Can I Add Water During Fishless Cycle?

[Lisa67]

Over the past 2 weeks I've lost about 1.5" of water due to evaporation and daily testing. If I add water will I mess up my amonia levels? Should I add amonia to compensate? Also, While cycling should I use water conditioner if I do add water? Thanks again. Also, once this process is finially complete do you recommend aquarium salt? (fresh water tank, 16gal)

 

[symon_say]

You can put more water, just use dechlorinator and check your ammonia reading to see if you need to add more ammonia.

 

[markandhisfish]

hi

yes its fine to tup up any evapouration , a small ammount like 1.5" shouldnt have a massive impact on your ammonia levels , but if in doubt just top it up then test

you can theoreticly add that much water without worrying about dechlorinator as it will be greatly diluted , but personally for peace of mind il normally dechlorinate even a small ammount of water i add to the tank .

 

[Skins]

hi

yes its fine to tup up any evapouration , a small ammount like 1.5" shouldnt have a massive impact on your ammonia levels , but if in doubt just top it up then test

you can theoreticly add that much water without worrying about dechlorinator as it will be greatly diluted , but personally for peace of mind il normally dechlorinate even a small ammount of water i add to the tank .

+1

 

[waterdrop]

Agree with the other comments. There is also nothing sacred about any of the water (or water changes) at any point during fishless cycling! You can do a full water change and recharge your ammonia at any time and it's no big deal, we just tend not to do it a lot because it sometimes slows the process down a little. When you do a water change during fishless cycling there is no meaning to doing a "partial" one, that is only for when fish are in. The best way to do one during a fishless cycle is to just gravel-clean and siphon all the water out until it's down to the gravel and the suction breaks naturally. Refill the tank with conditioned (I suggest conditioner always be dosed at 1.5x to 2x over the instructions when still in the first year of a tank and especially during cycling) and temp adjusted water (so the bacteria will be warm enough to get right back to work, lol.) And then of course never forget to re-dose ammonia and get it back to the 4ppm or 2ppm or whatever you are dosing at your stage of the fishless cycle. The water is just a "vehicle" to carry the correct concentration of ammonia, the fresh oxygen and the fresh calcium, magnesium and other trace elements to the young bacterial colonies and sometimes "not disturbing" your setup actually drifts into being a worse bacterial growing soup than if you do a big water change or even very gentle filter clean (contrary to what we normally say!) It all depends on your particular setup.

OK, so having said all that, let me also mention that tank size makes a difference. The smaller the tank is, the easier it is to do the kind of full water change I've described and thus I've mentioned how it can be perfectly fine and possible a bit helpful. But if your tank is large then obviously the process can be a huge amount of work and so the topping up procedures mentioned at first are probably more the way to go the majority of time!

~~waterdrop~~

 

[Whitey_144]

also note, if you top it up, over time the concentration of minerals will increase and therefore your 'total dissolved solids' will slowly be higher, because the evaporated water left the minerals behind and you're adding more in the new tap water. of course this is no big deal for small amounts, but it depends what you're aiming for.

For me i was aiming to soften water so topping up with tap water had the opposite effect for me and made the water harder.


all of this can be corrected at the end of the cycle anyway with more water changes - i used Ro water for my evaporation topups in the end, lol