Did I somehow miss the cycle?

[steelo]

Hey everyone, I am attempting to do a fishless cycle on a 45 gallon aquarium. It’s been set up for a little over 2 weeks and so far no nitrites/nitrates and the ammonia is sitting steady at around 3-4 ppm. What concerns me is during the first week, I did not know that I needed to monitor the levels and the water got very cloudy all of a sudden. Since then, it has cleared up but the levels remain the same. I've started using stability about 3 days ago but so far, no luck.

Should I wait or drain half and try again?

 

[Essjay]

A couple of weeks is not very long. It took my fishless cycle 3 weeks before ammonia started to drop and nitrite showed up. Just be patient. Provided you added around 3 ppm ammonia it is just a waiting game. However, if your water is very soft, that could be delaying the growth of the bacteria.

The cloudiness was a bacterial bloom, but the bacteria that cause the bloom are not the ones we want to grow in the filter. The bloom bacteria feed on organic matter (there is usually some of that in the water, and also chemicals leaching into the tank from all the new plastic things) but once they've eaten all their available food they die off and the water clears - as you have found.

 

[steelo]

Is it possible for the ammonia levels to drop before there are enough nitrites to show up on a reading? I swear my ammonia has dropped from near 4 ppm to around 2-3.

 

[steelo]

Going on 3 weeks and no sign of nitrites or ammonia dropping. Have been adding 1.5x dose of stability for almost a week. I am wondering if my filter has anything to do with the slow cycling, its an aqueon quietflow 50 power filter rated at 250 gph. If I dont see any results by Christmas, I may replace 1/2 of the water, put ceramic rings in the filter and use a lower ammonia level. Water has been dechlorinated prior to adding to the tank. Here are my readings so far:

45 gallon freshwater aquarium
Pump/Air stone with plenty of air flow
Temperature - 78 degrees
Ammonia - between 3-4 ppm
Ph - 8.2
Nitrites - 0
Nitrates - 0

 

[steelo]

Added some 'bio rings' inside my power filter, but I'm not quite sure how they are supposed to fit inside though so I just dumped them behind the media and put a few inside of the intake tube. Also, poured some prime directly on top of the bio rings inside the filter. I'm going to use the rest of the stability and will then try the prime. The LFS said I had about 0.5 ppm ammonia, but the API test I have shows between 1-2 ppm?

I'm going on a mini vacation next weekend so I kind of hope things don't go too crazy since I'll be away for 3 days...

 

[steelo]

Update - checked the nitrites today with the api kit. Waited about 10 mins and the color was an off blue somewhere between blue and purple. Should I get my hopes up? I also got some tss plus in the mail, would it hurt to add this? I keep hearing this is the stuff to add to jumpstart a cycle. I will also note that I now have some 'dr. tims cycling ammonia' but I probably wont use unless I decide to drain and start over.

 

[steelo]

Week 5 - Finally showing nitrites! According to the api test kit its somewhere between 0.25 and .5ppm

I havent tested ammonia levels yet but is it important not to let it get down to 0?