Large Water Changes and Tank Cycling

[Adam S]

I disagree with that entirely, but the hobby is about doing what makes you happy.

[Altum Nut]

I'm just reading this and it was not mentioned unless I missed it but are you using straight tap and do you add conditioner? If your water source has high levels of chlorine/chloramine...large w/c's at 80% might have a slight affect the BB and more so if your squeezing out sponge media at the same time with tap water.
Just covering the common errors...but if all above checks out and does not apply then I would agree with the others saying that your over thinking this and would not stress out.

...Ralph

[bluelagoon]

But how and why Vodka in our tanks, Mervin ?

I used it in a planted tank to dose some sort of carbon to the water instead of Excel.Seemed to work ok.But did notice slight cloudiness if I used a bit too much.

[Filip]

I used it in a planted tank to dose some sort of carbon to the water instead of Excel.Seemed to work ok.But did notice slight cloudiness if I used a bit too much.

This is new for me and quite interesting Mervin .

How much did you used and did you see any adverse effects on your fish or filters? .
Did you noticed plant pearling , PH lowering or any other sign that lead to conslclusion about increased co2 levels in the water , using this method ?

[CammieTime]

Here's the deal. Large water changes will not impact an established beneficial bacteria bed, but they will dramatically SLOW DOWN the process to cycle a tank (really the filters) or a tank going into re-cycle. So, lesson learned is that if you are having ammonia issues frequent large water changes will keep your fish alive, but they will not cycle your tank very quickly (may take months). Fastest way to done is to setup another tank with a duplicate set of filter media and cycle that using waste water from the main tank, and do very few water changes on it, and add ammonia as necessary - you want to replicate the bio-load of your main tank. This process should take the standard few weeks since you do not have to change the water. Soon enough that new tank will cycle at which point you can put the cycled filter media into your main tank. In the mean time, change water heavily on your main tank to keep the fish alive.