3 days ago, i started doing a fishless cycle for my new tank, to create de ammonia needed, i added in some fish flakes and fish food disc to let them rot. now, my water is cloudy and de food has clouded de water, i took out de food and did a 20% water change...now wat do i do??? my water is still cloudy...do i add feeder fish in???

Hi there, it's best to find pure ammonia to cycle with if you can, which country are you in we can advise you where to get it from.

The food will make the water cloudy, but it's not a problem because that's just it producing ammonia, so long as you keep measuring the ammonia and nitrite you can still follow the cycle through with fish food. It's best to just add a small amount each day though not loads at once. Then when your cycle is finished you do a big water change and remove any bits of food from the tank so it's clear for when the fish come along.

Don't add feeder fish, they'll die in these conditions and that's not fair on any animal.

Im also relatively new to the whole aquarist thing, but I have had exactly the same thing during my cycling process (as well as everyone else on this website). The cloudiness you're getting is not from the food. Its called a 'bacterial bloom' & its because your tanks filter has not yet established itself & the bacteria end up clouding up your water. Give it a little bit of time & it will eventually clear up



^^^ Or that, LOL Miss Wiggles is much more informative than I am ya see.

In fishless cycling, measuring the amount of ammonia and watching the timing of the ammonia levels gives you feedback to help you know how your cycling is progressing.

Using fish food as your ammonia source makes both of these things more difficult. Unlike pure ammonia, fish food must be broken down in the water by heterotrophic bacteria and turned into ammonia before it can become your ammonia source. That causes a time delay, small but confusing for interpretation. Secondly, the amount of ammonia you will get from the fish food source is much more unpredictable than pure ammonia and in fishless cycling, the starting amount does matter.

So let's compare: The fishless cycler with pure ammonia figures out how much of their particular ammonia will give them the correct,say, 4-5ppm for the morning dosing of the tank. From then on they just use that amount and pretty much know it should test out correctly. By contrast, the "fish food fishless cycler" grinds up a little flake food, drops it in and then must wait some unpredictable time for some unpredictable spike in ammonia amount, possibly worrying about whether it worked, whether the result will overshoot the goal and when to when to test.

If the delayed result overshoots to, say, 8ppm or higher, then you risk the wrong species of Abacs developing and stalling your process or slowing it down. ...if you have the option, pure ammonia is usually much better for fishless cycling.

~~waterdrop~~