Using Cycled Water

ryanadams23

New member
So I am setting up a new tank and I am using pre-cycled water I bought at the fish store.

Will I still need to wait for it to go through months of cycling before I add fish or wait until it has cycled again since it is cycled water through the store? Maybe a dumb question.
 
My local fish store sells Ro/di water that's pre-mixed, but I doubt it's "pre-cycled". While I'm sure you can have a bacterial population in the water column that helps, much of the bacteria would dwell on the rocks, on the glass even in your skimmer and filters. I'd use extreme caution expecting just the water to get you there.
 
Considering that the beneficial denitrifying bacteria live in and on surfaces of bio-filtration items (sand, live rock, biowheels, bioballs, glass, ...etc.), your "cycled water" is of minimal to no use in the speed of your tank's cycling process.

If you are starting your tank with new live rock, sand or other biomedia, the cycle of your tank (the process of the beneficial bacteria growing and establishing) will be as normal. Remember, cycling happens to the tank as a whole, not just the water.
 
There's no such thing as "cycled" water as water column does not contain the beneficial bacteria. To quickly cycle a new tank, you will need to use cycled live rocks or sand.
 
There's no such thing as "cycled" water as water column does not contain the beneficial bacteria. To quickly cycle a new tank, you will need to use cycled live rocks or sand.

Exactly. If you're paying more for so called cycled water, you getting ripped off. Any fish store the sells cycled water knows better, that alone would make me question spending my money there.
 
LFS has a set of stones if they are foisting 'cycled water' on you. I'd take it back and tell them 'it didn't work and I'd like a refund' LOL
 
I do agree with the rest of the posts. There is no such thing as cycled water. Its sad that LFS would do such a thing just to sell something.
 
Its kind of sad that we all have to assume the LFS told the OP it was cycled and not just salt water, isn't it? I mean, I'm not saying it didn't happen, or that we don't have reason to assume it, but I love my LFS's and haven't seen the issues most note on here... they aren't all just out to separate you from your money.
 
So, let me get this straight, they sold you water from an established tank proclaiming some benefit from a cycling perspective? Don't think I'd be going back to them, they essentially sold you their old water change waste
 
cycled water

cycled water

Ok gang, thanks for your replies.

They actually sell what they call as "cycled" water. Which is pretty much there own cycled salt water. They don't charge extra, it's the same price as buying those boxes of saltwater.

The LFS guy did say I needed to have preexisting live rock and sand to make it happen, which I did already.

Thanks guys for your help.
 
Lol, this brings back memories......bad ones.

My first saltwater tank, my LFS told me they would help me set it up with cycled water. The guy arrived later that afternoon with about 6 5 gallon buckets filled with the nastiest, greenest, water you have ever seen.

You can imagine how that turned out, I had no live rock, lol......

No, there is no such thing as cycled water. I would find another lfs.
 
As others have said, there's no such thing as cycled water unless your fish store is defining the term 'cycle' in a significantly different way than what people on this forum mean when they use the term.

A 'cycle' in it's purest sense is a predictable and sequential rise and fall in concentration of various species of nitrogen ions over a period of time, starting with ammonia, ending with ever increasing levels of nitrate. It's the measurable chemical result of a biological process that we can't easily directly test: the establishment of a community of several kinds of nitrifying bacteria in response to the presence of a source of ammonia. The end result of the cycling process is a bed (note the term bed, they're substrate bound) of bacteria that remove ammonia and nitrite from the water column, and contribute nitrate to the water column. So if by cycled they mean that they sold you some water with high nitrates, then yes, this is a possible thing to buy I suppose (though not sure why you would want that). However, just like you wouldn't wear an olympic athlete's sweaty workout clothes and expect to somehow get fit, you shouldn't expect to use the water from a cycled tank and expect that to have any impact on whether or not your tank will see sequential spikes in ammonia, nitrite, and then nitrate in response to the initial addition waste producing animals or organic matter. The 'work' doesn't take place in the water, the symptoms of the work done on a substrate are measurable in the water. There's a large and significant difference. I'm not saying you or others who have done this will or will not have a detectable nitrogen cycle, what I am saying is that this will not be one of the factors that contributes to it.

What is in the water from a fish store is potentially all sorts of parasitic protozoans, aiptasia planula, high nutrients, and questionable parameters. I go to great lengths to prevent even a single drop of fish store water from getting in to my tank for that very reason.
 
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