Fishless Cycling Ammonia not droping

[milindsaraswala]

I am doing fishless cycling for my shrimp tank. My tank is 7 gallon.

I started my tank something like this, I added 1 thin layer of Mironekuton (Japanese natural deep sea mineral) than 1 layer of fluval plant and shrimp stratum substrate than I added 1 thin layer of BacterAE then 1 thing layer of Beta-G than all remaining 2kg of fluval plant and shrimp stratum substrate. I am using RO water which have TDS of 8. Then I make water of 170 TDS by adding Shrimp King Shrimp Salt GH+/KH+. Added this very small amount of Mironekuton (Japanese natural deep sea mineral), BacterAE and Beta-G in water column.

On the top the layer, I have 1 moss ball, Sponge filter. It is same like this. I have added almond leaves and four 2 mm mineral ball. Heater is on 25 C

Now for cycling I have added 4 ppm of Ammonia(Janitorial Strength Formula) from ACE hardware.

On fourth day ammonia was gone to 2 ppm, so I added 2 ppm of ammonia. But after that ammonia never drop down. Today on 3rd weekend when I check my water I see my pH is 6.4 ppm and ammonia is still at 4 ppm

Yes, I forget to mention that after 4th day, our weather become cold and at night it is going up to 4-7 C and day time it is coming to 22-24 C

Kindly help me.

 

[Essjay]

The first thing to do is stop adding ammonia. You do not need to add it whenever it falls. Read this method and follow it instead http://www.fishforums.net/threads/cycling-your-new-fresh-water-tank-read-this-first.421488/

This method was written because too much ammonia makes so much nitrite that it stalls the cycle; it was written so that, if followed to the letter, nitrite can never get high enough to stall the cycle.

With a pH of that reading, I would change all the water and after refilling, add ammonia to 3 ppm or less. Shrimps do not have a high bioload so you shouldn't need the full 3 ppm given in the link.


Alternatively, once you have emptied the tank and refilled it, don't add any ammonia. Instead put lots of live plants in there, wait a week or so to make sure they aren't dying then get shrimps. The shrimps will love live plants and they will take up all the ammonia made by the shrimps meaning that you don't actually need to cycle the tank.