Advice needed for fishless cycle

[raiyeveain]

Hi all

First time posting and very new to fish keeping. I’ve been trying to do a fishless cycle on a 5 gallon tank for two weeks. It is an Aqueon MiniBow but I’ve replaced the filter with a HOB with sponge filters and bio rings. Needing some guidance on what to do next.

I added 1/4th bottle of TSS+ two days ago and have been adding small amounts every day. Before TSS+, I was showing 4ppm ammonia, 0ppm nitrites, and 0ppm nitrates. This afternoon, I am showing 4ppm ammonia, 0 nitrites, and 20ppm nitrates and pH dropped from 7.2 to 6.6. Is it normal for nitrates to spike after adding TSS+ with no signs of nitrite? Or does it cause false readings in nitrates? Should I do a small water change to lower nitrates and ammonia a bit or leave it alone? I’m scared of doing anything drastic and ruining everything lol.

 

[Essjay]

Nitrate can give a false reading if there is nitrite in the water (the nitrate tester turns nitrate into nitrite then measures that so any nitrite already in the water is added to the nitrate reading). But you don't have any nitrite.

Nitrate doesn't affect the cycle, but nitrite does - at around 15 ppm, nitrite stalls the cycle. But you don't have any nitrite yet, so the cycle can't have stalled.

Can I just check how you are doing the nitrate test, please? Are you shaking the bottle #2 like the instructions say (or even longer than they say), then shaking the test tube before starting the timer? Many people don't realise that the shaking is important or the test can give false readings.



Having got all that out of the way, I presume you have added ammonia (or possibly ammonium chloride) from a bottle? Have you added just one dose of ammonia or have you been adding ammonia each day?

The only way nitrate can appear in a tank is either by there being some in the tap water used to fill the tank (have you tested your tap water?) or being made in the tank from ammonia. During fishless cycling, the only source of ammonia is from a bottle. Other things can produce ammonia - fish waste, decomposing uneaten fish food, bits of dead plant decomposing - but there isn't usually any of these present during a fishless cycle.

Can you let us know -
the nitrate level in your tap water
exactly what you have added to the tank since it was set up.

 

[raiyeveain]

Nitrate can give a false reading if there is nitrite in the water (the nitrate tester turns nitrate into nitrite then measures that so any nitrite already in the water is added to the nitrate reading). But you don't have any nitrite.

Nitrate doesn't affect the cycle, but nitrite does - at around 15 ppm, nitrite stalls the cycle. But you don't have any nitrite yet, so the cycle can't have stalled.

Can I just check how you are doing the nitrate test, please? Are you shaking the bottle #2 like the instructions say (or even longer than they say), then shaking the test tube before starting the timer? Many people don't realise that the shaking is important or the test can give false readings.



Having got all that out of the way, I presume you have added ammonia (or possibly ammonium chloride) from a bottle? Have you added just one dose of ammonia or have you been adding ammonia each day?

The only way nitrate can appear in a tank is either by there being some in the tap water used to fill the tank (have you tested your tap water?) or being made in the tank from ammonia. During fishless cycling, the only source of ammonia is from a bottle. Other things can produce ammonia - fish waste, decomposing uneaten fish food, bits of dead plant decomposing - but there isn't usually any of these present during a fishless cycle.

Can you let us know -
the nitrate level in your tap water
exactly what you have added to the tank since it was set up.

Yes, I’ve been making sure to invert the tube after bottle #1, shake bottle #2 for 30 seconds, and then shake the tube for a minute after adding both bottles and then waiting 5 minutes to read results.

I tested my tap water before setting up the tank and it read 0 across ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate with a pH of 7.2. I tested it again just now and it came back the same as before.

I have been using Prime, Stability, and some Flourish since the start of this tank. I added Fritz fishless fuel to get ammonia in the water. I have done a big dose of ammonia to get it to 3ppm and have been adding one drop every few days. I also have a couple live plants and Fluval Stratum substrate. I added the TSS+ since I caught it for $4 at a local Petsmart and decided to give it a try. I did have some nitrites show last week (before TSS+) at about .25p but it only showed that reading for two days.

I retested and results look about the same. Ammonia is not as dark as yesterday. Looks to be about 3ppm now. Nitrite is still 0 and nitrate looks to be between 10-20.

