Cycling Advice Please (technical Stuff)

[LauraFrog]

I might do that then, there are a few dead beetles in there (sludge. Yuk.)

 

[LauraFrog]

Well we ran out of water, so I ended up syphoning out the dead beetles and topping up the evaporation and that was about all. I'm now having to add at least 4ppm ammonia daily and the nitrite is zero, it has been for a few days. The ammonia does not zero itself in one day from 5ppm but I reckon I'm only a few days off cycled.

Thanks for your help! I'm glad I didn't have to sit out the entire length of a usual fishless cycle.

 

[waterdrop]

You what? You ran out of water? Now you've got me picturing the Aus desert in the summer (its summer down there, right?) and you've got some odd way of getting water??

So 5ppm ammonia is not quite dropping to zero in 24 hours, and how many hours would you guesstimate nitrite is taking to drop to zero?

~~waterdrop~~

 

[LauraFrog]

LOL - that just cracked me up!

Australia is weird, my bit of it at least, it actually rains all summer and we get flooded in. We pump water from the creek into a tank on the hill which gravity feeds into the house. Well the tank ran out, or just about ran out. It's been filled up again. The creek is a few k's away, so it's easy to walk there, but it's not easy to lug buckets of water back up the hill.

It's processing the amount of nitrite you get from 4ppm of ammonia in 24 hours.

I'm going to do the 24 hour test because I think it should be getting pretty close...