Fish In Cycle ....

[chophousemusic]

So my fish in cycle has been going on about 3 weeks now...my tank is 75 gal and has 9 fish in it. Ive been testing the water regularly and maintaining the ammonia level at a max of .25ppm by 20% water changes every few days. I have not yet noticed any levels of nitrite or nitrate yet.

How long does this process take before I can add new fish? And if my ammonia levels go down to 0 is it safe to add a new fish or two yet or is this going to disrupt the cycle? and when can i expect these nitrite levels to raise?

 

[LauraFrog]

No, do not add any new fish until your cycle completes or you will just slow it down further and endanger more fish.

Three weeks is a very long time to be seeing no nitrite. What sort of filtration is the tank running and what filter media are in there? Grabbing at straws here, because zeolite filtration or water treatment containing ammonia neutralisers disrupt fishless cycles, but not fish-in - if you are seeing ammonia, after three weeks you should be seeing nitrite.

What fish are in the tank at the moment?

 

[Miss Wiggle]

you need to weait for both ammonia and nitrite to hold themselves steady at 0 without water changes.

when this happens wait a couple of weeks and then you can slowly build up fish, if you add too many fish too quickly you'll be back to square one and have to do a fish in cycle over again.

 

[waterdrop]

Agree with MW and Laura, I still keep having a sort of a "hunch" (do you guys use that term in UK??) that large filters (and I assume there are one or more large filters for a huge tank like that!) have a bit of a different "feel" to the progression of their biofilms/colonies/cycling. Its obviously nothing scientific but from listening/reading all the dozens and dozens of cycle stories that go through here, it just feels like big filters do a sort of waiting game on you and are slower to show signs of progress but then all of a sudden they come on stronger and then stay stronger thereafter. In other words, a flatter line down low to the graph but then it shoots up faster as compared to a progress line you would draw for a smaller filter. I don't know, it should probably just be put down to speculation, what do you two think?

~~waterdrop~~

 

[tez2k007]

I did not start seeing nitrite until about a month after starting which was around 7th december. And I have only just got 0 readings of Nitrite for the past 3 or 4 days. So I would say I roughly got Nitrites around 4 weeks later then another 4 weeks at least to get rid of them. Quite a long process but I have heard people say they have done it quicker. Next time I will be doing a fishless cycle as it seems to be less work. I as most new users do though fell into the trap of being impatient and ended up doing fish in. Never again.

 

[chophousemusic]

Thanx...so basically I just have to wait it out...?

Currently the tank has 2 zebra danios, 2 buenos aires tetras, 1 blk phantom tetra, 2 silver dollars, and 2 krib cichlids

and the filter is a fluval 405

 

[waterdrop]

Yes, to ease the frustration, focus on the detective work of figuring out what pattern of water changes (percentage and frequency, which gives you a lot of flexibility as to combinations) is the minimum you can do but still keep ammonia and nitrite(NO2) at zero right after a water change and only increasing (either toxin) to 0.25ppm by the time you are available to do another water change.

~~waterdrop~~