70G Fishless Cycle

[Shelby]

Starting Readings
PH between 7.0 ad 7.2 ---- Amonia 0 ---- Nitrite 0 ---- Nitrate 0
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Day 2 June 9 (8am before mature media)Ammonia 8ppm (ammonia overload! oops) 8:30am added mature media 11:30am Ammonia 5ppm
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Day 3 June 10 8:00am Ammonia 3ppm
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Day 4 June 11 8am Ammonia between 2 and 3ppm
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Day 5 June 12 skip
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Day 6 June 13 Skip
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Day 7 June 14 8am Ammonia between 1 and 2 ppm
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Day 8 June 15 Ammonia Between 1 and 2 ppm
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Day 9 June 16 Between 1 and 2 ppm
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Day 10 June 17 Ammonia Between 1 and 2 ppm ---- PH 7.6 ---- Nitrite close to .25 more of a darker blue than purple ---- Nitrate tiny bit more than 0 but nowhere near 5
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Day 11 June 18 Ammonia 1ppm ---- Nitrates 5ppm ---- Nitrites .50ppm
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Day 12 June 19 Ammonia Between .50ppm and 1ppm
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Day 13 June 20 Skip
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Day 14 June 21 Ammonia .25ppm
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Day 15 June 22 Ammonia less than .25ppm not quite zero. Bumped Ammonia back to 4-5ppm
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Day 16 June 23Ammonia very close to 0 ---- Nitrates close to 80 ---- Nitrites between .25 and .50 added 12ml ammonia
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Day 17 June 24 Ammonio 0 ---- Nitrates between 80 and 160 ---- Nitrites 0
added 12ml ammonia
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Day 18 June 25 Ammonia 0 ---- Nitrates between 80 and 160 ---- Nitrites 0 added 12ml ammonia
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Starting a 70Gallon freshwater (hopefully bolivian or german blue rams)

This is the first time I've ever fishless cycled a tank so here goes. Any advice would be greatly appreciated!!

Tank is filled with water and 50 pounds of black aqua terra sand. Currently my water is gray in color because of the sand having yet to settle completely. Running carbon at the moment hoping it clears up soon. I am running a magnum 350 canister with a small amount of cermic rings and a whisper 30-60 HOB filter one side full of bio rings and one side of carbon hopefully to clean up the water color. I plan on bring part of my sponge filter from home to place in the magnum with the bio rings to give it a jumpstart. Does anyone see anything wrong with doing it that way?

Current readings:
PH between 7.0 ad 7.2
Amonia 0
Nitrite 0
Nitrate 0

According to the calculator I need 13.4lml of ammonia to get it to 5ppm? I could have sworn it was 4ppm but I'll shoot for 5 and see what happens.

Brought ammonia up to 5ppm.. now comes the waiting *sigh*

 

[Shelby]

Day 2, June 9 It seems as I've over loaded the amonia. I think I read the seringe wrong *sigh*

tested at 8am Ammonia at 8ppm (holy cow)
Is this going to be a problem?

Holy Moses. I added some media from my tank at home and tested again at 11:30am and my ammonia has dropped to about 5ppm already. Is this normal??

 

[Defiance]

Hiya,

Edited ::: Why ? Well because i am 42 and can't read lol

Ok, here's a correct response he he

I can't rem offhand the stats, but i added some mature filter media and yep it sure started to eat up the ammonia pretty quick

Easiest way is to think of it like this .............

Lots of ammonia to feed the goodies on the media you added, so these get to work (as one would hope) and this starts them growing in mass and bringing down the ammonia readings

I have a spare 100L tank now, i might over the weekend have a crack at really high dosing ammonia on purpose to see if it can cycle fishless faster, one part of my brain (i got 2 cells ;P ) says it makes sense, other braincell says No !

Would be nice to know the outcome so heck i'm gonna do it

Tony

Ps: You will have a faster cycle time you know now with added amture media

 

[Shelby]

I'm setting this tank up at my work and I work for a 70 year old really really (and I mean REALLY) impatient old man! Although I must admit he is fun to work for and we have a lot of fun razzing each other.

I figured the mature media would jumpstart the cycle but honestly I didn't expect that much that fast. I sat around thinking about it and thought maybe I did the test wrong so I did it again at 1:15pm this afternoon and it's honestly down to about 4ppm.

