Using DrTim’s Aquatics One & Only Live Bacteria:
The best and easiest way to fishless cycle is to combine adding the ammonium chloride with our Live Nitrifying bacteria. When used in combination, these will cycle the tank in less than one week. Again, do not add too much ammonia. We make it easy by providing a bottle of reagent grade ammonium chloride that is at a concentration such that adding 1 drop of solution to 1 gallon of aquarium water will result in an ammonia-nitrogen concentration of 2 mg/L (ppm).
The procedure is to add the ammonium chloride solution, shake the bottle of nitrifying bacteria well and add it to the aquarium. Measure ammonia and nitrite the next day and record. Add ½ dose and wait 24 hours and measure again. By day 5 to 7, you should be able to add 1 drop per gallon and the next day, ammonia and nitrite will be 0.
Troubleshooting:
The three biggest problems with fishless cycling are 1) cloudy water, which may even smell, when doing the cut shrimp method, 2) when dosing with ammonium chloride, letting the ammonia and/or nitrite getting too high and 3) a low pH value.
The cloudy water will eventually clear up but you can add a natural organic remover like DrTim’s
Waste-Away to speed up the decay process. You can also change the water. Many people mistakenly think the cloudy white water is a nitrifying bacteria bloom but that is wrong. Nitrifying bacteria cannot grow fast enough to cloud the water.
The high ammonia or nitrite concentration (which by the way can sometimes occur in the shrimp method) is a problem because high levels of ammonia or nitrite inhibit the nitrifying bacteria. You need to change the water to reduce the ammonia and nitrite to get the cycle going again.
Also, if you decided not to use our Live Nitrifying Bacteria in the beginning and now want to add some to speed up the process, you need to make sure the ammonia and nitrite concentrations are under 5 mg/L-N before adding the One & Only Live Nitrifying bacteria.
The other big problem is that the cycling process seems to stall with ammonia or nitrite not dropping anymore. Usually this is due to a low pH value (less than 7.0). The conversion of the ammonia and nitrite by the bacteria naturally produces an acid that will lower the water pH. If the pH gets too low, however, the nitrification (cycling) process will stop. So if you add a lot of ammonia over the course of a week and get the cycling cranking, you can actually cause the pH to drop to a low value and ‘stall’ the entire process. The way to get the cycling going again is to simply do a 25 to 20% water change. This will increase the pH and usually gets the cycling process going again.
Lastly,
do not add ammonia-removing products as this just complicates the process – let nature take its course and your tank will be ready for fish.
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