Don't feel bad about getting bad info from your pet store. It is the norm, especially for a pet store that sells fish (not a true fish store). Even true fish stores will give bad advice too so they aren't immune either. Anyway, since you have fish, fishless cycling isn't an option. You will just have to test your ammonia and nitrite daily and do water changes as needed to keep the levels as low as possible. Optimally, you want both of those at 0 but during the cycling process with fish, try to keep them under .5 ppm (no higher than 1).

Wait, so when you do the add and wait method, and ammonia goes down to 1 ppm after initial dose of 5 or 6ppm, you raise it to 3 or 4 ppm right? Or wait till it hits 0ppm?

This post has been edited by love_fish: Nov 26 2005, 03:30 AM

Once it drops to 1 ppm raise it back to 3 or 4 ppm. Do that everytime it drops back to 1 until the nitrite finally drops to 0 and then your done. Do the big water change and add fish.

Alright, sounds easy enough. Thanks for the help.

I will be using water from our well .
Our water altho delicious to drink has Iron in solution ( the iron does not show until it sits in a container for a few hours)

Should I be doing anything different ?



It's been prolly 30 years since I ran a tank.
I now have a 55 gal that I will be using

Shirley

I dont think the iron will be an issue in the cycling process. Actually, if you have live plants it is probably a good thing. I guess it depends on the level.

How long should it take (approximately) for Ammonia to lower to 1.0, after initial 5 ppm (doing add and wait method)? It's been in there for a week now, and I see no change in the color of the tests.

Generally, the ammonia will drop back to 0 or 1 in about 7 to 10 days but it is generally a more gradual drop (nitrite will eventually drop from almost off the chart to 0 overnight), going down from 5 ppm to maybe 4 after 5 to 7 days, and then maybe a point a day after that. How high did you start the ammonia out? You should usually be seeing at least a slight drop after 7 days unless you started with the reading higher than the highest value on the chart.

The ammonia was inbetween 4 and 5 ppm. I'm going to test it tomorrow cuz I dont feel like doing anything right now. I'll update you and maybe you could help me.

I tested it, and it seems to be at four, or maybe a tiny bit greater than 4, but not at 5. Is this normal for after 8 days?

This post has been edited by love_fish: Dec 3 2005, 04:44 PM

That may be a little slow but not bad and at least you see a change now. It should drop about a point a day over the next 2 to 4 days to get near zero.

Alright then, I guess I'll just wait it out.

Thanks.

I deposited my ammonia into my tank (a 9.95% solution, worked out at 4ml to 18 imperial gallons to get approx 6ppm ammonia.) I've seen the colour shift nearer to the 4ppm shade already, but im expecting it to now hold at this for the rest of the week.

Oddly, the only item if chucked in the tank has been a filter with a new sponge (internal medium now change, but cleansed in warm water) - chances of cultivation from this fairly slim due to filter not being used for roughly 3 years and three caps of cycle (was included in a "trial pack" of their items, figured what the hey. if now drop in a while, would it be worth getting further sources and adding them?

I'm not a believer in the bacteria in a bottle products like Cycle. The best thing you could add to speed things up would be filter media from a cycled tank. It won't hurt to add more Cycle but I don't think it will help either.

Man, I've always done it using the one-small-fish-at-a-time method (or putting in some hardy, live-bearing fry), along with dropping in the filter element from a friend's aquarium (until I had another up and running). As the fry grow, so does their waste output and food for the "bugs" in the N2 cycle.

And it always, always took forever...like a month or two!

Then, no additional livestock until I got the plants established, which helped lower the pH to an acceptable level, because cycling w/ those growing guppies in my hard water made the pH go up. Constant work testing pH and adjusting it until the plants settled in.

That added another month or two. I'm just cautious as all get-out, and use the test kit a lot.

Your informative article seems to give a much faster, sure-footed approach. Would've enabled me to get my largest tank set up much more quickly. Just because I found and built a big tank (it was a bargain) doesn't mean I know what I'm doing, that's for certain!

My next setup will be a fishless cycle.

v/r, N-A

The 'add and wait' method - as described by rdd1952 DOES work - as a newbie, the tank 'cycle' was the one thing I was nervous about (chemicals, testing, adding, testing, waiting etc)... only a week after first adding 6ppm of ammonia, my tank's bacteria are now munching through 4ppm in less than every 24 hour period... now I'm waiting for my Nitr'i'tes to drop... around 2 weeks... so my new tank should hopefully be fully cycled in under a month?... quicker than using a 'fish' cycle... btw, my tank was planted out with real plants BEFORE I started the cycle... they are fine and healthy... the ammonia actually seems to have helped them along?...

Native American, I went through the same thing with our first tank, daily tests for ammonia and nitrite and daily water changes. And lost a few fish too. With the fishless cycle, you still have to do some testing every day but no water changes and no fish to worry about. I hope it helps you.

Bogwood, sounds like your cycle is going well. Every tank I've cycled seems to tank right at twice as long for the nitrite to fall as it did for the ammonia to fall.

I have fishless cycled all of my tanks using fresh shrimp hung to decompose in a stocking on the side of a tank

Not exactly the most common ammonia source but I'm sure it works. How do you regulate how much ammonia you have and what do you do to feed the bacteria present to process ammonia while the nitrite spike drops?

Ok so I am just about grasping all this with my limited knowledge o