Fishless Cycle Questions

[Kaybear]

I am attempting my first fishless cycle on my 75 gallon freshwater aquarium. I am not new to fish keeping by any means but didn't know about fishless cycling until recently. So here's the details.. It's a 75 gallon aquarium with gravel substrate, a heater set at 82 (for the cycling process), two penguin bio wheel 200s with the filter media in that came with it, just yesterday I cut a small slit in the floss area to remove the carbon. I read somewhere that it might interfere with the cycle process, plus it's not needed. I have some poly filter pads on their way to add to the other slot in the filter. Out of the faucet (treated with water conditioner) my readings are 0 ppm of ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate and about 7.4-7.6 ph. I bought 10% ace hardware ammonia, nothing but ammonia and water in it. I filled the tank, started up the filters (don't have access to seeded filters) and let it run for about an hour and then added my water conditioner (aqua safe, I plan on getting better stuff before I get my fish) and let it run over night. The next day (4-20) I added about 7 mls of ammonia to the tank, waited a couple hours and tested, got a reading of about 4 ppm. I have tested my water every day for ammonia and nitrites and it's stayed the same. After the first week I added another ml of ammonia because I wasn't sure if it was closer to 3 or 4-5. It has been 2 weeks and I thought by now I would have a change in ammonia or nitrites. I'm wondering if I am doing anything wrong or if the carbon that was in the filters could have caused a problem? Last week sometime my water got pretty cloudy which I thought was a bacteria bloom but nothing has changed. I haven't had money to buy any of those bacteria in a bottle products that some people swear by, I might pick up one this Friday. I know this isn't a quick process but I just thought I would see something by now. Any advice is appreciated and if there's any info I left out please let me know. Thanks!

Oh and I tested my ph out of the aquarium today and it's at about 8.4

 

[eaglesaquarium]

I am attempting my first fishless cycle on my 75 gallon freshwater aquarium. I am not new to fish keeping by any means but didn't know about fishless cycling until recently. So here's the details.. It's a 75 gallon aquarium with gravel substrate, a heater set at 82 (for the cycling process), two penguin bio wheel 200s with the filter media in that came with it, just yesterday I cut a small slit in the floss area to remove the carbon. I read somewhere that it might interfere with the cycle process, plus it's not needed. I have some poly filter pads on their way to add to the other slot in the filter. Out of the faucet (treated with water conditioner) my readings are 0 ppm of ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate and about 7.4-7.6 ph. I bought 10% ace hardware ammonia, nothing but ammonia and water in it. I filled the tank, started up the filters (don't have access to seeded filters) and let it run for about an hour and then added my water conditioner (aqua safe, I plan on getting better stuff before I get my fish) and let it run over night. The next day (4-20) I added about 7 mls of ammonia to the tank, waited a couple hours and tested, got a reading of about 4 ppm. I have tested my water every day for ammonia and nitrites and it's stayed the same. After the first week I added another ml of ammonia because I wasn't sure if it was closer to 3 or 4-5. It has been 2 weeks and I thought by now I would have a change in ammonia or nitrites. I'm wondering if I am doing anything wrong or if the carbon that was in the filters could have caused a problem? Last week sometime my water got pretty cloudy which I thought was a bacteria bloom but nothing has changed. I haven't had money to buy any of those bacteria in a bottle products that some people swear by, I might pick up one this Friday. I know this isn't a quick process but I just thought I would see something by now. Any advice is appreciated and if there's any info I left out please let me know. Thanks!

Oh and I tested my ph out of the aquarium today and it's at about 8.4

It all sounds pretty good to me. Have a read through some of the other fishless cycle logs. I am currently "testing" SafeStart with my fishless cycle on a 10 gallon tank. The ammonia has dropped, but without a commiserate rise in nitrites or nitrates. Check it out if you are interested here.


I'm only a few days in so far, but I'm not sure that the product is actually doing anything right now. The way I see it, if it were doing something, I would have seen either a jump in nitrites or nitrates by now, but maybe not. I'm just going to keep on plodding along.

 

[KittyKat]

In the filter you have, the bacteria are meant to live on the wheels, which is why you can take out the sponges altogether, if you like. Larger surface area is still desirable, of course, so feel free to leave them in. Carbon will not interfere with cycling.

Try a very large waterchange and/or cleaning everything in dechlorinated water: menacer, another member on here, had this sort of problem, restarting from scratch fixed it for him. Having said that, do keep in mind that ammonia most commonly start shifting on days 10-14 (so in some cases can take longer).

The best way to speed up the cycle is to get some established filter media from someone, or even some sponge squeezings from an established filter.

