Fishless Cycle

[catfish4ever]

hi guys when i hopefully get a new tank soon. i will fishless cycle it but do u change the water in a fishless cycle or add any chemicals? i dont think you do but just to be sure.

 

[fluttermoth]

You need to add ammonia, obviously, and a dechlorinator. You don't normally do water changes unless the nitrite or nitrate goes off the scale, which can stall your cycle and need a part change to bring them down.

 

[catfish4ever]

You need to add ammonia, obviously, and a dechlorinator. You don't normally do water changes unless the nitrite or nitrate goes off the scale, which can stall your cycle and need a part change to bring them down.

um... how do i add ammonia.

add fish food?

 

[fluttermoth]

Basically the bacteria you want to grow need ammonia to eat. Once you have fish, they'll be excreting it, but during your cycle, while you're growing the colony, you have to add an alternate source.

The cleanest, easiest route is with a bottle of household ammonia (used for cleaning); you can get in online from Boots or at Homebase, if you are in the UK, but not everyone can get it (it can be used as ingredient in terrorist bombs, apparently), so you can use fish food to rot down and prodcue the ammonia that way, but's messy and less accurate.

Don't forget that you can 'seed' the new filter with a bit of media from your exsisting filter, if that is properly cycled and that will speed things up, as you then only have to wait for the bacterial colony to expand, rather than waiting for one to start from scratch.

I suggest you go and read the article on fishless cycling in the beginner's resource center; the link is in my sig.

 

[Hermithall]

Neat ammonia (NH3) can be hard to find, I know I couldn't source it anywhere when I wanted to begin my own fishless cycle. The ammonia from my local pharmacies seemed tainted with other ingredients which I thought might be risky to add to the tank, so in the end I decided to cycle it with fish instead by way of a couple of hardy zebra danios. A couple of tough little wrigglers like these can usually withstand the ammonia spike no probs and will get your bacteria colony started (4-6 weeks to be sure; use a test kit to monitor the ammonia/nitrite spikes). Trick is not to add too many fish in one go after that - allow the bio load to adjust incrementally.
I know this doesn't help with your fishless cycling, so if you still want to try that but can't find any NH3, I can only suggest putting something in the tank which will decay and release ammonia - a dead fish would certainly do it, or maybe just some sinking fish pellets allowed to rot on the tank floor.
Best of luck with the cycle, whatever you decide

 

[CrazyCichlaMomma]

i haven't tried recently.. but i think you can still buy ammonia at the grocery store that doesn't have any additives except that it's diluted with pure water.

and if you're doing a fishless cycle you don't need a dechlorinator, the chlorine or chloramines disipate quite quickly when the water is being turned over and aerated. you don't want to add chlorinated water to a tank with fish in it, it CAN harm your fish, and WILL kill off your beneficial bacteria that you spent so much time growing.