New Tank Cycle

[terry simmonds]

Hi All, new here!!

I am setting up a Malawi tank, 340 litre, i have a Fluval FX6 filter, sand substrate and ocean rock, i added the water 5 days ago and have been adding Biostart 1st day 10ml per ltr, 2nd 5ml per ltr, 3rd 5ml per ltr, i have been testing the water with the following results, Nitrate was at 10ppm today is at 5ppm, Nitrite 0.25ppm now at zero, PH constantly at 8.2, i am going to do a 50% water change weekly, how long before i can add fish?
I note that people recommend adding ammonia to a tank to feed the bacteria is this a recognised activity to help the cycle?

 

[Essjay]

Malawi tanks do not usually have live plants so you have to rely on bacteria to remove all the ammonia made by the fish. (Plants use ammonia as fertiliser). The pH is also well over 7.0 so the proportion of any ammonia in the toxic form will be quite high. This makes it even more important that there is not a trace of ammonia when there are fish in the tank.

At the moment there is nothing in the tank producing ammonia so you can't know if the Biostart has added enough bacteria to the tank. If it hasn't, and you add fish, you could well find yourself doing a fish-in cycle, with lots of water changes to keep both ammonia and nitrite at zero. The safest thing for your future fish is to add ammonia solution to give a reading of 3 ppm, then test for both ammonia and nitrite 24 hours later. If either or both are above zero, there are not enough bacteria so you will need to do a fishless cycle. This is the best method for that http://www.fishforums.net/threads/cycling-your-new-fresh-water-tank-read-this-first.421488/

 

[terry simmonds]

Thank you,

I am now at week 4, the Nitrates and Nitrite is all zero, and the ph is 8.24, i decided to just be patient and allow the tank to cycle, did lots of water changes at week 2-3 and then none at week 4, the readings went upto 80ppm on the Nitrate and 20ppm on the Nitrite over the 4 week period, tested the water Sunday 28th and Monday 29th all as above, shopping now for my first batch of fish, i intend on adding around 25 Malawi Cichlids in total and adding these at 6 at a time.