 

[Essjay]

If all the bacteria in TSS are alive and well, they just have to settle in and grow some more. If there are enough nitrite eaters to keep up with the ammonia eaters, in theory it is possible that the nitrite eaters eat all the nitrite as fast as the ammonia eaters can make it. But because there aren't enough ammonia eaters yet, there is still ammonia in the tank. This is possibly why your nitrate is going up without more than a trace of nitrite showing.


For fishless cycling, you only need to add 3 ppm ammonia, then wait until certain targets have been reached before adding any more. Since 5 gallon tanks are only suitable for a limited number of fish, and usually either just 1 fish or a shoal of very tiny fish, even 3 ppm is probably too much. I used to have a 25 litre (6.5 gallon) tank with 1 male betta and I used just 1 ppm ammonia to cycle it, which was more than enough.


Given the size of the tank, I would do a water change to get the ammonia level down to 2 ppm, then follow this method for the targets to look for before adding any more ammonia (but instead of 3 ppm, use 2 ppm, and instead of 1 ppm use 2/3 ppm)

Cycling Your New Fresh Water Tank: Read This First!

Cycling Your First Fresh Water Tank What is Cycling and Why is it Important? Fish waste, and especially fish breathing, plus uneaten food and other organic matter breaking down in a tank all produce Ammonia. This can quickly become toxic to fish if it is allowed to build up to any measurable...

www.fishforums.net

 

[raiyeveain]

If all the bacteria in TSS are alive and well, they just have to settle in and grow some more. If there are enough nitrite eaters to keep up with the ammonia eaters, in theory it is possible that the nitrite eaters eat all the nitrite as fast as the ammonia eaters can make it. But because there aren't enough ammonia eaters yet, there is still ammonia in the tank. This is possibly why your nitrate is going up without more than a trace of nitrite showing.


For fishless cycling, you only need to add 3 ppm ammonia, then wait until certain targets have been reached before adding any more. Since 5 gallon tanks are only suitable for a limited number of fish, and usually either just 1 fish or a shoal of very tiny fish, even 3 ppm is probably too much. I used to have a 25 litre (6.5 gallon) tank with 1 male betta and I used just 1 ppm ammonia to cycle it, which was more than enough.


Given the size of the tank, I would do a water change to get the ammonia level down to 2 ppm, then follow this method for the targets to look for before adding any more ammonia (but instead of 3 ppm, use 2 ppm, and instead of 1 ppm use 2/3 ppm)

Cycling Your New Fresh Water Tank: Read This First!

Cycling Your First Fresh Water Tank What is Cycling and Why is it Important? Fish waste, and especially fish breathing, plus uneaten food and other organic matter breaking down in a tank all produce Ammonia. This can quickly become toxic to fish if it is allowed to build up to any measurable...

www.fishforums.net

I did a water change and was able to get the ammonia down to 2ppm. This also helped to get my pH back up to 7.0.

I’ll follow the post you linked and stop adding extra ammonia for now. Thank you for your help!

 

[P J]

Fishless cycling is a great way to proceed, it’s much more humane than letting initial fish suffer - but you do not need to add ammonia or anything else, just a few plants the tank will mature in circa four weeks. Sponge is far superior to ceramic rings in establishing biological filtering.

 

[ClownLurch]

plants, plants and more plants.

 

[Essjay]

Just a point of clarification in case anyone gets confused.-
Fishless cycling does not have plants in the tank and it does need the addition of ammonia.
Silent or plant cycling uses plants to cycle a tank and does not involve adding ammonia.

Using plants to cycle a tank is not fishless cycling.

 

[P J]

If there are no fish in the tank then what is it? Don’t add ammonia just a smidgen of fish food or dose biofloc from an existing aquarium is fine

 

[P J]

plants, plants and more plants.

Agreed.

 

[raiyeveain]

Small update -

Ammonia is down to .25ppm today and I’ll probably be adding another dose later tonight. Still no nitrites but at this point I probably won’t see any. Nitrates have been steadily increasing so they must be working fast. I’ve only had to do one 20% water change since my last reply since nitrates were getting high, reading around 40ppm.

I don’t have many plants, two anubias and a javafern. I’ve been looking into ordering some floaters as I’ve read that they help with nitrates.

 

[Essjay]

Floaters help with nitrates because they take up ammonia and turn it into protein rather than nitrite and on to nitrate. Because they are on the surface they have plenty of other things which allow them to take up lots of ammonia - light is strong as they are very near the tnak lights, and the plants get CO2 from the air.
In other words, floating plants take up so much ammonia there is little left to be turned into nitrate.