old intake sponge and some plants from our pond to our tank, it took a week for nitrate readings to appear along with 0 ammonia and nitrite. I wouldn't have the patience to wait for weeks or months when I knew our two small black moors can't live well with our comet goldfishes. Now they're happy in our tank.

[jenniferbrook]

2 years ago i ask my local exotic fish store if i can have a old dirty media bag and they looked at me like i was crazy lol but they still gave it to me when i told him i was desperate to cycle my tank after a month of failing lol it definitely helped lol

[CatalinaFOIA]

My advice to all new beginners: buy the test strips. I know they are expensive; just do it. If you don't ever want a new fish that's being introduced to die buy the strips. I buy the Tetra 6 in 1 & the ammonia strips in a kit! It's around $18.99 but you get 25 strips of each.

[CatalinaFOIA]

Thank you for this wonderful video for the very beginners and for us adults who still love to learn!

[lovism]

I would really appreciate if you put the links to the other videos in the description too since I can’t click on them on my mobile device. :) thanks for a great channel

[ceciliawallsbroad]

1:20 ish is when the different cycle method suggestions begin

[frankchen]

I didn't even know that Irene is collaborating with aquarium co-op! Good to see you!