phoebechicken
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- Jun 5, 2007
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As the title suggests my fishless cycle doesn't appear to be working.
I have a Juwel Rio 125 tank. I set it up with gravel and dechlorinated water a fortnight ago, and started my fishless cycle 12 days ago. I added enough ammonia to get the levels to 6ppm, whacked the heater up as high as it will go (31C), assembled the filter etc and let it do it's job. I have added 3 rocks to the tank but that's it so far - no plants, fish, bogwood etc.
Over the next five or so days the ammonia levels dropped to somewhere between 2 and 4 PPM and then just stopped going down. I waited five days and the reading was always the same (I'm using a liquid drop test kit that I saw recommended on here). I did some research online and apparently some people have found that ammonia levels of over 5PPM can actually kill off the useful bacteria and stall the cycle, so I wondered if I'd added too much ammonia in the first place. I did a 20% water change to try and get rid of some ammonia - the levels are now just below 2PPM. The trouble is that this was 3 days ago now and the levels are STILL just below 2PPM. Nothing seems to be happening!
Where am I going wrong?
I did test the nitrite a few days ago, even though I knew there wasn't much point at this stage, and there was a little there but not much.
Any help gratefully received as I would like to get some fish in there some time this century!
Celeste
I have a Juwel Rio 125 tank. I set it up with gravel and dechlorinated water a fortnight ago, and started my fishless cycle 12 days ago. I added enough ammonia to get the levels to 6ppm, whacked the heater up as high as it will go (31C), assembled the filter etc and let it do it's job. I have added 3 rocks to the tank but that's it so far - no plants, fish, bogwood etc.
Over the next five or so days the ammonia levels dropped to somewhere between 2 and 4 PPM and then just stopped going down. I waited five days and the reading was always the same (I'm using a liquid drop test kit that I saw recommended on here). I did some research online and apparently some people have found that ammonia levels of over 5PPM can actually kill off the useful bacteria and stall the cycle, so I wondered if I'd added too much ammonia in the first place. I did a 20% water change to try and get rid of some ammonia - the levels are now just below 2PPM. The trouble is that this was 3 days ago now and the levels are STILL just below 2PPM. Nothing seems to be happening!
Where am I going wrong?
I did test the nitrite a few days ago, even though I knew there wasn't much point at this stage, and there was a little there but not much.
Any help gratefully received as I would like to get some fish in there some time this century!
Celeste