Fishless Cycling

[Wanda hornsey]

Ok so have taken photos and need help know what on earth it all is (other than dirty. ) thanks
you can see the pics here
fishy stuff pics

 

[rdd1952]

Wanda, it want let anyone look at the pics, saying we're not logged in. What you need to do is store them on the hosting site as you have and in your post, click the tree icon and enter the URl there. It will actually make the pics a part of your post. Like this:

Bogwood, sounds like you are about a day away from finished. The rest of the nitrite should drop pretty quick. Let the ammonia go about 12 hours without adding any more and the nitrite should be gone too. The nitrate isn't anything to be bothered with. When you do the big water change, you will bring them way down.

 

[Wanda hornsey]

it wont let me show for some freaky reason have tried them again
fish tank pics again

can you try again ...if it still will not work I will try again in the moring its midnight here

 

[rdd1952]

It worked that time. Some of the stuff I can ID. Some I can't.

2466 I believe is an airpump (looks like a Rena brand, very good)
2468 looks like a CO2 injection system for a plated tank
2459, 2470, 2471 all look like water pumps but I may be wrong
2460, 2461 and 2469 look like a filter but I can't tell for sure

Try starting a new thread in the Hardware section and they will probably be able to ID everything for you.

On a totally unrelated note, I saw your name on the Photobox page. I once new a Wanda Armstrong here too.

 

[Wanda hornsey]

It worked that time. Some of the stuff I can ID. Some I can't.

2466 I believe is an airpump (looks like a Rena brand, very good)
2468 looks like a CO2 injection system for a plated tank
2459, 2470, 2471 all look like water pumps but I may be wrong
2460, 2461 and 2469 look like a filter but I can't tell for sure

Try starting a new thread in the Hardware section and they will probably be able to ID everything for you.

On a totally unrelated note, I saw your name on the Photobox page. I once new a Wanda Armstrong here too.

Thanks so much for all the help your a star xx
I will go post on the other forum and see what they can help with......I am now Wanda Hornsey ( here in england its pronounced Vanda - the polish/german way) as you might have been able to see from other pics I recently got married

Off to post and thanks for the info

 

[Kairi]

I wish I had read this before starting our tank- how long does the fishless cycling last? If you have a used filter, can you use that instead of cycling? (are those dumb questions?)

 

[rdd1952]

They're definitely not dumb questions. It generally takes between 2 and 4 weeks to do a fishless cycle if you start from scratch. Mine have almost all been in or around 3 weeks, about 1 week for the ammonia spike to drop and another 2 weeks for the nitrite to go down. If you have an established tank, you can take some filter media from there and add to the new filter to jump start it. That can cut the time down to as little as a few days

 

[Kairi]

very cool. i'm doing this when we get our next tank. thanks for the info!

 

[dgwebster]

word of warning: make sure you get your decimal points right when working out the number of drops you need, esp if changing it to ml you need to pour in. i have just done some calcullations and found that i put in about 16ppm into the tank, but the colour doesnt go darker than the darkest on your test kit.

effectively, i think i managed to perform an add daily method instead of add and wait.

i suddenly got ammonia drop, nitrite production (but very low for the volume of ammonia given) and nitrates all in one go.

 

[Stephensd30]

I'm in the process of fishless cycling using Rdd's "Add and Wait" method. I am using Aquarium Pharmaceuticals, Inc.'s Ammonia test kit. It has a little vial that I add 8 drops of solution to, shake, and then compare to a card. It wasn't hard to get the 5-6 ppm reading. I am having trouble matching my other readings though as they are yellowish in color, but not close to the ones on the card with the kit.

Are there any other test kits that are eaiser to read? I have lost all confidience in the lfs here as when I was in there looking at test kits he offered his "assistance" which amounted to telling me that I was wasting my time and he had some very hardy fish that would help me establish my tank and I would be able to enjoy it quicker.

Having lost a whole tank of fish because of lack of knowledge on cycling, I hate to say I went off on the guy but I kinda lost it. I set him straight and feel very sorry for others that will follow what he says. I am off Sunday and will make a trip to the "city" as I'm a country bumpkin and the local Wal-Mart is just not going to cut it for me. I am afraid if I see the man again I will go postal on him.

Dawn

 

[dgwebster]

No offense to any of the older people, but ive found that it is mostly older enthuisiasts who cant grasp the concept of the fishless cycle.

A person who has been keeping fish for quite some time - about 30 years. When I tried to explain to him that I was cycling the tank, settingup the bacteria by introducing ammonia from a bottle and not a fish his response was "why would you want to do that, when you can practically empty your tank every day and replace it with fresh water. the water quality here is so good, you just need to make sure the chlorine is removed and that it is roughly the right temperature."