 

[Kaybear]

I'm going to give it another week, if nothing has changed by then I will do a large water change and start over I guess. I don't have a reliable source to get an established filter from, I'm not big on sharing tank water or filters with people I don't know well enough to trust that their tank is healthy. That's the last thing I want, an established tank with disease or parasites in it. I actually just got the extra sponge filter pads in the mail so I'm gonna throw those in, hopefully give more breeding grounds for the bacteria.

 

[KittyKat]

I don't have a reliable source to get an established filter from, I'm not big on sharing tank water or filters with people I don't know well enough to trust that their tank is healthy. That's the last thing I want, an established tank with disease or parasites in it.

Actually, that part doesn't matter. The 4 ppm of ammonia is enough to kill most disease/parasites and the ones it won't kill will die because they will not have a host fish to live on. Even though I still take all precautions of cleaning used equipment and so on, to be honest, I have never heard of a disease which can survive for over a week without a fish to live on.

 

[Kaybear]

Yea I haven't either, I'm just a freak when it comes to that stuff lol. Tomorrow I'm going to be looking around at fish stores for different decor and a few supplies, I might talk to the lfs that I used to sell my fish to about getting a filter from him. If I chicken out then I will just get a bottle of stability and hope for the best

 

[KittyKat]

Another point, if you're buying the fish from him.. if the filter is diseased, the fish would be too, right?

Cycle aids are nowhere near as useful as some good ol' bacteria.

 

[Kaybear]

I picked up some stability Saturday and have been treating the tank with it, over dosing a little. And today... my nitrite test was purple!! I'm too excited that I'm finally seeing some progress. I know the second part of the cycle isn't a quick one either but now I know it's going in the right direction.

 

[OldMan47]

It sounds like you are definitely moving forward. Keep on top of things and you will get there eventually.

 

[waterdrop]

I would tweak the temperature a little higher to 84F. WD

 

[Kaybear]

I bumped the temp up to 84F. Ammonia hasn't dropped, it's still at about 5 ppm, nitrites have went up to 1 ppm and my ph is about 8.2. Approximately how long should it be before I start seeing a drop in ammonia now that my nitrites are going up everyday? Monday the nitrites were .25, yesterday .50 and today 1.

 

[Kaybear]

Never mind, the ammonia has dropped some today. I think it's close to 2-3 ppm, I will wait to see where it's at tomorrow before I dose it with more ammonia. Some people dose their tanks back to 5 ppm after the nitrite spike and ammonia drop, others keep it at 2. Im thinking 2-3 would be better, which do you think?

 

[eaglesaquarium]

Never mind, the ammonia has dropped some today. I think it's close to 2-3 ppm, I will wait to see where it's at tomorrow before I dose it with more ammonia. Some people dose their tanks back to 5 ppm after the nitrite spike and ammonia drop, others keep it at 2. Im thinking 2-3 would be better, which do you think?

I've posted this elsewhere, but I think the best benefit to your cycle would be to keep your nitrites as low as possible to help the nitrospira population have the best chance of colonization.

from Dr. Tim Havonec

The reason why one finds Nitrospira and not Nitrobacter in these systems has to do with the nitrite concentrations. As Regan et al 2002 describes starting on page 79, a low-nitrite environment selects for Nitrospira while a high nitrite environment will select for Nitrobacter. Optimum growth for Nitrospira is a nitrite concentration around 0.14 mg/L NO2-N. For Nitrobacter the optimal nitrite concentration for grow is around 14 mg/l NO2-N which is a toxic concentration for most freshwater fishes.

I would advise: Keep your ammonia dosing low until the N-bacs start to catch up, then slowly increase the dosing back up. I also would recommend (although others may disagree) that any time your nitrites spike up off the scale, do a huge water change to lower the nitrites back to a level more appropriate to the Nitrospira bacteria (~0.14ppm).

 

[Kaybear]

That's what I thought too. I have read so many different things but I always thought that continuously adding a lot of ammonia would produce too much nitrite, thus delaying or even stopping the cycle. I will try to keep the ammonia at about 1-2 pmm until the nitrites start getting processed. I will do some water changes if the nitrites get too high, which they probably will. Thanks for the info

 

[OldMan47]

You only add ammonia once the ammonia in the tank reads zero. As long as you still have any ammonia, the A-bacs have more than they need to continue to grow. If they did not have enough to continue growing, they would have already used up all available ammonia. There is much to be said for maintaining low ammonia levels during your nitrite spike. As the reference by EaglesA shows, the required nitrite condition for optimal N-bac growth is quite low. We have seen some evidence of that over the years here on TFF when WD or I have advised enormous water changes when people's nitrite readings were completely off scale. The end result has often been a rapid end to the nitrite spike.