Ammonia Added But Cycle Yet Still Hasn’t Started

[Rollxr]

Hi everyone had a question, yesterday i set up my tank and i threw in a bunch of flakes to add the ammonia in and now i have seen the ammonia sitting at the bottom of the tank but however today i am testing for ammonia and i have zero. What am i doing wrong here? Could it be because of prime water conditioner, that it just detoxifies ammonia from the water? I used prime as my conditioner

 

[CaptainBarnicles]

Prime detoxifies ammonia for a couple of days I think...but don't start your cycle with food. Rather buy ammonia in a bottle, it's much easier and you'll have more control

 

[Essjay]

i have seen the ammonia sitting at the bottom of the tank

You cannot see ammonia as it dissolves in water to make a clear colourless solution. Do you mean you can see the food on the bottom of the tank?

Food needs to decompose to make ammonia and this can take time. As CaptainBarnicles said, using ammonia instead of food is faster and you can control how much ammonia is going in the tank.

 

[Rollxr]

You cannot see ammonia as it dissolves in water to make a clear colourless solution. Do you mean you can see the food on the bottom of the tank?

Food needs to decompose to make ammonia and this can take time. As CaptainBarnicles said, using ammonia instead of food is faster and you can control how much ammonia is going in the tank.

Sorry. I meant i see the food sitting at the bottom of the tank but i am not getting ammonia from my test result!

 

[Essjay]

You won't get any ammonia until the food has decomposed. It's not instant, it takes a few days.

Also, you cannot know how many bacteria have grown using food - are there enough bacteria for a whole tankful of fish or just a few fish? When using food, the fish must be added a few at a time like with fish-in cycling. Using a bottle of ammonia means you know that you have grown enough for a tankful of fish so they can all be added once the cycle finishes.


With food, it needs to be replaced regularly. It will go mouldy and make a mess, so it must be removed and more food added before that happens.

 

[Rollxr]

You won't get any ammonia until the food has decomposed. It's not instant, it takes a few days.

Also, you cannot know how many bacteria have grown using food - are there enough bacteria for a whole tankful of fish or just a few fish? Using a bottle of ammonia means you know that you have grown enough for a tankful of fish so they can all be added once the cycle finishes.


With food, it needs to be replaced regularly. It will go mouldy and make a mess, so it must be removed and more food added before that happens.

What do you mean by “when using food, the fish must be added few at a time like with fish in cycling?” Am i supposed to constantly add food or what? Also a side note, this is a fishless cycle.

.

 

[CaptainBarnicles]

What do you mean by “when using food, the fish must be added few at a time like with fish in cycling?” Am i supposed to constantly add food or what? Also a side note, this is a fishless cycle.

Using rotting fish food doesn't give you a consistent measure of ammonia produced to start and then maintain the cycle. So you won't know how much bacteria has grown to support the amount of fish you want to keep, therefore you'd only be able to safely add a few fish a week to give the beneficial bacteria a chance to adjust to the amount of ammonia being made.

That's why it's advisable to use ammonia from a bottle to do a fishless cycle, it's a big concentrated amount that will grow a tank full of bacteria that will support a tank full of fish. Meaning when your cycle is completed you can literally just add all the fish you want to keep all at once.

Does that make sense or was I just on waffle settings?

 

[Essjay]

With a fishless cycle using ammonia, enough bacteria are grown during the cycle so that all the intended fish can be added once the cycle has finished. This is because a set amount of ammonia is added at intervals so the amount of ammonia going into the tank is known.

Doing a cycle with food relies on the food decomposing to make ammonia. Using this method it is not known exactly how much ammonia has been used to cycle, so not all the fish cannot be added at once. The fish need to be added a few at a time instead. A fishless cycle with food is a sort of hybrid between a fishless cycle using ammonia and a fish-in cycle.

Using this method, the food goes bad as it releases ammonia so it has to be removed and new food put in to keep making ammonia.


A fishless cycle is finished when the tank can clear 3 ppm ammonia to zero ammonia and zero nitrite in 24 hours. Using food, it is impossible to add 3 ppm at one go.

 

[TwoTankAmin]

And maybe read the information on this site about how to do a fishless cycle? If you had do this you would have read this:

Fish food or shrimp allowed to rot in a tank will produce ammonia. They will also produce some other nasty looking stuff there is no reason to have fouling a tank. This method does not allow one to have any control over how much ammonia is introduced or when. And rotting food can cause a bacterial bloom (not the bacteria we want) which turns the water very cloudy. We advise against using this to create ammonia in your tank.
https://www.fishforums.net/threads/cycling-your-new-fresh-water-tank-read-this-first.421488/

This is what Dr. Hovanec, who discovered the specific bacteria at work in tanks, said about using food to cyclen (I added the red coloring):

Using shrimp or fish food​

One of the more popular fishless cycling methods is to buy a few dead shrimp at the grocery store, cut them up into chunks and add them to the aquarium. The shrimp decay, which produces ammonia to feed the nitrifying bacteria. There are a few drawbacks with this method, one being that the hobbyist really has no way to know how much ammonia is being produced by the decaying shrimp, and the aquarium does not look very good with dead shrimp laying on the bottom. Also, the organic material of the shrimp can cause bacteria blooms which turn the aquarium water cloudy. This method works but it takes time and patience and you will probably see a spike in ammonia and nitrite if you add a medium to heavy load of fish after the initial cycling. Note that some people use flake fish food instead of shrimp but this is not recommended because flake food does not have much organic material compared to shrimp and so does not add a lot of ammonia to the water, but you can use cut fish instead of shrimp.

from https://www.drtimsaquatics.com/resources/fishless-cycling/