If I remember correctly I wait until it hits 1ppm or less and bring it back up to 5ppm and start the timing all over again?

 

[Defiance]

Hiya,

Here's the linky to the fishless faq

http/www.fishforums.net/index.php?showtopic=113861

Gotta dash out now or i would read and post better, but link has all info in

Adios

Tony

 

[Shelby]

Thanks for the link I always forget where it is! I went back to my first post and put my test "log" at the top

 

[OldMan47]

I am almost as old as your employer Shelby. I always think of myself as a fun guy but do not have a sense of humor when it comes to fish care. You may well have gone a long way to cycling a new tank's filter by using a clone from an existing tank. A clone can be amazing in its ability to cycle a new filter. My own clones often take a week or less to establish a new functional filter for a tank. I still do a fishless cycle on those filters just be be certain though.

 

[Shelby]

Hi Oldman,
Well mine seems be taking quite a bit longer to cycle than a week for sure! I am on day 7 now and still sitting between 1 and 2 ppm. Which is fine because I am waiting to put fish in until it processes 5ppm in 8 hours or less. I am going to have to special order the fish I want or drive an hour each way to get them so I will get a majority in all at once.

I currently have carbon in one side of my filter to clear up the remaining color from the sand in the water. That will come out tomorrow and I will add more media from my mature filters at home. I just didn't want to take too much from home at once because I didn't want to throw my own tank off.

Hopefully with adding more media it will speed things up a bit more!

 

[Shelby]

It's been 4 days and my ammonia numbers haven't dropped at all

Ammonia between 1 and 2 ppm
Ph 7.6
nitrite not quite .25 more of a dark blue than purple.
nitrate not quite 0 nowhere near 5

 

[Shelby]

Day 11 numbers are
Day 11 June 18
Ammonia 1ppm
Nitrates 5ppm
Nitrites .50ppm

I did start with a small amount of mature media and an over dose of ammonia! lol

Are these numbers looking anywhere close to being right?

 

[PDSimon]

This looks normal for a fishless cycle, ammonia decreasing and nitrite rising. Doesn't look like the mature media has had much effect at all. There are no 'average' cycles but this is pretty average speed so far.

I'm not the person to talk to but you have your own tanks so maybe another attempt to seed it? I would get more info from oldman47, waterdrop or someone else used to these cycling situations.

 

[Shelby]

I was thinking about that. I added new media to mine when I took some out. I'm guessing that should have had time to seed by now. I'll grab some more out of my tank at home. I really really don't want to throw that thing into a mini cycle and risk loosing my own fish. It's only been 11 days so I was hoping it was moving a tad bit faster than "normal" whatever that is!

 

[PDSimon]

Normally from what I've seen when you add filter it jump starts the cycle but it seems to have had no effect on this unfortunately... It will have less effect the longer you leave it but like you said you have to be careful not to put your own filter in danger.

good luck!

 

[Shelby]

Well it could be because my tank is a 30gallon and this tank is a 70gallon. So the tank size could have something to do with it.

 

[waterdrop]

I have just seen this thread for the first time and have some concern about the filtration involved. Every time we've had discussions about the Magnum 350s there has been concern about them. They are a very different sort of machine and many say they were designed to be used in a fish room where they are moved from tank to tank to provide very high speed mechanical filtration. My recollection was that they possibly have trouble with biofiltration. Now that could be made up for with the large HOB (more than one HOB?) but you then mention that you are using all rings and carbon. Raptor and I have had some discussions about how ceramic rings are optimized to slow down the water and allow debris to be trapped below a coarse sponge that caps the rings. The mulm that collects in the ring area then breaks down, providing some of the ammonia going directly to the autotrophs farther up the water path inside the filter. The rings are not optimized as a biomedia however, they just don't have enough surface area. Likewise, carbon is not an optimal biomedia (its technically mostly a chemical media) because it tends to crumble over time and get carried away by the water and by water changes.

I may be way off base but I'm just concerned this may not be the best mix of media types or the most optimal filtration equipment for your tank, even if it cycles ok initially. Hopefully others more experienced than me will comment.

~~waterdrop~~