Hi, all! I have three established tanks with bettas and 1 ADF: 3.5g, 5g, and 10g. With all three of these, I did fish-in cycling with the bettas. Everyone did beautifully and their tanks are all sparkling clean now. I live in a small apartment and can only have tanks smaller than 20g, so I wanted to get my feet wet (so to speak) with the aquarium hobby before trying anything harder than bettas.
I snagged a 16g bowfront aquarium kit for cheap at Petco during the post-Christmas sale. I set it up a few days ago with plans to do my first fishless cycle, chosen because the size of the tank makes frequent water changes a hassle. My tap water is high in ammonia, forcing me to schlep big jugs of RO water from my LFS to do water changes in my little tanks; I didn't want to be lugging these jugs to my apartment constantly, so I decided to set it up fish-free and cycle it properly.
I filled the tank with my tap water, which reads .5 on the API ammonia test, and treated the water with Prime. I got the heater and filter running and let it go for a few hours until the tank was at 78 degrees. Then--here is where I may have done something dumb--on advice from my LFS, I added a bottle of ATM Colony. I hadn't ever expected to use one of those "instant cycle" products, but the guy at my LFS talked it up so much, and he's generally really knowledgable, so I figured, what the heck.
Day 1, my ammonia was 0.50. Yesterday, I noticed the water was cloudy. My subsequent readings for the past two days have been as follows:
Day 2: Ammonia .25, Nitrite 0, Nitrate 0, Ph 7.6
Day 3: Ammonia .25, Nitrite 0, Nitrate 0, Ph 7.6
So, no change in numbers besides the ammonia dropping from Day 1.
Here is my question: did the Colony work? Or have I basically just not even begun the cycling process yet? Should I do a PWC and start stocking? Or should I add ammonia to 5ppm and begin the waiting-and-testing process? I'm very new at this, and even with as much reading as I've done, I'm confused. And I kind of wish I hadn't messed with the Colony stuff, and just done a real cycle from the start.
I snagged a 16g bowfront aquarium kit for cheap at Petco during the post-Christmas sale. I set it up a few days ago with plans to do my first fishless cycle, chosen because the size of the tank makes frequent water changes a hassle. My tap water is high in ammonia, forcing me to schlep big jugs of RO water from my LFS to do water changes in my little tanks; I didn't want to be lugging these jugs to my apartment constantly, so I decided to set it up fish-free and cycle it properly.
I filled the tank with my tap water, which reads .5 on the API ammonia test, and treated the water with Prime. I got the heater and filter running and let it go for a few hours until the tank was at 78 degrees. Then--here is where I may have done something dumb--on advice from my LFS, I added a bottle of ATM Colony. I hadn't ever expected to use one of those "instant cycle" products, but the guy at my LFS talked it up so much, and he's generally really knowledgable, so I figured, what the heck.
Day 1, my ammonia was 0.50. Yesterday, I noticed the water was cloudy. My subsequent readings for the past two days have been as follows:
Day 2: Ammonia .25, Nitrite 0, Nitrate 0, Ph 7.6
Day 3: Ammonia .25, Nitrite 0, Nitrate 0, Ph 7.6
So, no change in numbers besides the ammonia dropping from Day 1.
Here is my question: did the Colony work? Or have I basically just not even begun the cycling process yet? Should I do a PWC and start stocking? Or should I add ammonia to 5ppm and begin the waiting-and-testing process? I'm very new at this, and even with as much reading as I've done, I'm confused. And I kind of wish I hadn't messed with the Colony stuff, and just done a real cycle from the start.