Preferred way of cycling a planted tank

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Dear Fellow Hobbyist

What is your preferred way of cycling a new planted tank from bottom up assuming you don't have a mature tank to leverage off beneficial Bacteria? How do you tell if your tank is completely cycled? I'm currently in the process of using DSM to grow my HC, hairgrass and Staurogyne repen. Its only 2 weeks old.

TIA.

[mUAr_cHEe]

Add water and wait.

You do not have much other choices.

[Urban Aquaria]

If your tank is using active soil substrates which release ammonia, then that will kickstart the cycling process. Just have to allow time for the tank to cycle until its ammonia and nitrite are zero, and only nitrates show readings, then can consider it cycled.

For those tanks that use inert substrates, then have to do the fish food or dosing ammonia method to do a fishless cycle. Alternatively, in a larger tank volume, its also possible to add hardy livestock from the start but in very small numbers (ie. 1-2 small fishes every few days, its called a "fish-in" cycle), so that they can naturally produce small amounts of ammonia that the growing beneficial bacteria can still be able to handle.

The only way to know if a tank is cycled is to use test kits... best to use reagent-based (test tube) test kits for better accuracy, get those that have tests for ammonia, nitrite and nitrate.

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I'm using ADA Amazonia Soil. Is that considered active substrate?


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[Urban Aquaria]

I'm using ADA Amazonia Soil. Is that considered active substrate?

Yes, ADA Amazonia aquasoil is active soil substrate, it releases alot of ammonia initially to boost plant growth.

Note that when you do dry start method (DSM), although there will be some beneficial bacteria developing inside the soil substrate, the tank filter and its bio-media are not in operation so they are no beneficial bacteria colonizing it yet... therefore when you finish the DSM and flood the tank, the filter will still need additional time to develop its own beneficial bacteria colony and stabilize the water conditions.

That being said, the amount of time to fully cycle a tank after DSM is usually shorter because most of the ammonia tends to already be used up by the plant growing over a few weeks, and there are some beneficial bacteria colonies already established in the soil.

Alternatively, in the meantime you could just run the filter with a container or bucket of water and do a fishless cycle on it, add in a portion of aquasoil or perhaps some fish food to produce ammonia. Let the beneficial bacteria population start growing inside the filter media over a few weeks, so when its time to use it for the main tank, there would already be a growing population of beneficial bacteria in the filter to further accelerate the cycle.

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Thank you Urban Aquaria for your very informative response and excellent suggestions. :-)