test fish method?

[Aj Flip]

a friend of my dads used to keep a reef tank and he said to see if params were good enough to add fish, he would buy a blue damsel and see if it does well, if it does, then he brings it back to LFS and buys a new fish, is it doesnt do well, well.......ammonia spike???..........i was actually thinking about doing this but didnt want to waste $8 (cost of blue damsels here) because i know it wold die and ill be gone for the next comming weekend with nobody to feed the little thing..........

anyways has anyone ever tried this or even heared of it?

i know its kinda cruel and pointlesswhen u have a test kit right?

 

[unbreakable]

yeah its a common practice by noobs or uneducated people to add fish to start a cycle, but you either end up with dead fish or fish that suffer while it cycles. IMO its not a good idea.

just throw in a raw shrimp from walmart that costs 25 cents or add some flake food or something to add ammonia and just watch parameters. pee in your tank if you have to.

 

[snorvich]

Simply test your water; you will have to do that eventually in any case.

 

[BangkokMatt]

As Snorvich said "simply test your water"

 

[Reefer07]

With plenty of live rock even if it's dead will cycle itself.
Also, I did the shrimp method on a freshwater tank I had.....it worked really well but let me deter you by saying the smell was unbearable.

 

[jdieck]

If you are using live rock you do not need to add absolutely nothing, the rock has more than enough stuff in it to properly cycle.
Test for Ammonia, as soon as it starts dropping then test for nitrite after nitrite is gone test for ammonia, nitrite and nitrate, if ammonia and nitrite are gone the tank is cycled for the level of low bioload you would have. As you add critters and the load increases so the ammonia will come back until the bacteria population reproduces to the new level of bio-load so add critters slowly and as apart as your patience dictates but no more than one or max two fish per week, while doing so monitor your ammonia.
Finally if you went to the expense of buying live rock you really want to maintain as much live stuff in it as possible so it is recommended to change water if ammonia exceeds 0.5 ppm. Besides keeping more stuff alive, limiting the ammonia spike has the side benefit of reducing the amount of nitrates you will end up at the end of the cycle.

Enjoy!

 

[snorvich]

What he ^ said!