Does This Fishless Cycle Seem Slow?

[oswoldy]

Hiya,

My story is:

Started my cylce on the 02/03/09 and on the 14/03/09 realised I had added too much Ammonia so that was basically a waste of time

I done a 90% water change on the 14/03/09 and got Ammonia back down to 1 so topped it back up and ever since then including today my Ammonia has not dropped at all.

Todays readings are:

PH: 8.0 Thats gone up from 7.6
Ammonia: 3/4 - Unchanged
NitrIte: 0
NitrAte: 0
Temp: 29c

Does this seem overly slow?

Mike

 

[fatheadminnow]

You said you realized that you added too much ammonia? Could you let us know how much ammonia you actually had in there?

What could of happened was, when you have too much ammonia (8+ ppm), you start tou grow the wrong type of bacteria, ones we dont want.

That would explain why it is taking longer.

Yes, you should defiantely have seen ammonia drop within two weeks.

-FHM

 

[oswoldy]

It was 8+ do I need to do anything to get rid of the other kind of Ammonia?

Mike

 

[OldMan47]

What other kind of ammonia did you have? Were you using the stuff with detergents as well as dosing too much?
By now, after 2 weeks, I would have expected to see some kind of start to the cycle but maybe not too much progress. The ammonia usually starts to drop within the first 2 weeks.

 

[oswoldy]

What other kind of ammonia did you have? Were you using the stuff with detergents as well as dosing too much?
By now, after 2 weeks, I would have expected to see some kind of start to the cycle but maybe not too much progress. The ammonia usually starts to drop within the first 2 weeks.

I was using fishfood originally, I have since swapped to Homebase Ammonia 9.5%

Mike

 

[OldMan47]

The fish food is a tried and true method that we seldom recommend because it is hard to control dosages. It will only have set you back a bit by getting the ammonia value too high for a little while. It will not have stalled the cycle. Have you checked the thread of media donors for people who are near you? Your cycle can get a real good jump start by trading media for some mature media for your tank. There is a link to the thread in my signature area. Most of the donors seem to be in the UK so you have a better chance of finding someone nearby than I would.

 

[waterdrop]

Yes, agree with OM47, can't see anything wrong here. I too would have expected you to have found at least a few A-Bacs by now (15 days after reset) that would start making a small drop in ammonia visible.

I certainly agree with OM47 that discovering a mature media doner would be a big win in your case.

Your problem touches on another one of those gray areas (at least for me) I wonder about sometimes. If I'm remembering correctly, I believe the thinking is that the primary source for original inoculation of the water medium of the tank is via the incoming tap water, not the air. Seems like I read some usenet or other discussions where people debated this back when the fishless cycling process got dreamed up in the 1980's and I'm guessing there were water engineers who confirmed that this should be the case. At any rate the impression I've always had from all the souces is that its virtually impossible -not- to get our two species of bacteria appearing eventually in any water that's been dechlored/dechloramed.

But the question of "how soon" is still interesting, in that it would seem there might be a large element of chance involved. There has never been enough evidence of significant improvement in initial inoculation by anything less than a chunk of mature media for people to consistently recommend any measures less than that, but I've always found it hard to resist the speculation that introductions of things like live plants to a pristine new tank might bring along some small numbers of beneficial bacteria that might manage to help in the initial inoculation. Not sure if others share this speculation or just think I'm venturing too far into the area of raising false hopes... OM47,BTT?

~~waterdrop~~

 

[OldMan47]

I would also expect to see a few bacteria on any plant that came from a mature tank. I am not sure it would speed things up much. I also have had good success cloning filters by washing out an old filter in a new tank before I start using the ammonia. Along with all the dirt and wastes that are introduced, I get a good start on having some of the right bacteria go into the new filter. I view it sort of like using a bacterial additive that I know has the right bacteria in it and as a bonus, they are still alive. It is not much of an option unless you have an established tank with a filter that needs cleaning. I almost always have at least one filter that could use cleaning in a given week.