I dont think he grasped that yes, i am going without fish for quite some time, but i am also looking after my fish, making sure that they are not harmed in the cycle process and that im also saving myself from endless numbers of bucket trips daily.

I could also see that he didnt quite get what i was doing with adding ammonia to the tank. Basically, he understood "the cycle" as "fish pees and poops, stuff changes it to semi-decent stuff, add fish slowly so stuff doesnt get too much pee n poop to start off with"


oh, with regard to the API test cards, do you mean by "other readings" your nitrate readings or other ammonia readings?

if ammonia, i know that up to like 1ppm its allow yellow ish colours, going green about 2ppm.

these are the best tests ive found around because:

if its not quite the colour above or below, you know its in between - thats all that matters.

liquid tests are better. i tried some of the dip sticks, esp the "5in1" tests, they bomb out even more that the liquid tests for beiung easy to see what colour it is. I have a hard enough time with the diabetes test strips every other day.

I've found though that if i hold the card n tube under my table lamp (a white xenon bulb lamp) i get a very very clear accurate colour to help decide which colour its closest to.

 

[rdd1952]

Hi Dawn, I use the API kit too and you're right about some of the tests being hard to read, especially the nitrate kit. Anything over about 40 ppm to me looks the same. The good thing about that is that nitrate isn't terribly toxic unless it gets off the scale. I usually don't even test for nitrates until I have a good nitrite spike and then it's only to make sure that some nitrite is being processed since it will be off the chart too and you can't tell by the tests if anything is happening to it.

There are other kits. Hagen makes some and so does Red Sea Labs (I have their Phosphate, CO2 and Iron kits). I'm not certain if they are any easier to read or not though. The API kit seems to be the most common one on this site by a wide margin. Once your tank is cycled though, your readings will all be to the point that they will be easy to read as ammonia and nitrite will always be 0 and the nitrate will be in the 5 to 10 range unless you have nitrate in your tap water as some people do. But even then, nitrate has to get into the 80+ ppm range before it becomes a problem.

Unfortunately, a lot of fish store employees aren't very knowledgable, and a lot of them just want to sell you fish. There are definitely some good ones out there and we have several members here that work in LFSs. I think you can tell a lot about a fish store as soon as you look at their tanks. If the tanks are really clean with no algae then I have found that it's usually a good place and the employees are pretty good. If the tanks look dirty and have algae every where, it's usually a bad sign. I even refuse to go in a Walmart any more after seeing their fish tanks at 3 different stores in my area. Our company even gave us several gift cards for Christmas, one of which was to Walmart. I gave the WM one to my parents as I won't go in their stores.

 

[Stephensd30]

Got a quickie question. I'm on the middle of my fishless cycle and my tank is processing 3-4 ppm of ammonia in 12 hours or less now, but I haven't seen an off the chart reading on the nitrites. Here's my this afternoons readings after putting in ammonia this morning to bring my level up to 4 ppm this morning.

Nitrate 40
Nitrite 0.5
GH 75
KH 120
pH 7.8
ammonia 0

My ammonia has been cycling throuh in less than 12 hourse for a couple of days now. The other thing I've noticed is that I went through a cloudy water phase for about 4 days, but now my water is clear. No algae growing everywhere or anything that looks like it.

Am I doing something wrong?

 

[rdd1952]

It's odd that you aren't seeing any ntrites. Are you using any chemicals other than dechlorinator? Or possibly any inserts in your filter? There are some products that remove nitrite (Algone, which is a pack you put in the filter, is one that comes to mind). It may be that something is removing the nitrite rather than the nitrifying bacteria processing it naturally.

Can you add the ammonia and then check it in about 4 hours and then again in about 8 to see if the nitrite is rising and then falling back?

 

[Stephensd30]

It's odd that you aren't seeing any ntrites. Are you using any chemicals other than dechlorinator? Or possibly any inserts in your filter? There are some products that remove nitrite (Algone, which is a pack you put in the filter, is one that comes to mind). It may be that something is removing the nitrite rather than the nitrifying bacteria processing it naturally.

Can you add the ammonia and then check it in about 4 hours and then again in about 8 to see if the nitrite is rising and then falling back?

I use Aqua-Tech EZ-Change Filter Cartridges. It's one of those easy to slide in the filter types. It does say Improved carbon works faster on the box. As far as other chemicals go the only thing that I have used is the dechlorinator and the ammonia I have been feeding it. I did a double check on the ammonia to make sure it was pure ammonia. Yep, ammonia and water.

I will be able to do the 4 and 8 hour check tomorrow afternoon because I will get home early. Thank you for the quick response. I will post a response tomorrow after I have completed the test.