Cycling While Away?

[ellena]

I've just had to do this and followed the advice given on here which was to put some fish food in a stocking and leave that in the tank. Worked OK, the bacteria seem to have suffered no ill effects, although the nitrites did a have a couple of day spike.

 

[waterdrop]

Yes, agree, socks of food has worked before. How long did yours have to hold out ellena? Was worried Geoff would be gone pretty long...

 

[Geoff1991]

Ill be gone about a week,

Therell be someone in to feed the other pets... But he wouldnt touch the fish tank

No idea why by the way, hes here to handle a frozen dead rodent and bird seed and doesnt want to handle ammonia?

Oh well...

 

[waterdrop]

I was going to ask if you could offer the person more money but then I thought, heck, only one week.. probably you won't be too messed up using one of those organic methods we've been discussing. Besides, you just come back and pick up where you left off, there's no way you'd be back to square one I don't think.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[Geoff1991]

So, feeding block?

 

[ellena]

Mine was in 5 days.

 

[Geoff1991]

Right then, its a week on saturday and i dont think i should put this off any longer.


Ill get a feeding block sometime in the week and see how it goes. Anyone got any other suggestions?

 

[Geoff1991]

You know what?

Ive had problems with planaria and i think adding a feeding block would just encourage them while im trying to starve them.

Im currently thinking about dosing ammonia before i go and just leaving it. And continue as normal when i get back.

What dyou think?

Im not really bothered about slowing down the cycle.

 

[waterdrop]

I have no idea how much of the bacteria would remain after the 5 days. First of all its really only 4 since you could dose 6 or 7 ppm in there before you leave, so the first day would be taken care of.

Bacteria drying out is really the worst killer and then lack of water movement and oxygen is pretty bad, so at least you are only dealing with the milder situation of lack of ammonia and we know that at first only one or two percent die after the second day or so without ammonia, but then the curve starts to drop off faster.

If you don't mind being our experiment, it will really be pretty interesting to see how well they bounce back after you get back. We can all hope there will be a core of bacteria left and it will bounce back quickly when you come home and immediately add some ammonia.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[Geoff1991]

Well today, all the media that i got from a doner disintegrated as it was rather old and well worn...

So, i think im just going to replace all my media since its all cut up into bits from when i changed my filter and just start again when i get back.

Actually, forget that. Ive replaced the piece that broke up and im going to keep going.

Yeah, my tank can be your guinea pig, waterdrop.

 

[waterdrop]

You realize there's a reasonable chance it won't be as bad as you're picturing?

 

[Geoff1991]

Well, im back

Tank was dirty and full of algae but ive cleaned it up and got back into my cycle and its slowed down a bit but i cant really see a negative effect...

I actually forgot to dose up the morning i left so it was just sitting with zero ammonia zero nitrite for a week.

 

[waterdrop]

Interesting. And it will be very interesting to hear the results of how many hours it takes for the drops from 5ppm over the next 2 or 3 days.

 

[Geoff1991]

So far its taken about 18 hours.