Fish In Cycle

[vcmtik]

Hi there

I am currently on Day 18 of my fish in cycle, Here are the records for the last 11 days - How an I doing? It feels like I am not getting anywhere!

Day PH Ammonia Nitrite Nitrate Notes

• 1 7.6 0.25 5 Not taken 75% Water Change
• 1 7.6 0 0 Not taken
• 2 7.6 0 0 Not taken Intro 4 shrimp,2 Golden Apple Snails,2 Horned Nerite Snails
• 3 7.4 0.5 0.25 10
• 3 Change Substrate and 95% Water
• 4 7.4 0 0 0
• 5 7.4 0 0 less than 5
• 6 7.4 0.5 0 5 75% Water Change
• 6 7.4 0.25 0 less than 5 75% Water Change
• 6 7.4 0 0 less than 5
• 7 7.4 0 0 less than 5
• 8 7.4 0.5 0 5 75% Water Change
• 9 7.4 0.5 0 5 75% Water Change
• 10 7.4 0 0 5

11 7.4 0.5 0 5 75% Water Change



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[Marve99]

As difficult as it has been to make sense of your readings (edit - that looks better now) , it looks like you have yet to get your nitrite spike, but then you are only on day 18, be patient and keep up with those water changes-you'll get there

 

[vcmtik]

As difficult as it has been to make sense of your readings, it looks like you have yet to get your nitrite spike, but then you are only on day 18, be patient and keep up with those water changes-you'll get there

Hi there

Yeah sorry, I tried to copy and paste my table, and all the columns disappeared! I have tried to redo it. Will I get a Nitirite spike if I keep changing the water?

 

[Marve99]

Water changes at this stage are neccesary to keep your ammonia below 0.25 which you appear to have been controlling very well. In time the ammonia will be turned into nitrites by bacteria, but they can take a good few weeks to establish themselves.

If you could get hold of some mature filter media, it would almost certainly speed things up. There is a list of members willing to donate media in a pinned topic in this section - ccheck it out and see if anyone lives near you.

 

[waterdrop]

Marve99's advice has been good and I agree with it. Fish-In cycles need about 30 days and as he says you much change water to control the toxins to below 0.25ppm, but changing a lot of water can also obscure any feedback to you about whether the goal of cycling has been reached. The way you'll know (when you're out closer to 30 days) will be to watch your same log entries, just like the ones you've posted for us, and when you can go a whole week without doing any water changes but still have zero ammonia and zero nitrite that whole time, you'll be cycled (unlike now, where you can see that every day or couple of days traces of ammonia or nitrite can crop up in your readings and that's even with water changes occurring!)

~~waterdrop~~