What dose it mean to cycle a new aquarium?
Like all living creatures, fish give off waste products (pee and poo). These nitrogenous waste products break down into ammonia (NH3), which is highly toxic to most fishes. In nature, the volume of water per fish is extremely high, and waste products become diluted to low concentrations. In aquariums, however, it can take as little as a few hours for ammonia concentrations to reach toxic levels. How much ammonia is too much? The quick answer is: if a test kit is able to measure it, you’ve got too much (i.e., it’s in a high enough concentrations to stress fish). Consider emergency action (water changes) to reduce the danger. In aquaria-speak, the “nitrogen cycle” (more precisely, the nitrification cycle) is the biological process that converts ammonia into other, relatively harmless nitrogen compounds. Fortunately, several species of bacteria do this conversion for us. Some species convert ammonia (NH3) to nitrite (N02-), while others convert nitrite to nitrate (NO3-). Thus, cycling t
