Fishless Cycle

[Bala Sharker]

so im starting my fishless cycle of my 60l tank. have been reading some of the posts on this and am about to go out and buy my api test kit and some ammonia. how much ammonia shud i add for the 60l is it about 3 ml.

so my understanding of the cycle is that i add the ammonia up to 4-5ppm and then wait for it to come back to zero at the same time keeping the temp about 80 f. and the ph around 7-8, then once it gets back to zero why do we start testin for nitrite, and then is it only when the ammonia get to zero in 10-12 hours that is time for fish, wen it gets to this stage what shud the readings be.

very confused on the whole thing
thanks for any information on thisalso looking to get some info on fish while i wait for the cycle

im looking at these fish
Cardinal tetras
Neon tetras
Rummy nosed tetra
Glolight tetra
Harlequin rasbora
Emerald eye rasbora
Dwarf gouramis

wud they go well together and what combinations would work best i know most need to be in sholas of 6-8 so how many would i fit inot a sixty litre tank

thanks

 

[waterdrop]

Right, you've got a good start on understanding the start. You dechlorinate the tap water and get the filter running and leave the tank light off (except when you're working in it or if you've got plants.) You try to start low and come upwards to get your ammonia concentration to be about 4 to 5ppm as you've said. You begin to tweak your temperature in, trying to get it to 84F/29C on your separate thermometer (the numbers on the heater don't tell you anything and are usually adjustable once you've checked with a thermometer (most of us like the simple glass ones that stick on with a suction cup.) You make sure you have an aquarium notebook (or plan a running note file in your PC, but that has to be backed up, ugh.)

I'll try to describe this from a different angle as all sorts of angles can help!
1) First Phase: Just for fun lets say about 20 days average:
This is when you are waiting and ammonia sometimes just sits there at 4ppm for days or weeks! You begin to wonder why people talk about it dropping to zero. Then on some random day it suddenly might read 1ppm instead of 4ppm and the next day it might even be zero ppm. Towards the end of this first phase you might begin to see some nitrite(NO2) show up for the first time.

Note: You only add ammonia once in a 24 hour day and only if ammonia dropped to zero ppm within the previous 24 hours. If you test at 12 hours and its zero, you still wait to your 24 hour mark to add ammonia (for example if you added ammonia at 8am and you tested at 8pm and it was zero, you'd still wait to the next morning at 8am to add your 3ml of ammonia or whatever it takes to go back up to 4ppm etc.

2) "Nitrite Spike" (2nd phase): Now nitrite(NO2) has gone as high as the nitrite test kit can measure. On the API kit it might say 5ppm all the time but you know that probably its 10ppm or 15ppm and the test kit just can't measure it. This is because you have more A-Bacs (ammonia oxidizing bacteria) than N-Bacs (nitrite oxidizing bacteria) and the A-Bacs are putting out an excess of nitrite(NO2) that the N-Bacs aren't numerous enough to process. This too might last about 20 days.
3) Third Phase: This is after the "Nitrite Spike" is finally over. Now nitrite(NO2) will drop much lower or to zero within 24 hours after ammonia was added. What you're hoping for is for nitrite(NO2) to begin to drop so fast that it will reach zero ppm within 12 hours after ammonia was added, and you also want ammonia to keep dropping to zero ppm 12 hours after it was added. Either one of these may "stick" at some low level like 0.25ppm for days on end rather than go to zero ppm. This phase might take another 20 days.

So you can see in our example that this particular "average" fishless cycle is going to take 60 days of work! It takes a lot of patience! Having given this example, I'll say that fishless cycling is very, very unpredictable and really we see total times from 3 weeks to 2 months or so, when no mature media is used. (mature media is filter material from an established fish tank where the bacteria have had a long time to grow.)

The test of the end of a fishless cycle is when you can add 5ppm of ammonia and then confirm that both ammonia and nitrite(NO2) have dropped to zero ppm at 12 hours after the ammonia was added. When this happens, you can start your "qualifying week" and just watch it continue to get "double-zeros" at 12 hours for a whole week. Then you will be confident that after doing the big water change (dechlor and temp match but no more ammonia!) and getting your first stocking of fish, the testing will not show any "mini-cycles" (traces of ammonia or nitrite.)

~~waterdrop~~ whew!

 

[Bala Sharker]

cheers for the help water drop think i got my head around it now cheers