Tank Cycling Mkii

[Benauld]

Hi all,

There is another post floating around in this forum regarding my previous attempt at cycling using food. To cut a long story short, i buggered it up and it didn't work. To add to which, I had problems with my sand. I've now changed the setup completely, removed the poxy tannin leaching bogwood, swapped the anaerobic sand for gravel and am attempting to cycle the tank again. (Using ammonia solution this time.)

I've just done a few tests in a 10 Litre bucket, using a Nutrafin: Essential Mini Master Test Kit, with various quantities of ammonia solution and the results look like this:

Sorry about all the confusing gridlines, I needed them to read across and down the graph correctly. Now, if I want to raise the ammonia to 4ppm I need 2.3ml of solution in 10 Litres. So, since my tank holds 130 Litres, I need to add 2.3 X 13 = 29.9ml

Is this correct?

I will be following the "Add and Wait" method described in this forum, but will also be using Nutrafin Cycle bacterial supplement.

 

[ox5477]

Ya, thats fine and actually good that you did the test bucket as you can easily add too much ammonia to your tank as 4 ppm is obviously not much. Just keep testing the water and add appropriatley. Remember, its easier to add more ammonia if needed instead of doing a water change to take out excess.

 

[Benauld]

Well despite doing my test bucket and trying to calculate the correct amount of ammonia to add, I think I still managed to add a little too much last week. I added 30ml in my 130L tank. I don't really like the colour charts with my test kit, I think they are too subjective, however, I measured the ppm at around 7.3 maybe even slightly more.

I thought about doing a water change to lower this, but with work commitments didn't find the time, (I knew it wasn't urgent, & that it would just take longer for the bacteria to build up).

Anyway, the ammonia level did slowly start falling and by Friday [09/03/07] night 11pm-ish, I measured it at 5.5ppm. However, by 12am Saturday night [10/03/07] the ammonia had disappeared! I measured it at 0ppm. It literally disappeared overnight!

So, as per the "Add & Wait" instructions, (printed off from the pinned cycling section on this forum) I measured nitrIte and it was 1.6ppm. I then added some more ammonia (I was more conservative this time and added 10ml, which I measured as raising the concentration to between 3 and 3.5ppm). By 12pm Sunday [11/03/07] the ammonia had been completely reduced again - 0ppm! So I have added more ammonia again 20ml, which has raised the ppm to between 5 and 5.5.

I am going out today to get another nitrIte test kit as I finished it up last night. However, I don't think there will be any major surprises, the nitrIte should have gone up again.

BTW as a slight aside - I can't believe that they give you two different sized bottles of reagent in the NitrIte test kit, and tell you to use the same amount of drops from each bottle! Only the smaller reagent has run out, now there's a surprise!

Hopefully, it should just be a matter of waiting for my nitrIte to fall now. I wont test for nitrAtes until it has fallen, as my stupid nitrAte test doesn't work in the presence of high nitrItes!