There is a reason why you see so many beginners here using the Add&Wait Ammonia Fishless Cycling Method written up by RDD in the Beginners Resource Center. It makes for less work and in my opinion is a fascinating way to learn about the all-important nitrogen cycle hands on in your own tank. When organics like fishfood are used, they must break down into ammonia to reach the point of feeding our first bacterial species and so using pure household ammonia turns out to be a way to more easily measure and control the ammonia that begins the process. The reason that fishless cycling itself is easier is that fewer water changes are needed, assuming a typical cycling case. The water testing is about the same.
The Fishless Cycling process, in practice, is not a cookbook procedure. It is better for the typical beginner to be interactive with the members here about their experience as it goes along. An important baseline is to test the tap water and post the results, along with the tank particulars and all chemicals and special considerations up in the first post of the fishless cycling thread. Then proceed to begin entering a once or twice daily log one line at a time by editing this same first post day after day. A good template might be as follows: Day X, am/pm, Temperature, Ammonia, Nitrite(NO2), pH, Nitrate(NO3), milliliters added (before/after test) to re-dose ammonia, water clarity and other observations.
I also like to recommend that every fishless cycler have a simple notebook, spiral bound or whatever, that they call their aquarium notebook and where they keep the master log that this forum log comes from. In their notebook they can record the same things but add more personal details such as where things came from, purchase prices, accidental mistakes and all sorts of other things. This all becomes very valuable just a short time down the road. All tank additions and removals and major activities should be noted. Pay particular attention to big obvious things like the addition of a fish as these are easiest to forget in the excitement of that day!
The finding of the correct ammonia can be an adventure. The members generally like to hear about this adventure and can offer suggestions for places to look. The ammonia is referred to as household ammonia or clear ammonia and is sold in the mop and broom section of stores as a household cleaner. It shouldn't have dyes, fragrances, surfactants or soaps in it. If you can see it you can perform a shake test. It should form larger bubbles for 2 or 3 seconds just like plain water but not foam. It in fact -is- mostly just distilled water with ammonia gas dissolved in it to just a few percent, typically 9.5%, especially in the UK where its apparently a rule that it stay below 10%. In reality the percentage, even if marked, can't necessarily be believed since the gas comes out of the water to a certain extent.
The use of a good test kit is paramount as I'm sure you already know. We recommend a good liquid-reagent based test kit. Salifert makes the very best but they are sold as inidividual tests and some involve tablets or powder I believe. Most of us, myself included, like and use the API Freshwater Master Test Kit. The Nutrafin Mini-Master Test Kit is another popular one. The basic tests are Ammonia, Nitrite, pH and Nitrate. Often the pH test must be divided into two ranges for greater accuracy.
Not all tests are performed at all times throughout the fishless cycling process. In the beginning it might be good to run them all for a day or two but then drop back to just the ammonia test once a day. The pH and nitite(NO2) tests could be done every third day during the first couple of weeks. Then, as nitrite(NO2) begins to appear, the nitrite test can be performed daily, out of interest.
Its good to look at your daily schedule and figure out two times of day, one in the morning and one in the evening which are 12 hours apart and at both of which you will have the time to perform tests. This can be quite challanging for people trying to get off to work, so you have to do some planning and thinking about it. One of these times will be the main 24-hour "daily" test that will be most frequent. We like to call this the "add-hour" because its when we will always re-dose our ammonia (IF it went to zero in the previous 24 hours.) We only ever re-dose at this add-hour in order to try and keep the waves of substances moving across the hours in a steady sequence that we can understand better. The other time of day, 12 hours off, will be our secondary testing time and will only be used late in the fishless cycle after the so-called "nitrite spike" phase has ended. Most working people find that evening works better for the "add-hour" and keeps the majority of testing at a less hectic time of day, but of course that depends on your personal schedule.
If you are still running the same biomedia in your filter that has been used with fish, there are likely to be colonies of the beneficial bacteria already starting in there. This may give you somewhat more advanced results once you get started. The biomedia will have to have stayed moist at least, if not submerged. You may have nitrites already showing, in addition to ammonia starting to drop down from day one instead of just sitting at the same concentration.
If you need to, please go ahead and ask questions before starting your fishless cycling thread!
~~waterdrop~~
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