Cycling with fish = fish died why??

[SlugSnorter]

Yeah not even remotely accurate. I can cycle a tank ready for livestock in under a week.

Who in there right mind is going to setup a tank, and wait a month before putting anything in it? Yeah no one.

Plenty of ways to cycle a tank that take no where near a month.

with dry rock and dry sand with a newbie? not really.

 

[SlugSnorter]

Most likely the firefish was bad to begin with....I doubt it was because of your water quality if you were managing like you said.

a cycling tank will often not have great water quality, not just due to ammonia.

 

[Eric Cohen]

There is tons of evidence of here that would suggest otherwise. 1-4 weeks seems to be the normal on here. My dt was cycled in under a week with two clowns using turbo start and my coral qt and fish qt both cycled in about two weeks not using turbo start. I don’t think @brandon429 will respond but his stuck cycle thread has more than enough info on length of time it takes.

If op used turbo start I would lean to something being wrong with the fish rather than ammonia building up that fast and being processed that fast. I would think if ammonia levels were high enough to kill a fish the tank couldn’t cycle that ammonia fast enough to get back to zero

a cycling tank will often not have great water quality, not just due to ammonia.

I’ve always found the best water quality of any aquarium is during the first week of setup. After that, **** just rolls downhill. Lol.